Twins' Alex Kirilloff to see specialist after injuring wrist
The injury bug has once again bitten a top Twins prospect.
Alex Kirilloff was a late scratch before Tuesday's Twins-Rangers game in Minneapolis due to a right wrist injury that he may have suffered while sliding into second base Monday night.
The extent of the injury is unknown, but manager Rocco Baldelli indicated that it could keep Kirilloff on the shelf for an extended period of time.
"It doesn't appear to be the most minor of things," Baldelli said, adding that the team will "hopefully know more once we talk to the specialist" on Wednesday.
Kirilloff is rated by MLB.com as the Twins' No. 2 prospect, trailing former No. 1 overall pick, shortstop Royce Lewis. The sweet-swinging lefty started his 2021 season with 15 hitless at-bats, but turned it around with four homers in a six-game stretch.
In fact, from April 23 through May 3 Kirilloff led the majors with eight barreled baseballs. That's a fancy term meaning he squared up the pitch and hammered it. Josh Donaldson and Shohei Ohtani each had seven barrels during that same stretch, tied for second most in the big leagues.
"Alex Kirilloff is now 9-for-26 (.346) with four homers, three doubles, and a .923 slugging percentage since starting 0-for-15," tweeted The Athletic's Aaron Gleeman on May 3. "And the 0-for-15 start was full of all kinds of bad luck on hard-hit balls, too. This kid has a chance to be really special."
Willians Astudillo played first base in place of Kirilloff Tuesday night and the Twins also recalled infielder Nick Gordon from Triple-A St. Paul after Luis Arraez was placed on the injured list with a concussion.
Miguel Sano has been eligible to come off the injured list since Saturday, but the Twins are letting him regain his timing at the plate before inserting him back into the lineup, though Kirilloff's injury may speed up that process.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.