Healthy Alcala poised to take lights-out spring into regular season

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- In a different universe, 2022 might have been the long-awaited breakout year for hard-throwing reliever Jorge Alcala. Instead, he lost nearly the entire season to a right elbow injury.

In the meantime, Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax broke out as core pieces of the Twins’ leverage bullpen core, with Jorge López also entering the fray via trade last season. But with Alcala finally feeling healthy, he has spent this spring showing glimpses of all that potential -- and he looks poised to carry a lights-out spring into a renewed opportunity to bolster Minnesota's bullpen in 2023.

“I felt like I couldn't help the team [last year],” Alcala said through interpreter Anderson de la Rosa. “So I had a couple of people behind me, help get the motion going, get everything up again, and say, ‘Keep going, keep going. The moment is coming.’”

The Twins have seen what Alcala is capable of at his best. He wields electric raw stuff, with a fastball that touches triple digits and a power slider that averaged 89.7 mph when he was last fully healthy, in 2021. Amid a campaign that didn't result in a postseason berth, Minnesota pushed Alcala into higher-leverage roles -- and as part of an 0.87 ERA in his final 18 innings that season, he capped the year with his first save, seemingly setting the stage for more significant work to come.

But Alcala had just two outings in 2022 before he hit the IL with right elbow inflammation. He attempted a comeback, which was shut down, but ultimately underwent season-ending arthroscopic debridement surgery in August.

Coming off that level of inactivity and surgery over a year, it wasn’t realistic to expect Alcala to jump right back in at 100 percent -- and the Twins made it clear at the start of camp that they simply wanted to see him get back in the routine of pitching and get back into the feel for consistent work on the mound.

He’s done more than that. Following his clean ninth inning during the Twins’ 3-0 loss to the Blue Jays on Thursday, Alcala has allowed two runs on three hits and three walks across 7 2/3 frames this spring -- and both of those runs were in his first outing. Since then, he has posted six straight scoreless appearances, and five straight without allowing a hit.

“Any player that's coming off of something, you look at and you just keep an especially close eye on,” manager Rocco Baldelli said last week. “He's handled it all well, and from the beginning of camp until now, he's already made great strides. You've got to be really pleased about it.”

Perhaps there was some question at the start of camp as to whether Alcala would find those strides, but his performance has seemingly resolved any concerns. The stuff is still coming back, as his 95.4 mph average on tracked fastballs this spring remains below his 97.4 mph average of 2021. But even so, his slider is averaging 87.2 mph, and it has all played to the tune of 11 strikeouts and three walks in 7 2/3 frames.

“The first couple days when we were here in Spring Training, I felt like I didn’t have a couple pitches,” Alcala said. “I had no [feel], nothing. But the moment when I came to Spring Training and kept going every day, every single day throwing, I got the feeling. And now I’m finding my pitches, my grip and everything.”

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The Twins don’t need Alcala to be a leverage arm yet. Before this season, he was still a work in progress, even as he pitched to a 3.92 ERA with 61 strikeouts and 13 walks in 59 2/3 innings in 2021. His well-documented troubles with lefties due to the lack of a reliable changeup prevented Alcala from taking that step in the past, and even in '21, lefties had a .740 OPS off him, versus a .580 OPS for righties.

He threw the changeup more than ever in 2021, and just as Minnesota waited to see what it could expect from Alcala this spring, it seems likely that the club could ease him into more important spots in the regular season, while Duran, Jax, López and Caleb Thielbar handle the leverage situations.

But if Alcala starts climbing that ladder again with the return of his stuff and continued improvement against lefties, it might be a nice boost for that bullpen depth -- something the Twins have sought from Alcala for years.