If you follow the Yankees minor leagues at all, you’ve probably come across Juan Miranda’s name. He’s a 1b/DH whose official age is 25 but because he’s from Cuba, he’s probably a year or two older than that.
He missed some time in 2008 with injuries but posted a line of .287/.385/.452 in AAA Scranton and was brought up in September to play a few games. Miranda isn’t a wunderkind and not really considered much of a prospect at this point–he’s pretty much hit his ceiling plus there is the concern about his age. But still with numbers like that, you might wonder why his name hasn’t come up. The answer to that is in his splits (taken from minorleagueplits.com:
AB AVG OBP SLG OPS vs. LH 115 0.200 0.264 0.287 0.551 vs. RH 237 0.329 0.438 0.532 0.970
Those are some of the most extreme splits you’ll ever see, which makes it clear Miranda is really only a platoon option. There was an idea floating around at some point that he might platoon 1B with a bat who can only hit lefties (like the recently DFAd Shelley Duncan) but the Yankees aren’t really a team that can afford to do this for a variety of reasons.
Still, Miranda has a bat that should be useful on the MLB level and it would be a shame to keep him in AAA. There are two obvious options here:
1) Make space for Miranda on the bench. CF is apparently going to be a black hole of offense with Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner fighting it out for who sucks less, so there are going to be times when a pinch hitter against a RHP is desirable. In the event that Nady is not traded (meaning only one of the lightbat twins is on the 25-man), Swisher or Damon can take over CF for a few innings with Nady in R/LF. If Nady is traded, that probably means both Gardner and Melky are on the bench so just stick one of them to replace the other.
2) Either give Miranda some Major League at-bats or let him mash some more in AAA and trade him for spare parts to a team that can/will use him. He’s not worth much on his own but perhaps this would be the optimal time to trade, say, Jose Veras for something somewhat useful with a WHIP under 1.4!
I would prefer the first, if only because the Yankees under Cashman never seem to have a competent bench. I’m not under the illusion that the Yankees could get much for him (alone or in a package) but he’s obviously not getting a shot with the team and they should look to get some value out of him.
