The Twins will place Jose Miranda on the 10-day injured list prior to Sunday’s game with the Giants, manager Rocco Baldelli told reporters (including Betsy Helfand of the St. Paul Pioneer Press). Utilityman Diego Castillo will have his contract selected from Triple-A to take Miranda’s spot on the active roster and the Twins will have to make another move to clear space on the 40-man roster.
Lower-back tightness has kept Miranda off the field since Wednesday, so the Twins will be able to backdate Miranda’s IL stint to July 11. With the four-day All-Star break also factoring into the 10-day span, Miranda won’t miss much additional game time if he is able to return after only 10 days, though the Twins will certainly be careful with a player who has emerged as one of their chief offensive weapons.
Miranda seemed to lay claim to the Twins’ third base job with a very solid rookie season in 2022, but then struggled through a rough 2023 campaign that was limited to 40 games due to shoulder surgery. Royce Lewis’ own injury problems allowed Miranda to get a fresh chance at regular playing time this season and he has exploded for nine home runs and a .325/.366/.522 slash line over 276 plate appearances, translating to a 149 wRC+. This big year included a place in the history books, as Miranda’s string of 12 consecutive at-bats with a hit matched a major league record.
Miranda has a .349 BABIP, and between middling hard-contact numbers and a below-average 5.1% walk rate, he is certainly overachieving to some extent — the infielder’s .380 wOBA is well above his .345 xwOBA. Still, even that xwOBA is well above the league average, and Miranda’s contact is helped by the fact that he is rarely swinging and missing. His 13.4% strikeout rate is in the 93rd percentile of all batters, even if his chase rate is unimpressive.
This production has been a big reason why the Twins are in possession of an AL wild-card spot, so the club can only hope that Miranda’s back problem won’t linger. Beyond just Miranda’s absence, the Twins’ wider-scale problem is a sudden swath of infield injuries, as Miranda joins Lewis, Kyle Farmer, Alex Kirilloff and Austin Martin on the club’s 10-day IL. Star shortstop Carlos Correa was also a late scratch from Saturday’s lineup due to a heel contusion, though there isn’t yet any indication that Correa’s injury is anything but a day-to-day issue. With so much infield depth missing, Minnesota had to get creative with Saturday’s lineup, moving catcher Christian Vazquez to third base — Jair Camargo was called up from Triple-A earlier this week, so the Twins still had flexibility behind the plate with Vazquez, Camargo and Ryan Jeffers all available.
Castillo brings some versatility to this mix, as the 26-year-old has already played five different positions and even thrown a couple of innings over his two MLB seasons. Debuting with the Pirates in 2022, Castillo hit .206/.251/.382 over 283 during his first year in the Show and was then traded to the Diamondbacks after the season and appeared in just one MLB game during the 2023 campaign. A flurry of waiver claims this winter saw Castillo join four different organizations before finally landing with Minnesota, via an early April trade with the Orioles.