The wrist injury that ended Miguel Ontiveros's season in late August felt, at the time, like it might also end the good feeling around the Ironclads' near-playoff run. Thursday, in his first game back, Ontiveros erased most of that worry with a three-hit, three-RBI night in the team's 6-2 home-opener win over the Millbrook Anglers.
Ontiveros, who hit .312 with 19 home runs last season before the wrist injury sidelined him in late August, said he had not allowed himself to think much about how his first at-bat back would go until he was actually standing in the on-deck circle. “I’ve taken a lot of swings in the cage since December,” he said. “None of that tells you anything until you’re standing in there with a real pitcher trying to get you out.”
He answered that question in the second inning, driving a first-pitch fastball over the wall in right-center for a two-run home run that put the Ironclads ahead for good. He added an RBI double in the fifth and a single in the seventh, finishing a night manager Ray Delacroix called as complete a return as he could have scripted.
You can’t manufacture that. We knew he’d be ready physically because the medical staff cleared him weeks ago. What you don’t know until it happens is whether the timing comes back that fast. His timing looked like it never left.
Ray Delacroix, Manager, Bellwater Ironclads
A rotation and bullpen built for this night
Right-hander Theo Aldrich, who logged a career-high 162 innings last season, started the opener and worked into the seventh, allowing two runs on six hits before turning the game over to a bullpen that finished the night with two scoreless innings. Closer Julio Vasquez, re-signed over the winter to a multi-year deal, worked the ninth for the save, an early piece of what became a clean opening homestand for the relief corps and a full season removed from last September’s late-season collapse.
General Manager Sandra Tolliver said Ontiveros’s return was the single biggest factor in the offseason’s roster planning, more than any of the bullpen additions the team made. “We built a lot of the winter around getting our bullpen right,” Tolliver said. “But if Miguel doesn’t come back the way he did tonight, none of that matters as much. He’s the middle of our lineup.”
A packed house welcomes him back
Founders Park drew one of its largest opening-night crowds in recent years, and Ontiveros said he could hear the reaction when he rounded first base after the home run. “That’s the part that got to me a little, honestly,” he said. “I heard that place get loud and I remembered how long it had been since I’d heard it get loud for me specifically.”
Arlene Petrosky, a season-ticket holder who has followed the Ironclads for two decades, said she came to the opener mainly to see whether Ontiveros looked like himself again. “You worry about a young man’s career when an injury like that happens,” she said. “Watching him round the bases tonight, I got a little emotional. This team needed something to feel good about after last September.”
Ontiveros said he has been cleared for full contact since early in spring workouts and expects no lingering restrictions going forward, though he and the training staff have discussed periodic rest days early in the season as a precaution. “I feel like I have something to finish,” he said. “We were rolling before I got hurt, and I want to be on the field for whatever happens this time, all the way through.”
Delacroix said he does not plan to treat Thursday’s performance as a signal to abandon caution with Ontiveros’s workload, even after the three-hit night. “One game doesn’t change the plan,” he said. “We’re going to manage him smart over six months, not get excited and forget why we had a plan in the first place.”
The win, paired with the bullpen’s clean ninth inning, gave the Ironclads a homestand-opening result that Tolliver said validated both halves of the offseason’s rebuilding work. “You want your best player healthy and your bullpen trustworthy,” she said. “Tonight we got a glimpse of both at the same time. That’s a good way to start a season we think can end differently than the last one.”
Ontiveros spent the winter and much of spring training on a rehabilitation schedule built jointly by the team’s medical staff and a hand specialist who treated the injury last August, working through a progression that began with light gripping exercises before advancing to swinging a bat again in January. He said the slowest part of the process was mental rather than physical, learning to trust the wrist in game situations rather than tensing up in anticipation of pain that, by spring, was no longer there.
“There were days in December where I wasn’t sure I’d feel normal again by opening day,” he said. “The training staff kept telling me the timeline was normal for this kind of injury, and they were right, but it doesn’t feel that way when you’re the one waiting.”
The Ironclads open a nine-game road trip this weekend before returning to Founders Park, and Delacroix said keeping Ontiveros’s early workload manageable will be a priority even as the third baseman pushes to play every day. “He’s going to want to be in the lineup every single game,” Delacroix said. “Part of my job is making sure a great first game doesn’t turn into us overusing him in May.”