One of these days, we’re going to have a conversation about Isiah Kiner-Falefa that won’t involve any surprises. This week’s revelation: his offseason was spent swinging an axe at tree stumps, at his dad’s behest. It’s not the conventional modern method in this day and age of high-tech biometrics and Rapsodo cameras, but since when has Kiner-Falefa’s path to success — drafted as a shortstop, converted to super-utility player, then catcher, then winning the third base job before unseating the longest-tenured player in the organization at shortstop — been predictable?
Advertisement
Of course, the offseason abandonment of technology is nothing new for Kiner-Falefa. Nor was the advice from his dad. After a 2019 season that saw a transition to catcher abandoned midseason, the infielder spent the 2019-20 offseason at home in his native Hawaii getting his “sloppy” (his words) body back into shape to play infield. When he got to spring training, he was trying to win a spot on the roster — likely as a utility player. He started the spring with an 0-for-10, and his dad, Fili Falefa, a former football coach, had a suggestion: Isiah should narrow his batting stance.
“As a football coach, you gotta break down the film,” Falefa says. “Every time we watched the game, I would keep replaying, and try to figure out how to understand his body movements. And we figured that might be the best; we can try it and see if that would help him. But to be honest, we got lucky.”
“I didn’t listen to him (at first),” says Kiner-Falefa. “(But) I talked to the Rangers coaches, they had the same thing to say.”
Fili says he understands. Sometimes as a dad, you can give all the good advice you want, and your kid just needs to hear it from someone else.
On Feb. 27 against the Cubs, he went 1-for-3 with a home run. The next day: 2-for-2 against the Angels. By the time Cactus League play was cut short on March 11, he had gone on a blistering tear.
.378 batting average (4th in Cactus League)
.757 slugging percentage (2nd)
1.167 OPS (2nd)
Four home runs (tied for 5th)
14 hits (1st)
11 runs (1st)
He led the Rangers in every single one of those categories.
And though the following months in quarantine hurt the development of some players without a place to practice, Kiner-Falefa thrived.
“If anything, I got more time,” he explained last summer once the team had reconvened to prepare for the shortened season. The overhaul that had begun in November now had late spring and early summer to come to fruition. “This year, I’m trying to crush balls, I’m trying to be the fastest guy on the field. I’m trying to try to run, I’m trying to make plays on defense.”
Advertisement
Two and a half out of four isn’t bad: Kiner-Falefa won a Gold Glove, he ran quite a bit (eight stolen bases), and his 28.1 ft/sec sprint speed was fifth-best on the team, behind Eli White, Leody Taveras, Nick Solak and Scott Heineman. As far as the “crushing” balls, well … that part didn’t quite pan out. And Kiner-Falefa says he knows why.
“Those three months (at home) I started hitting the ball further and further and further,” he says. “I went into summer camp, same thing. We got into the season, and I couldn’t really control my emotions. I wanted to just show everybody what I had turned into and who I am. And then I kind of got away from myself.”
His final numbers weren’t bad. He was still worth 2.0 bWAR in a 60-game season and hit .280/.329/.370 (.699 OPS) — all career highs. But consider this, from Baseball Savant:
A short interpretation: he almost never struck out, at least in part because he almost never swung-and-missed at any pitch. The downside? While he never missed, he also didn’t hit the ball hard nearly as often as he’d like, and too often it was hit on the ground. That’s how you end up with a batting average of .280 and a slugging percentage of just .370.
“I wanted to be special. And I tried too hard.”
Fili noticed, too. He knew Isiah was capable of hitting for more power, but something was wrong with the swing path. The former football coach now works as a tree trimmer, and the more video he watched, the more he drew on his own life experience for a possible solution.
“It was more for him to understand … that he actually has to use his lower half, (so) he’s more connected to the ground,” Falefa explains. “As the season went along, he was hitting more balls on the ground. So that was the one thing that we were trying to help — trying to get him to elevate the ball a little bit more. And that’s where I thought that having him use the axe (would help), because that’s what we do at work. We swing the axe at different angles. And if you swing it at different angles, you’ll see that when you make good, hard contact with the wood to split it, then you can feel that you’re generating the right proper power at the right angle.”
Advertisement
The shortstop resisted a little at first, even after his dad had helped him the previous year.
“I thought it was kind of dumb in the beginning,” Kiner-Falefa says. “And now looking back at it, I’m glad I did it.”
Every day from November until it was time to report to camp, Isiah spent time punishing a tree stump that Fili would bring home from work.
(Video courtesy of Isiah Kiner-Falefa)
But even as Kiner-Falefa was getting back to a very rootsy training method, he was still implementing what he had learned from his hitting coaches.
“If you look at the biomechanics of the new swing, of the new era, and how to hit the fastball, it’s all about keeping your elbows tight and staying as tight as possible,” the shortstop says. “When you pick up that axe, and the head is really heavy, the only way to make an indent in the tree is to have the pure mechanics of a great swing … it just keeps everything square, because if not, it would probably break your wrist hitting that wood. So I gotta make sure my mechanics are on point all the time.”
The results: he has looked a lot like the guy who torched Cactus League pitching a year ago.
“Last year, my swing was there, but my mental side of it wasn’t there,” Kiner-Falefa explains. “I had new-found power, and I wanted to be special. And I tried too hard. So I think hitting that axe into the wood every day (this) offseason is allowing me to just play. The power is still there, and I’m realizing that. So just hitting the ball, not trying to do anything crazy and seeing it jump off the bat like that, it’s a great feeling.”
“There’s nothing about Kiner that’s phony.”
False confidence or arrogance doesn’t take long to see through. But even authentic confidence takes time to settle in as a person grows and matures. A perfectly legitimate influx of wealth, height, talent, or — to use a more relevant example — power at the plate can feel a bit shaky while the person in possession learns to gracefully integrate it into their everyday life. Some people don’t ever get there — there’s a long line of lottery winners who end up broke — but for others, there’s an adjustment period on the way to turning great assets into sustainable success.
Advertisement
To hear Kiner-Falefa talk about last year, it sounds like it just took him some time to let the confidence take hold. After a winter of chopping wood, that no longer seems to be a problem.
“It’s amazing just to hear his maturity level and how he thinks about the game, and you see it on the field now. He’s calm,” says manager Chris Woodward. “You see him on defense, there’s a calm, like, predator kind of mentality, that he’s ready to pounce. He’s like that in the batter’s box now. He’s not over-swinging with two strikes, he’s really learned how to sink into his lower half. And that’s going to help him in so many ways.”
Kiner-Falefa leads by carrying two attributes that do not often mix well: a competitive chip on his shoulder and genuine, humble kindness. Too little of the former, and the pressure of professional sports can overwhelm. Too little of the latter, and an athlete can become a bully, needlessly turning teammates into foes.
Fili can explain how those two things came to make peace with one another in his son.
“It started when he first played football as an 8-year-old, playing Pop Warner football,” Falefa explains. “He always had that drive, because he was always a smaller guy on every single team that he played on … Everyone had to say, when he was smaller, ‘Oh, you’re not gonna go nowhere. You’re not gonna be no one, you’re too small, you’re not fast.’ There would be scouts that would come and watch the games. And they all said he was too small. And the only scout that believed that he was going to have a growth spurt was Steve Flores from the Texas Rangers.”
Flores predicted the young infielder would have a late growth spurt. He did, his senior year. But the University of Honolulu — whose property bordered Kiner-Falefa’s high school — never offered him a scholarship. His dad says the snub motivates him to this day, confirming something Kiner-Falefa himself said back in December when it was announced that he was taking the starting shortstop job.
“I like being home because that’s the first thing I think of every time,” he said. “I have to drive by it every day, and it’s the best reminder in the world … I felt like it took me winning a Gold Glove to even be considered legit.”
Advertisement
OK, so that explains the underdog chip on the shoulder. But a lot of guys feel like they’ve been snubbed. How is it that Kiner-Falefa can churn so hot when it comes time for motivation, but treat others — his teammates, his opponents, and even the media — kindly, without aggression or arrogance?
“That’s basically from (Kim), his mom,” Fili says, pausing for a moment for effect, “… and I. From both of us. We’ve always told him, ‘Always be humble. And always be nice to people.’ Because our state is a very small state. And if you burn bridges with someone, there’s gonna come a time where you run into that same person — you’re trying to do work (or) find a job and that person that you burned your bridges with might be the person that has to hire you. So our thing has always been ‘Always be nice to everybody, be humble. Good things always happen to good people.’”
It’s a combination that has impressed his manager, among others.
“There’s nothing about Kiner that’s phony,” says Woodward. “He’s authentic to who he is, man. And he’s unapologetic for being who he is. He understands now … He’s got some pretty deep core values that he doesn’t stray from, and I think that that’s kind of the root of who he is. He talks about just treating people right, doing the right thing. And so when I talk about the core of who we are as an organization, and who we want to build around, that’s why it’s so important to have a guy like that … we look at our core group, he is 100 percent dead in the middle of that.”
Someday we will have a conversation about Isiah Kiner-Falefa that won’t involve any surprises, but seeing as this is a spring training story, that day is not today: In his locker in *ahem* Surprise, Ariz., there are a couple of new additions this year. The first is an axe-handle bat, which he says helps the swing trajectory he spent an entire winter perfecting back in Hawaii feel more natural at the plate.
The other serves as both reminder and metaphor. There beside the bats, in balanced repose — half smooth-handle, half sharp-edge — rests an axe.
(Photo of Isiah Kiner-Falefa: Kelly Gavin / Courtesy of the Texas Rangers)
