Kirk’s impactful return to lineup lifts Blue Jays over Rays

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.

May 15, 2025 - 09:06

Kirk’s impactful return to lineup lifts Blue Jays over Rays

TORONTO – Julio Rodriguez’s average bat-speed of 75.5 m.p.h. ranks in the 93^rd 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, which he described as the worst he’s ever taken on the field. 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 himself 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, leaving him to return Wednesday to steer Chris Bassitt through 5.2 innings of traffic-filled, one-run ball and help the Blue Jays back to .500 at 21-21. Catchers sign up for all types of abuse behind the plate and in recent seasons, as they’ve crept closer to the plate to better frame pitches for umpires, more gloves have been getting clipped, but swing follow-throughs off the body or head are far rarer, which raised the uncertainty on Kirk.

“You never know, everyone responds to that differently, speaking from experience, too, and you don’t want to take chances,” said manager John Schneider, a former catcher who suffered seven concussions in six pro seasons. “Sometimes it doesn’t look bad and it ends up being bad. Kirky is tough back there. Whether it’s blocking balls or getting hit in the head, he’s about as tough as they come. Initially, you always kind of go to the worst-case scenario with that and thankful that it wasn’t that. He basically carried us on both sides of the ball.”

Bassitt is thankful for that, too, although as a member of the player union’s influential executive subcommittee, he was also thinking bigger-picture about the incident.

“I’ve talked to a number of teammates about this and I’m pretty adamant when I say there probably should be a rule change where if the hitter does that to a catcher, they should automatically be out and then it’s just quickly going to change a swing,” he said. “I mean, a bat is a weapon. You can’t be out of control. If you’re out of control, you’re out. Like, fix it.

“You can’t have guys get hit in the head,” he added. “Julio’s a great hitter, and I’m not saying Julio, I’m saying throughout the course of the league, guys that are swinging like that, it’s mostly one-handed finishers, it’s a weapon. If you can’t control it, you shouldn’t be hitting.”

When told of Bassitt’s suggestion, Kirk was more forgiving, saying he didn’t think such a penalty was necessary for “an accident,” while acknowledging that the impact “really hurts.” The Lauer curveball was exceptionally nasty, and at 7.7 feet, Rodriguez has one of the longer swings in the game, adding to the outlier nature of the incident.

Regardless, taking such an impact could have derailed Kirk’s recent surge at the plate, but instead he picked up where he left off.

He was down in the count 0-2 in the sixth when Ryan Pepiot left a fast 97 m.p.h. fastball middle-middle and Kirk drove it 407-feet to right-centre, all signs that his swing and approach are right where they should be.

“In that at-bat, I just wanted to make sure that I was on time on the fastball,” he said. “I was looking for that fastball. He has a good fastball. He throws that fastball regardless of the count. So I just wanted to make sure that I was on time and he left it right down the middle and I connected.”

He certainly did, and in a timely way, too, Kirk went back to doing damage, rather than taking it.