A grinning Alexander Alberto answered his introductory Zoom call with media donning a MLB Players Association t-shirt, since his selection by the White Sox in last month's Rule 5 Draft put the towering 24-year-old right-hander on a 40-man roster for the first time.
Even after spending the first six years of his professional career in the Rays organization, the White Sox being part of the start of things for Alberto feels familiar.
"This was the first team that took a look at me when I was doing the tryouts, before I signed as an international free agent, and I always remembered that," Alberto said via interpreter on Tuesday. "I know that [trying to make the major league roster] is a big challenge and that’s why I’m working hard to take advantage of it. I know there have been cases where players weren’t supposed to be at the level to make their major-league debut, and they worked hard and made the team out of spring training. That’s my motivation, to be one of them."
Even though it ended in High-A, giving Alberto a three-level jump to begin navigating in a month's time at Camelback Ranch, the 2025 season was a breakthrough campaign in numerous ways. The 48⅔ total innings across both levels of A-ball were a career-high, and he felt he maintained his stuff and delivery throughout, even while admitting that keeping weight on his 6-foot-8-inch, 205-pound frame was a challenge over the course of a full season.
That stuff he maintained included an uptick in velocity, as he averaged 97.8 mph on his fastball and touched 101 mph, blowing away his previous high of 98.4 mph from 2024. The best on-field results of his career (30.6 percent strikeout rate, 2.59 ERA) were also accompanied by the best and most consistent strike-throwing Alberto has ever displayed. If Alberto had maintained his 10 percent walk rate from 2025 across his whole pro career, it's hard to imagine he would have progressed so gradually through the Rays farm system, nor been left unprotected this past November.
From a scouting perspective, there are two ways to interpret someone taking six years of pro ball to throw enough strikes to be a palatable minor league reliever. The cynical standpoint is there's just not enough physical coordination in this massive frame to expect much more than spurts of fringy command, and the incremental progress over a long stretch of time reflects that. Something closer to the White Sox standpoint is that part of hunting outlier physicality is accepting longer, nontraditional development paths, Alberto has thrown few pro innings relative to his age (172⅓ ), and is responding pretty quickly to some recent tweaks.
"I was able to make some adjustments," Alberto said via interpreter of his '25 progress. "I shortened my arm action, I lowered my leg kick, I was able to repeat consistently my delivery and that also helped me to improve my velocity and being able to throw more strikes."
The data supports Alberto's assertions more than the GIFs might reveal. He averaged closer to seven feet of extension with his new leg kick, where it previously just mirrored his height in length, and his release point was 4-5 inches lower in 2025.
Usually that latter element would make it easier to ride four-seamers over the barrels of opposing hitters, but Alberto doesn't have the usual four-seamer. Chris Getz lauded Alberto's cutter in the immediate wake of the Rule 5 draft at the Winter Meetings, but the man himself says that classification comes from just the natural cut with which he throws his fastball; which at least provides an explanation for the mystifying nature of his pitch data.
"Just a natural cutter, that is not something that I work on," Alberto said via interpreter. "I think it’s good, but sometimes it gave me a little trouble to control."
The unique action provides some differentiation for Alberto from your standard fastball-slider right-handed reliever, which is what the Dominican right-hander says he throws. But the varying and unpredictable nature of the pitch explains for why Alberto's wildness has persisted beyond the traditional remedies of reps and added strength, and until Davis Martin shows him his kick change grip or some similar breakthrough occurs, also makes it a measure trickier for him to command the zone to his arm side. In effect, this makes Alberto a very long double-edged sword, but sort of a familiar one for White Sox pitching development.
Grant Taylor's fastball is naturally cut-ride, but a stronger example might be last year's Rule 5 success story in Shane Smith, who also dealt with seemingly random spurts of cutting action that served to make his running sinker such a potent midseason addition.
But Alberto is not the first overall pick from the Rule 5 draft, he's the 13th (the second overall pick, Jedixson Páez is traveling to the US and expected to meet the media next week). Accordingly, the prospect of him sticking in the majors -- even as a dude who throws 100 mph -- requires a few more leaps in consistency and ability to handle the workload of the highest level of the sport, when Alberto felt that just last season was the first time he really got accustomed to being physically and mentally ready to pitch every single day.
He pulled off a career-altering leap forward in development last year, one that greatly increased his long-term chances of a meaningful major league career. But for the White Sox's purposes of stealing a reliever, he'll need to pull off an even bigger one in 2026. For Alberto, hopefully knowing that is half the battle.
"I know that this is a big opportunity," Alberto said via interpreter. "I’m working right now on putting on more weight on my body to get stronger. If I’m able to do that, I won't need to max out every time, or it’s going to be easier for me to have better performance consistently."
