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It's kind of wild now to go back and look at pictures from the unveiling of the new Twins branding back in November. The vision for the team's future was so different then from what it turned out to be, as illustrated by Luis Arraez and Jose Miranda bookending the five-player uniform showcase that also featured Jorge Polanco, Joe Ryan and Byron Buxton.
Arraez and Miranda had established themselves as foundational to the Twins lineup, which might help explain why the team's offense was so foundationally dysfunctional in the first half, searching for an identity in their absence.
Arraez is gone this year and that's largely true of Miranda as well, except not quite: he was worse than gone. Miranda produced a negative-0.6 fWAR in 40 games before going on the injured list, damaging the Twins with both his bat and glove. He was bad at third base and abysmal at the plate, producing a 56 OPS+ in 152 plate appearances.
Going forward, Arraez obviously will not be a part of the franchise's plans, due to a strategic decision that so far looks pretty good. Will the same be true of Miranda, who is now very much at risk of getting lost in the shuffle?
It's tricky to see a path forward for the 25-year-old, whose future here looked so promising so recently.
Miranda was placed on the 60-day injured list last week, and with a lack of status updates, it seems all but understood his season is over. A spring shoulder injury that was deemed mild at the time has ended up derailing his season and casting a major cloud over Miranda's major-league future.
While he's been sidelined, some major developments have taken place around him. Royce Lewis returned to the fold and has taken a star turn at third base, powering the offense as a rookie in a way that makes Miranda's 2022 campaign pale by comparison.
Meanwhile, last year's first-round pick Brooks Lee is already on the doorstep of the majors. He's playing a mix of short and third in Triple-A, but with Carlos Correa entrenched as shortstop it appears Lee's future is at the hot corner, which always profiled as his best defensive position anyway. That means Lewis will eventually need to relocate – possibly to second base or the outfield.
Needless to say, there's a good bit of a lot of competition at third base within the emerging core and Miranda has put himself squarely behind multiple players in that race. His days at the position might've already been numbered, given how bad he's looked defensively at third. Will the Twins even bother trying to bring him back there next year?
Miranda's clearest path to returning to the picture, it seems, is first base or designated hitter. But these spots are also well staked in Minnesota's young nucleus, with Alex Kirilloff looking like the (hopeful) long-term fixture at first, and a multitude of quality bats vying for designated hitter time – Edouard Julien, Matt Wallner and Trevor Larnach among them.
Notably, those players are all left-handed hitters, which affords them an edge given the vastly higher number of righty pitchers in the league. Miranda faces a pretty high bar as a right-handed hitter with a spotty track record and unexceptional defensive chops. To understand how readily available this player type is, look no further than Donovan Solano, who was available on a $2 million deal in late February.
To be clear, the version of Miranda we saw for a brilliant stretch of summer 2022 – seemingly backing up his monster 2021 campaign in the minors – is worth making room for. From May 20th to the end of July last year, a rookie Miranda slashed .335/.374/.571 in 50 games, launching 20 extra-base hits and driving in 37.
He did so in pretty convincing fashion during that altogether brief period of time, too. Miranda would never be confused by anyone for a disciplined hitter, but he made consistently made hard contact while showing an ability to drive the ball oppo. His spray chart via Statcast illustrates an inclination for pull power with an ability to dump singles and doubles the other way on outside pitches.
Usually, that's a pretty safe formula for success, so it's easy to see why Minnesota started looking at Miranda as a building block type. Unfortunately, the success evaporated this season, as he was overcome by the same limitation that kept him on the fringes of the prospect radar for years: too much soft, useless contact. Getting the bat on everything isn't helpful if you're producing easy outs, and that was the story of Miranda's 2023 season up until he was shut down in July.
The combination of anemic offense and rough defense made him one of the least valuable players in the league. So that's what Miranda is working back from, at a time where the Twins are ushering a historic rookie class with numerous players solidifying their own places in the franchise's future.
In short, it's hard to imagine how this season could've gone worse for José Miranda. And as a result, it's now hard to envision how he finds his way back into the team's plans going forward, barring some significant injury to another building block type.
As Twins fans know, that's hardly a long-shot. Kirilloff specifically has struggled to stay off the injured list, and the system's depth at first base behind him is relatively sparse. That position seemingly holds the best chance to create another opening for Miranda, but again – even IN the depressing scenario where AK is continually sidetracked by injuries – Miranda still needs to turn around his own narrative as a poor fielder whose hitting prowess appears flatlined.
It'll be very interesting to see how Miranda is viewed and handled heading into the 2024 season. For those who recall how impactful he was at his best, in the not-so-distant past, Miranda will be an intriguing wild-card factor in the franchise's bright overall outlook.
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