CHICAGO -- Here's the thing about the Twins starting to get healthy again: At some point, someone is going to get squeezed out of the lineup, whether a younger player who established himself in the opportunity presented by the club's rash of injuries, or someone who had previously been an everyday starter.

For now, the answer appears to be the latter.

Miguel Sanó was out of the lineup again for Tuesday's series opener against Lucas Giolito and the White Sox, and he hadn't been in the lineup posted before Monday's rainout at Guaranteed Rate Field.

In fact, Tuesday marked the sixth time in the last nine games that Sanó wasn't in the Twins' lineup, as part of a stretch during which the team finally had Luis Arraez, Josh Donaldson and Max Kepler healthy together at the same time, leading to a crunch for playing time around the field due to relatively seamless transitions to the Majors for top prospects Alex Kirilloff and Trevor Larnach.

"We have a lot of guys now that we want to get in the lineup, and we have a lot of good and young left-handed hitters, guys that go out there and are lined up to compete pretty well against some of these right-handed starters that we're facing," manager Rocco Baldelli said. "There are even a lot of days where we can't even get all of those left-handed hitters in there when we're trying to."

All three of Sanó's starts in the previous nine games came against left-handed pitchers, but there are clearly far more right-handed pitchers in baseball -- and the Twins have indicated they prefer to keep Larnach and Arraez, in particular, in the lineup against left-handed pitchers, too.

Considering Sanó's tough numbers to start this season, it's a challenging argument for him to make his case for more playing time. Entering Tuesday, his average sat at .196 and his OPS at .718, his lowest marks since 2018, when he was demoted to the Class A level for a stretch to regain his bearings.

Arraez (.743 OPS), Kirilloff (.745) and Larnach (.776) have performed well enough to show the Twins that they deserve to be more than just platoon players, even as the latter two continue their adjustment to the big leagues. Sanó also has the added challenge that he's not particularly built to be a platoon bat, with relatively even career splits against righties and lefties.

"That's a decision they take, and I approve that," Sanó said. "I don't have any problem with anything that they do to me. I'm OK. ... We're still the same. Nothing bad with my coaches. We're still the same as people, teammates, coaches. Same person."

Miranda, Winder promoted to Triple-A St. Paul

Top Twins prospects have had a rough go of things early this season -- particularly from an injury standpoint. That's what makes the progress of third baseman José Miranda and right-hander Josh Winder all the more encouraging.

Miranda and Winder were promoted to Triple-A St. Paul on Monday after they dominated the Double-A level to open the Minor League season, leaving the Nos. 16 (Miranda) and 12 (Winder) prospects in the organization, per MLB Pipeline, one step from the big leagues.

The 23-year-old Miranda was always known for his contact ability combined with some pop, and he's gotten much more consistent with squaring up the ball, leading to a .345/.408/.508 slash line in 47 games with Double-A Wichita to go with 25 strikeouts and 17 walks in 194 at-bats. He homered in his first at-bat with St. Paul on Tuesday night.

"Just getting to barrels more consistently, and I think for a guy like him, he knew the strike zone, kind of always generally knew it, but you get guys that get more consistent as they get more at-bats under their belt, right, and I think that there’s no way to speed that up sometimes," Twins executive vice president and chief baseball officer Derek Falvey said. "You just need the plate appearances."

Winder, meanwhile, could be an answer this season to Minnesota's pitching woes if needed. The 24-year-old right-hander has continued to hone his usage of offspeed pitches, coupled with the added velocity he showed out of the COVID-19 hiatus. That all led to a 1.98 ERA in 10 starts with Wichita, including 65 strikeouts in 54 2/3 innings.

The Twins will continue to evaluate how he feels between starts as they monitor his health as part of his sharply increased workload coming off the lost 2020 season, in which he wasn't at the alternate training site.

"He’s developing consistent command of his secondary stuff," Falvey said. "All the things that you see of guys at that age. He’s got good feel of his fastball. He just needs to continue to progress. The key for him will be, we want to make sure we’re building him up thoughtfully in terms of total innings, thinking about over the long term, because we think really highly of him as a cog for us along the way here."