Kyle Goon: With hard plays and new Orioles teammates, Blaze Alexander throws himself into the fire

Even as it was happening, Henry Davis looked as if he didn’t believe it.

The Pirates catcher rumbled down the basepath on a grounder down the left field line just fair — it should have been a double. But on the replay, as Pete Alonso stretches for the throw to first, Davis’ eyes bulge in disbelief. How was it even close?

Luck was on the Orioles’ side on the play — luck, and Blaze Alexander at third.

Alexander has ingratiated himself to Baltimore fans through his web gems, none better than the diving play in which he pitched his body over the foul line to cover up Davis’ grounder this month. Gunning it across the diamond, Alexander beat Davis to the bag — a ruling manager Craig Albernaz had to use a challenge to get.

Maybe not even the umpire could fully believe anyone could have made the play.

“Some guys can’t make or don’t want to attempt it,” Alexander told me this week. “I’m all for it, man. I want the least amount of guys coming to the plate, so if I gotta put my body on the line — run through a wall, jump, dive — I’m doing it, man. I’m doing it for the team.”

Alexander’s range is not limited to the grounders he can smother at third base. The 26-year-old native Floridian has started at third, second and shortstop this year. On Wednesday against the Arizona Diamondbacks (the team that traded him during the offseason), he started in center field.

“I’m sure, if I put him behind a plate, he’ll figure it out,” Albernaz said. “He’s just a baseball gamer. … He has all the confidence in the world when he’s on that defense. He wants the ball hit to him.”

The life of a defensive specialist in a utility role is not particularly easy, but you will not hear Alexander complain. He has resting smiling face. Around the clubhouse, you’ll always see him making friends and laughing about something, or making teammates and coaches crack up themselves — he’s the team’s joyful warrior.

This past week, he was bashful as he confessed his former Diamondbacks teammates had an ax to grind with him. He had never settled up his fantasy football dues, which he wound up having to pay to catcher James McCann.

Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo chuckled remembering how Alexander had taken a pitch to the hand and needed imaging on a machine called a fluoroscope. Later, he told the good news to his teammates — his “horoscope” had shown no fractures.

“That’s why we love Blaze,” Lovullo said with a grin.

But coaches and teammates also love his willingness — you could really call it eagerness — to throw himself into difficult defensive situations. McCann joined the Diamondbacks midseason and was quickly impressed when Alexander chased down an Alex Bregman fly ball over the wall to rob him of a home run in a September game.

The catch was memorable, to be sure. But it was also just the second of four appearances Alexander made in left field, and his first career putout at the position.

“He’s one of those young, exciting players that kind of brings the best out of everyone,” McCann said. “He brings joy to the game. He’s one of those guys where, you can be down as a team, and all of a sudden, he beats out an infield single or turns a single into a double, and all of a sudden it jump-starts the guys.”

But Alexander played at strong developmental positions for the Diamondbacks, freeing him to be a trade asset. The Orioles dealt reliever Kade Strowd and two prospects — and it turned out it was a necessary acquisition when the news came days later that Jordan Westburg had injured his elbow.

Although Alexander acknowledged it was difficult to leave the franchise that drafted him out of IMG Academy in 2018, he chose to see the change as a positive (which, if you’ve ever met this human golden retriever, is unsurprising).

“I couldn’t reverse the trade or do any of that, so it was like, ‘Hey, this could be really good for me.’ And, ultimately, I think it has been good,” he said. “I would say, like, maybe three, four days in the spring, it felt like I’d been playing with these guys for a couple years.”

If the Orioles’ locker room wound up being accepting, you could say Alexander’s personality has made the transition absolutely frictionless. When asked who some of his closest friends are, he starts listing.

Jeremiah Jackson, Chris Bassitt, Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson ... at one point, he just gives up singling out teammates.

“I could literally say something good about every single person in this room,” he said. “I’m, like, not a guy that kind of shies away from people, you know?”

Whether it’s relationships with his teammates or impossible defensive plays, you’ll always find Alexander happily diving in.