Yes, most times when I try to put the Mac to sleep using the Apple menu, it starts to go to sleep and comes back to life.
It’s weird because I’ve used Alfred for years on my old Mac, and never had a problem like this. I spent three hours on tech support with Apple, and I reinstalled this new Mac Mini twice, and the problem doesn’t seem to start until I install Alfred, but honestly I’ve given up on the reinstalls because I have work to do. Putting the Mac to sleep with Alfred’s sleep command works, so that’s been my solution.
Like you wrote, I couldn’t imagine Alfred being a problem, and there is nothing in the log files, but empirically it seems to be the cause of the problem. But again, not a huge issue, I now have a workaround. Thanks!