A different type of pride: Isiah Kiner-Falefa is right where he wants to be

Jamey is a lifelong Rangers fan who has been blogging for nearly 20 years at newbergreport.com and traces his fandom back to the days of Bump Wills, Bert Blyleven, and the powder blues.

There are the regrettable trades, the ones emboldened by the perceived riches of depth that turn out badly, and then there are others that work out better than expected.  Sometimes it’s the ones you don’t make, however, that turn out to be game-changers.

Isiah Kiner-Falefa, groomed early on to provide the versatility every team wants on its bench, was never going to carry a deal as he progressed through the Rangers system.  Truthfully, the Rangers wouldn’t be able to front an impact trade with the former fourth-round pick right now, either, in spite of his tremendous debut since coming up two weeks into the 2018 season.  But there have been opportunities to move him, even before this year.

The Rangers are thankful they didn’t act on those.  As is the 23-year-old from Honolulu.

“It’s awesome,” says Kiner-Falefa, who has played every inning of the Rangers’ last 15 games, over which time the club has emerged from a brutal 4-10 start to go 7-8.  “You always hope that you make it with the team that first believed in you.”

“Honestly, I don’t want to think about where we would be without him,” says Rangers Assistant GM Jayce Tingler, who was the club’s Minor League Field Coordinator the first two years of Kiner-Falefa’s pro career.

After coming off the bench late his first two nights on a big league roster, Kiner-Falefa has started every game since; 11 times at second base, twice at shortstop, and twice at third base.  He hasn’t seen time yet behind the plate, but that’s in the bag as well.

Growing up in Hawaii, Kiner-Falefa was a shortstop.  He committed to San Jose State as a shortstop.  He was drafted by the Rangers as a shortstop.  His first two seasons in the Texas system, he was mostly a shortstop, with some second base mixed in.

Then, suddenly, he was a Class-A utility player.

It wouldn’t have been unreasonable for the 5’10” baseball rat, not a big power guy, a big speed guy, or generally a big guy physically, to take the change in roles as a bad omen.  But it was also possible to view it instead as a challenge.  “Both went through my mind,” Kiner-Falefa admits.  “When you come up as a shortstop, I think maybe more so than other positions, it makes you stubborn in a way.  As the Rangers started moving me around, I started wondering, ‘Did I do something wrong?’  I knew I needed to separate myself any way I could.”

Current Minor League Field Coordinator Corey Ragsdale, who since 2016 has manned the position Tingler once held, overseeing all on-field farm instruction for the franchise, believed Kiner-Falefa was prepared for the challenge.  “We had a really good idea the kid was going to succeed.  Izzy has a special skill set.  He’s a special worker.  He’s got a special attitude.  He is very talented — and although no one particular talent may grade the highest, his intangibles and his makeup and his skill set make him a really good baseball player.”

“Isiah comes from a tremendous family and upbringing,” adds Rangers Minor League Infield Coordinator Kenny Holmberg.  “He arrived with a built-in work ethic and attitude from day one.  Ultimately, he’s always envisioned playing at the highest level and in his heart, he knew he could contribute and produce.  He just kept plugging away, grinding, preparing for this opportunity.  When he was called upon, he was ready.”

The versatility that would come to define Kiner-Falefa’s game helped lead to this winter’s addition to the Rangers’ 40-man roster, to the call-up precipitated by Rougned Odor’s hamstring injury, and to the daily name in the lineup that’s now basically a given.

It’s an opportunity that Ian Kinsler nearly didn’t get in Texas, and that Rich Aurilia never did.

In Kinsler’s case, the Rangers were saved by the decision of a player who never suited up for Texas.

Coming off four straight last-place finishes in the division, the 2004 Rangers surprised everyone — in their first season after trading Alex Rodriguez away — by building a 4.5-game lead in the AL West late in July.  But Texas got cold, Oakland got hot, and when the A’s came back to win a 7-6 game on July 29 in Texas, they knocked the Rangers out of first place for the first time in three and a half weeks.  Texas GM John Hart wanted to make an impact move at the trade deadline.

He had Michael Young at shortstop, still short of his arbitration years, and Alfonso Soriano at second base, just one year into arbitration.  Behind them was Joaquin Arias, the 19-year-old who’d come over (instead of Robinson Cano) with Soriano in the A-Rod deal, hitting .300 in High-A.  Perhaps that long-term depth is what prompted Hart to agree on July 31 to send Kinsler — who, in his first full pro season as a 17^th-round pick, had hit .400 for two months with Low A Clinton before leapfrogging the younger Arias with a two-level jump to AA Frisco, where he was hitting .313 at the time — along with RoughRiders righthander Erik Thompson to Colorado for 37-year-old right fielder Larry Walker.

But Walker exercised his 10/5 rights and vetoed the deal (accepting one six days later to the Cardinals), Arias battled injuries and never put it together with the Rangers, and Kinsler went on to spend eight years as a core player in Texas, establishing himself in the prime years of what’s been a tremendous 13-season career.

Before Arias, there was Benji Gil.  And before Kinsler, there was Rich Aurilia.

In 1991, the Rangers had drafted Gil from a San Diego-area high school in the first round, and he was the future.  He was a premium athlete with a big enough arm that several clubs drafting ahead of Texas were looking at him as a pitcher.  The profile was there for Gil to be a long-term, five-tool answer for the Rangers at shortstop.

A year later, Texas used a Round 24 pick, 678^th overall, on Aurilia, a shortstop out of St. John’s University.  In addition to Gil, the Rangers had drafted UTA shortstop Larry Hanlon in the third round in 1991 and Mississippi State shortstop Jon Shave in the fifth round in 1990, the same year that they signed Dominican shortstop Guillermo Mercedes.  The arrival of the Brooklyn-born Aurilia in the system didn’t cause much of a ripple.

Aurilia hit a robust .337/.447/.465 (with 42 walks and only 18 strikeouts in 251 plate appearances) that summer with Short-Season A Butte, but Gil — a year younger and the number 21 prospect in the game, according to Baseball America — was a level ahead of Aurilia and holding his own.  In 1993, Aurilia skipped a level and hit .309/.408/.402 with High A Charlotte, but that same season Gil shockingly opened the year with Texas, making the jump from Low A to debut in the big leagues at age 20 when shortstop Manny Lee wasn’t healthy enough to start the season.  Once Lee was activated, Gil was assigned to AA Tulsa and put up an .808 OPS.

Despite his own early success, Aurilia understood the realities of the game.  “It really hit me that second year,” Aurilia recalls.  “I was a late pick.  Benji was a first-rounder.  In the back of your mind, you know how it works.  The first-round guys are going to get looks before you do.  I felt like I might have been stuck, but I realized I was playing for 29 other clubs, too.”

Tom Grieve was the Rangers’ General Manager when the club drafted Aurilia under the direction of Assistant GM Sandy Johnson.  “Sandy was very pleased with the pick, and the organization felt he had a chance to play in the big leagues,” says Grieve.  “But probably in a utility role.”

When the players’ strike ended the 1994 Major League season in August, the minor leagues had another month to go.  That combination of events might have changed the course of Aurilia’s career.

“I’d had an awful first half, the first time I’d really struggled as a ballplayer,” Aurilia says.  “But I told myself going into the second half to just have fun, do what I can do, just play the game.”  When the Players Association went on strike, the coaching staff of the Giants traveled to AA Shreveport to see some of their top prospects play.  The Captains were hosting Tulsa.  They didn’t see the Aurilia who was on his way to a .234/.315/.378 season; they saw the player who was not used to failing.  “I had a great series.  I think it must have stuck with them.”

A month later, the Rangers replaced Grieve with Doug Melvin.  “Doug didn’t like me for some reason,” says Aurilia.

Not the case, Melvin says.  “As a new GM, you have to be careful moving players you’re not familiar with, but also careful because most staff fall in love with their own players.  It takes some time to go through that evaluation process.”

But in this instance, Melvin didn’t feel he could wait.  “Finding pitching was a primary goal.  Kevin Brown was a free agent and we knew he was not re-signing with us.  Sandy was still in Texas.  What I was told was that Aurilia would be a utility player who was not a true defensive shortstop but would hit enough to play off the bench.  At the same time, Benji Gil was highly regarded by evaluators that I respected.  I had my own personal evaluations of players, too, as I was coming from an AL club [Baltimore] and was a personnel rat on minor league players.”

That December, in his second trade as Texas GM (following Jose Canseco to Boston), Melvin went after some of that pitching he’d hoped to replace Brown with, sending Aurilia and AA first baseman Desi Wilson to San Francisco for reliable 29-year-old righthander John Burkett.

But when the strike ended, Burkett and the Rangers couldn’t agree to terms on a new contract and the Rangers moved on, signing Bob Tewksbury and former Orioles Mark McLemore and Mickey Tettleton instead for as much combined in 1995 as Burkett sought alone.  Texas had traded Aurilia — considered its third-best shortstop prospect, behind Gil and Mercedes — and Wilson for Burkett, and never got the righthander in uniform (at least not until trading again for him two years later).

Gil played his first full big league season with Texas in 1995, hitting .219/.266/.347.  Meanwhile, Aurilia made his way that year from AA to AAA to San Francisco, putting up an .800 OPS on the farm and hitting .474 in a nine-game look in his big league debut.

In 1996 — and for seven years after that — Aurilia was the Giants’ starting shortstop.

Over the same timeframe, Gil played nearly as many games in the minor leagues (354) as in the Majors (452), and with five different organizations.

Aurilia was an All-Star in 2001, and 12^th in the NL MVP vote.

Gil was selected in the minor league phase of the 1998 Rule 5 Draft.

Aurilia thinks back to that Tulsa series in Shreveport when the players’ strike sent Giants officials on a minor league pilgrimage.  “It wasn’t a great season for me.  But I guess I got hot at the right time.”

Kiner-Falefa didn’t hit .400 in Low-A like Kinsler.  He didn’t put up a .900 OPS his first pro season or an .800 OPS his second season like Aurilia.  He’s never put up an .800 OPS, as a matter of fact.  He was a Round 4 draft pick, not a 17^th– or 24^th-rounder like the other two, but early in his pro career, he was asked to carry several different gloves in his bag.

At the age when Rougned Odor was a starting big league second baseman, Kiner-Falefa (who is just one year younger) was splitting his season between Low A and High A — and getting starts at second base, shortstop, third base, and left field.  The year after that, the organization asked him to start working at catcher.  He added center field and first base to his resume that season, too.

If Aurilia felt like he was stuck when Gil reached the big leagues, you can imagine what might have been going through Kiner-Falefa’s head as he not only saw Odor entrenched, and Andrus entrenched, and players like Jurickson Profar and Drew Robinson and Ryan Rua ahead of him, and investments in players like Andy Ibanez, Chris Seise, and Anderson Tejeda behind him, but also found himself turned into a role player — in Class A.

But whereas Aurilia had turned his focus to playing for a league full of scouts and coaches, for Kiner-Falefa the goal never shifted.  “I think it’s a natural thing that you fall in love with your first team, that you dream of getting to the Major Leagues with them.  Being ‘homegrown’ — it’s a different type of pride.”

Rangers Senior Director of Amateur Scouting Kip Fagg believed in Kiner-Falefa’s character on Draft Day and isn’t surprised a bit by where he finds himself now.  “Izzy deserves a ton of credit for keeping his nose to the grindstone, working his ass off, and getting better.  One of our biggest concerns about taking a player from the islands is them not wanting to leave their families and their comfort zone.  Our area scout Steve Flores has covered that area for years and assured us that Izzy was different.”

Different from many minor leaguers in his maturity and focus, and different from most rookies in the poise he plays with.  But as a big leaguer Kiner-Falefa is not different from the hitter he was on the farm, with a batting average (.271) and OPS (.679) that are right in line with his career minor league numbers.  He more than held things down in the Odor absence that created this opportunity.  He moved over to shortstop when Profar joined Andrus on the sidelines.  He posted up at third base with Adrian Beltre out.  He’s doing what he did in his six seasons as a minor league baseball player, no matter where the manager puts him.

“He’s given us what you see on the field,” Tingler says, “the solid-plus infield defense and the competitive at-bats.  But it’s also the energy that he brings each and every day.  It’s contagious to others on the team.”

Holmberg, who has played a significant role in the development of Kiner-Falefa’s Swiss Army knife versatility, has seen for years the things Rangers fans are seeing now.  “Like the best young players, his physical attributes are catching up to his vision and decision-making.  He plays for his teammates.  In my mind, he’s the guy you want handling the baseball with the game on the line.”

If and when he puts the catching gear on as a big leaguer, Kiner-Falefa will take his all-purpose value to a new level, the kind that’s virtually indispensable the way the game is evolving.

But maybe he’s more than that.  Maybe Isiah Kiner-Falefa isn’t a role player.  It hasn’t taken him long to prove that he’s worth far more to the Rangers than he was ever worth on the trade market, when Texas resisted opportunities to move him in relatively small deals designed to improve the fringes of the roster — and to prove that he might be something more than even his own club envisioned.

Odor will likely reclaim his job once he’s healthy, as of course will Andrus and Beltre.  It’s probably against the odds to suggest Kiner-Falefa will carve out an everyday role with Texas, or that he’s the type of player who could have Kinsler’s career, or Aurilia’s.

But in two weeks, he’s played every day.  Leading the club in base hits over that time.  Starting at three different positions.  Hitting in six different spots in the lineup.  Executing on his one goal.

The Aurilia trade wasn’t the only trade that Melvin regrets, but he recalls one that was panned before working out pretty well in the end.  “One player later on that I took criticism for trading was Warren Morris for Esteban Loaiza.  Warren had a very good walk rate and was an intelligent player.  But Loaiza later turned into Michael Young.  Trades sometimes have lengthy lives to them.”

And sometimes, Kiner-Falefa might suggest, so too do the trades never made.

EXIT VELO

• Despite missing three of the season’s first four weeks, Delino DeShields is tied for the big league lead with four outfield assists.  The stat can be misleading — teams run on him in situations where they might not against some other center fielders — but credit to DeShields for consistently out-throwing his scouting report.  We’re watching him get better in every phase of outfield play.  Remember that he’s basically learned the position in the big leagues, as the Astros didn’t move him off the dirt until the year before Texas invested a Rule 5 pick on him.

• As of Saturday, Jordan Akins is a two-time third-round pick — in 2010 by the Rangers as an outfielder and in 2018 by the Houston Texans as a tight end out of the University of Central Florida.  In his four seasons in the Rangers system (2010-2013), playing mostly center field, Akins hit .218/.246/.344 with a few dozen home runs.  He topped out at Low Class A.

• Right-handed relievers Johnny Fasola and Adam Parks were activated and assigned to AA Frisco, where both relievers last pitched in 2016 before Tommy John surgery.  Each worked a scoreless frame in his season debut Saturday night.  You can read more about Fasola’s backstory here.

• RoughRiders lefthander Brady Feigl, acquired from Atlanta in 2017 as the second piece in the Luke Jackson trade, has yet to allow a run in seven appearances (10 innings), fanning seven and walking two while holding Texas League hitters to a .125/.200/.156 slash line.

• Not as pleasant a start to the season for High A Down East righthander Michael Matuella, off of whom the Carolina League is hitting .338/.410/.538 in his four starts, over which he’s completed only 14.1 innings.