Jays’ prospect Alford looking to stay healthy this season

DUNEDIN — Anthony Alford played football at a high level for years and never got his bell rung, until he started concentrating on a more pastoral sport, baseball.

The irony of which makes Alford — ranked the 59th best prospect by Baseball America — laugh and wince at the same time.

“You expect (a concussion) to happen in football so you’re more prepared for it,” he said. “You don’t expect that to happen in baseball. But it is what it is.”

Last June, playing in his third full season in the minors, for Class A Advanced Dunedin, Alford collided with shortstop Richard Urena at home against St. Lucie on a pop fly and remained down for nearly 15 minutes before being taken to a local hospital. Fortunately there was no skull fracture, but the outfielder suffered a neck injury and a serious concussion. He also suffered a knee injury early in the season and though he was able to get in 92 games for Dunedin, Alford never really had the chance to get untracked, hitting .236 with nine home runs with an OPS of .722.

“It was very frustrating because I was just really excited about last year and having those set backs you can’t get into that rhythm and you can’t perform how you want to perform,” said the 22-year-old. “It’s real frustrating because you know you’re better than what the numbers show. But you can’t do anything about it when you’re always on the trainer’s table.”

A two-sport star in high school, (he is the only athlete to ever be named both Mr. Baseball and Mr. Football in the state of Mississippi in the same year,) Alford played quarterback for Southern Miss as a freshman in 2012, then transferred to Ole Miss and played safety in 2014, all while spending his summers making appearances in the Jays’ minor-league system after the organization selected him in the third round of the 2012 draft. But after getting married in 2014, Alford gave up football to concentrate on baseball — much to the Jays’ delight — and now the organization is patiently waiting for the 6-foot1, 215-pound bruiser to break out. Alford is an excellent athlete and hits for average and power and has above average speed and is a good fielder. He’s hoping that when the Jays need an extra outfielder this season, he’ll be called up, although his ETA for the bigs is 2018. Still, Alford’s biting at the bit to make his Major League debut.

“That’s the ultimate goal,” he said. “I don’t expect to do it out of spring training, but hopefully at some point I can be up there with them and help them win.”

Forget about the Queen and her Annus Horribilis in 1992. 2016 was an equally horrible year for Alford who not only battled injuries all season, but early in the morning on Dec.28, Alford’s family home in Columbia, Mo., — where his mom Lawanda, dad Anthony Sr. and younger sister Ayanna lived — burned to the ground in a fire. Nobody was hurt, but the family lost almost everything — including all the mementos, pictures and trophies Alford picked up over the years. Priceless stuff. He also told Postmedia in a phone interview a couple of days after the fire that he was also dealing with some other personal issues, problems he said this week that he now has under control. Obviously the big outfielder is looking forward to a more positive 2017.

“My goal is just to stay healthy and just see what will happen,” said Alford. “You can’t really do nothing if you’re not healthy.”