Columnist image

| Archive

There’s no questioning the package of tools Anthony Alford brings to a baseball field.

His ability to stay on that field is different story altogether.

Each and every time the converted football player looks like he’s generating positive momentum and his tools continue to morph into baseball skills, he gets hurt.

It’s been an unfortunate trend over the past three seasons.

This spring, Alford was once again turning heads and tearing up the Grapefruit League with his speed and developing power.

Now, he’s sidelined for at least three weeks, and possibly as many as six, with a right hamstring strain.

A week ago, Alford was a healthy and productive two months at Triple-A Buffalo away from being in legitimate consideration for a late May or early June call up.

Thanks to the injury, that timeline has likely backed up significantly, depending on how Alford looks when he returns.

Since turning to baseball full-time prior to the 2015 season, a laundry list of injuries have slowed Alford’s rise through the system.

The only thing that’s allowed him to work around the injuries and keep his prospect status intact is the supreme athletic ability the 23-year-old flashes when he is healthy.

In 2016, a nasty outfield collision left him with a concussion and Alford was stretchered off the field.

Prior to that, he had dislocated his knee earlier in the season.

Last year, five days after being called up to the big leagues for the first time as the Jays were dealing with a litany of injuries, a broken hamate bone suffered on a swing shelved Alford for about six weeks.

“I knew when I took that swing and felt that pop that something was wrong,” Alford said. “I had never felt that before.”

Now, it’s the hamstring.

Since being popped in the third round of the 2012 draft, between injuries and football, Alford has still yet to accumulate 500 plate appearances in a season.

In 2015, he got to 487 between Low-A Lansing and High-A Dunedin. In 2016, he walked to the plate 401 times in Dunedin. Across four stops last year, including eight major-league at-bats, Alford had just 332 plate appearances.

This was supposed to be Alford’s coming out party in 2018 — a full, healthy season that would catapult the 6-foot-1, 215-pounder from top prospect to a big part of the plan.

In 31 at-bats this spring, Alford already had 10 hits, with six of them going for extra bases.

There were also signs he needed those two months in Triple-A, as Alford struck out eight times and didn’t draw a walk.

It’s minor nitpicking.

Logjams have a way or sorting themselves out, and Alford’s setback — especially if the worst-case scenario end of the timeline comes to fruition — helps sort out what Triple-A Buffalo’s outfield will look like to start the season.

Randal Grichuk, Kevin Pillar, Curtis Granderson, and Steve Pearce, who returned Thursday after missing 10 days with a calf injury, are the four big-league outfielders to start the season.

If healthy, of course.

That means the red-hot Teoscar Hernandez, Dwight Smith Jr., and Dalton Pompey, who’s currently battling a wrist injury, will likely make up the trio at Triple-A while Alford is out, with Roemon Fields and Jonathan Davis in that mix as well.

Alford’s mindset won’t be any different than the last time he was hurt.

“It’s just another speed bump in the road for me,” he said.