FORT MYERS, Fla. — Jose Miranda entered 2023 looking to build upon a promising rookie season and establish himself as a major leaguer. A shoulder injury that cropped up in spring training last year essentially robbed him of that opportunity.
Now, Miranda, once one of the organization’s top prospects, is looking to show he’s healthy — and that he belongs — even as it appears that he will start the season in Triple-A after what amounted to a lost season for him a year ago.
“Sometimes you’re going to go through some tough moments, and for me, I just took ’23 as a learning experience,” he said. “But obviously I flushed that already.”
When the shoulder pain originally popped up a year ago, Miranda at first was limited to just hitting. He wound up being healthy enough to play third base to begin the season, but the shoulder issue persisted. As he played through the his injury, his numbers took a hit at the plate. He felt he was unable to extend the way he normally could, and he was eventually demoted to Triple-A St. Paul.
In the meantime, Royce Lewis recovered from his knee surgery, returned to the major-league roster and staked his claim to third base. After Miranda spent nearly two months at Triple-A, Lewis hurt his oblique, opening up a roster spot for Miranda once more. But just a couple of weeks later, he landed on the injured list. He didn’t play a game after mid-July and finished the season hitting .211 with a .566 OPS and 56 OPS + (100 is league average) in 40 major-league games.
“The way I feel right now, I feel like I’m extending more, and last year, I kind of didn’t feel that,” he said. “… It didn’t hurt when I swung, but it just felt like my swings weren’t the same. But you just want to grind through it and play through it.”
After an offseason cleanup procedure in his right shoulder, Miranda is healthy once again and has set out to show that. And after spending the offseason working on his swing, he feels much better at the plate, as well.
“He just looks more free. He looks like he can just let it rip and he can actually load and let his hands work,” shortstop Carlos Correa said. “He put in a lot of work this offseason just one to get healthy and two to fix his swing, and I believe that he’s going to contribute to this team at some point.”
It’s a small sample size but the results show that: Miranda is hitting .316 this spring and has felt more comfortable at the plate. He spent the offseason rehabbing in Fort Myers and would work with hitting coach David Popkins when he came into town.
He lowered his hands a little bit and changed the positioning of his feet. His load is a little bit shorter, he said, and now, he flies open less. He also said he eliminated a move within his swing in the process.
“I just feel like that move was making me chase pitches where I didn’t want to swing, swings that I maybe didn’t want to do. So just being more simple, trying to lower my hands a little bit,” Miranda said. “… Just try to be balanced. It’s really important to me.”
Miranda, who DHed early in spring, returned to the field days ago, manning first base for the first time. That will be his positional focus for the time being, though it’s being filled at the major-league level by a combination of Carlos Santana and Alex Kirilloff right now.
And while Miranda will likely begin the season in St. Paul, he is ready to show that he is once again the player the Twins were so high on just a year ago.
“He’s a player that he knows he’s a really good hitter, and he knows that he can contribute to this team,” Correa said. “It’s all about putting the pieces together, and he knows he can do that, and he’s going to show everybody that he’s that player that was a top prospect in this organization and had a promising future.”
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