TORONTO – Julio Rodriguez’s average bat-speed of 75.5 m.p.h. ranks in the 93rd percentile and at 76.2 m.p.h., he definitely got his A swing off while whiffing through Eric Lauer’s first-pitch curveball in the third inning Sunday afternoon. But the Seattle Mariners centre-fielder was also long in his follow-through on the cut, the top of the bat slamming directly into the left side of Alejandro Kirk’s helmet.
For some two minutes, the Toronto Blue Jays catcher tried to gather himself from the blow to his temple. He finished the inning, doubled and scored in the fourth and then left the game right after when he didn’t feel right in the dugout. “That part of the head is dangerous,” he said. “I get a lot of foul balls off my mask. I felt that one pretty good.”
A couple of days off and a few passed concussion tests later, Alejandro Kirk was feeling good for different reasons Wednesday, returning to the Blue Jays lineup to club a decisive three-run homer in the sixth inning of a 3-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays.
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The 26-year-old also threw out phenom speedster Chandler Simpson trying to steal second in the third inning, had a throwing error on a steal attempt by Christopher Morel that led to Kameron Misner’s RBI single in the fourth and lined out to centre in the eighth with two runners on during an eventful return.
Even if it hadn’t been such a consequential effort, the simple fact that he was back on the field so soon after absorbing such a frightful head shot was a stroke of good fortune for both Kirk and the Blue Jays.
“At the beginning after I got hit, I felt OK,” Kirk said of the Rodriguez backswing before the game. “But when I hit the double and I was running the bases, I felt weird, maybe a little bit dizzy. When I came back to the dugout, Jose (Ministral, the head trainer) said, ‘OK, that’s enough, we’re going to take you out to make sure that you’re OK.’”
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The intervention there mattered, as rather than exposing him to more risk, Kirk instead began to recover. He said he began to feel better Sunday night during the trip home, rested and recuperated further during Monday’s off-day and then resumed baseball activities and underwent testing Tuesday.
He was available to hit but wasn’t used in the 11-9 loss to the Rays, with Wednesday marking his first time back, steering Chris Bassitt through 5.2 innings of traffic-filled, one-run ball.
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