After lost season, Twins outfielder Alex Kirilloff playing without pain

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Now that his right wrist is surgically repaired and fully healed, Alex Kirilloff is careful to make time every day to do a series of strengthening exercises to keep it that way.

There's stretching. There's flexing. There's a drill for range of motion, and another for improving grip strength.

And then there are his favorite ones: Lifting 2-year-old Penelope. And cradling 3-month-old Priscilla.

"I'm so glad I got this fixed," Kirilloff said with a smile.

So are the Twins. Kirilloff was one of the franchise's most highly respected hitting prospects in the past couple of decades, even got a hit in a playoff game before ever appearing in a regular-season game. But a chronically sore wrist worsened when he jammed his hand into second base while sliding headfirst last May 3, his rookie season.

"I could feel it when I stood up, but I played the rest of the game," Kirilloff said. "Then the next morning, it was all swollen. And that was the start."

Doctors told him there was ligament damage that would require surgery — eventually. Kirilloff decided to put it off as long as possible, in order to keep playing. "I wanted to see if I could play through it, so I got a cortisone shot. That lasted for a couple of months, but started to wear off. I kept wondering, can I keep my performance at a level to where my wrist is allowing me to do that?"

When he went 4-for-29 during the week before and the week after the All-Star break, he knew the answer. Kirilloff went on the injured list again, scheduled the surgery, and prepared for an unexpected summer as a stay-at-home dad.

But his worries weren't over. Two months after the surgery, after slowly testing and strengthening the wrist, which seemed to be healing smoothly, Kirilloff was cleared to pick up a bat and take some swings against a pitching machine.

And the pain returned.

"I couldn't hit anything at a higher velocity without pain. That was the confusing part, and it was a little scary, yeah," Kirilloff said. "So we decided to shut it down again for another month."

The problem, doctors told him, was that in addition to repairing the torn ligament in his wrist, they also had shaved down a portion of his ulna bone in order to create more space for the ligament to move. That's the part that hadn't healed as quickly as he had hoped.

In December, Kirilloff was cleared once again to ramp up the rehab work, a development that the Twins didn't know about since the MLB lockout had forced team employees, even medical staff, to sever all communication with players. Twins doctors had directed him, in the week before the lockout began, to a rehab center in Fort Myers that would develop a plan for him, and just hoped it worked.

Imagine their relief when the lockout ended last week and Kirilloff showed up at camp with pain-free, newly strengthened grip on his dangerous bat.

"AK looks great. He's moving around really well," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "He's paid a lot of attention to his body, and he's swinging the bat well. He can take part in everything."

Especially parenting. Still only 23, Kirilloff and his wife, Jordan, are enjoying the equally hard work of raising their two young daughters.

"How our lives have changed since 2020 until now is pretty crazy, but it's worth every second of it, for sure," Kirilloff said. "It's a lot of work, but it's definitely been a lot of fun, too."

Now that his wrist has healed, he has goals in mind for his second season with the Twins, mostly just using his experience to make rapid improvements on his .251-average, eight-homer season. And one other thing, too.

"I'm trying to get [Penelope and Priscilla] to be" daddy's girls, he said. "They spend so much time with their mom, it's hard to get them to that point."