GLENDALE, Ariz. >> As injuries have sidetracked Alex Reyes’ career — the Tommy John surgery that cost him the 2017 season, the torn tendon in his shoulder that ended his 2018 season, the surgery to repair a torn labrum last May — he has carried something that his daughter gave him.
Perspective.
Young Aleyka was diagnosed with neuroblastoma as a 5-month-old in 2017. The rare cancer forms in the immature nerve cells of infants. In Aleyka’s case, the cancer was found in her heart, and she underwent chemotherapy.
Alex was rehabbing from his Tommy John surgery as Aleyka went through chemo. Regaining the 100-mph fastball and sharp breaking stuff that had made him one of the top pitching prospects in baseball didn’t seem quite as important as what his daughter was fighting through.
“My daughter has been through a lot too,” Reyes said. “That’s just always been what I look at and put things into perspective. Baseball — that’s my love, that’s my passion. But at the end of the day, it’s a game that I play, right? For her, it was a life-or-death situation. So it’s completely different for me. I just look at the big picture. I want to be on the field and it’s a game that I love to play, but I’ve just got to let God do his thing.
“It was a part of my life that I look back at now and I find strength from those moments.”
Reyes has needed that strength. His injury history has kept him from throwing as many as 20 innings in a big league season four of the five years since he debuted in 2016. His one healthy season (2021), he was an All-Star closer for the St. Louis Cardinals, a hint of the potential that made him such a dynamic prospect.
“The injuries are definitely tough,” Reyes said. “But at the end of the day, my goal is to be on a baseball field and there’s no other way to do that other than getting through it.”
Aleyka got through her early challenges. Alex said she recently had her annual checkup and Aleyka (now 6) is “100% clear” of the cancer.
“We’re in good places now,” Reyes said.
The Cardinals decided they couldn’t wait for Reyes to get through his latest challenge. They did not offer the arbitration-eligible right-hander a contract last fall, making him a non-tendered free agent. The Dodgers decided it was a relatively low-cost gamble they could take and signed Reyes for $1.1 million with incentives that could increase his salary — if he returns to health.
Reyes’ labrum surgery was 9 months ago now and he said he has progressed to playing catch from 90 feet. Throwing off a mound is still “a month or two” away but Reyes and the Dodgers are optimistic he will be ready to pitch for them in “June, July-ish.”
“It’s a day by day thing,” Reyes said. “I feel 100% confident that I’ll be back at my full capability. I’ve been able to do it after both of my other injuries. I’m not saying this is the same. But my mentality has to be that I can until I’m proven different.”
Reyes has also learned from his previous experience that rehabs can’t be swallowed whole. It takes a series of daily bites.
“Having experience with these other injuries, I understand that’s not the right way to go about it,” he said. “I have to think about ‘Tomorrow is my next day of throwing.’ For me, that’s the big day.
“I’ve got to try and stay animated and excited for the small steps. And that’s how I handle that. If you look at the big picture, you look at the whole program that’s written out, if you look three or four months from now — it’s real hard.”
FULL SQUAD
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts will get his first chance to address this year’s team before today’s first full-squad workout. Part of his message, he said, will be to focus on the positives of the personnel changes this winter that brought in veterans such as Noah Syndergaard, JD Martinez, Miguel Rojas and Jason Heyward.
“The guys that we brought in, a large percentage of them, a majority of them, chose to be here,” Roberts said. “There’s a lot of power in a player making a decision to be in a certain place. When you have that, you’re already ahead of the game. You can go down the list of guys that remain on the roster and the guys that have come in, they made a choice to come back here.
“That’s a big message in itself that they have made.”
DH DAYS
Last season — the first full season with the DH in the National League — 14 players started as the Dodgers’ DH, led by Justin Turner with 61 starts there.
This year, the Dodgers have signed Martinez, and Roberts said he expects him to be the DH “99.9% of the time.” That means no longer using the DH spot to give position players a “half-day off, essentially,” and it could impact the number of at-bats for some. Notably, catcher Will Smith started at DH 24 times, keeping his bat in the lineup while giving him a break from the rigors of catching.
“It’s not in our DNA — for lack of a better word — to have one dedicated DH. It’s not. We’ve shown that,” Roberts said. “But when you layer in the person, the ability to hit right and left, the relationship with Robert (Van Scoyoc, the Dodgers hitting coach who has worked with Martinez in the past), the relationship with some of our players, his desire to be here — all of that baked in, the net was a no-brainer to make that happen.”