When will Yankees' Isiah Kiner-Falefa hit a home run?

By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer

Aaron Judge isn’t the only Yankee with a chance to etch his name in the record books this season. Shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa is chasing home run history, too. It’s just ... a very different kind of history.

As Judge and his collection of dingers creep ever closer to Roger Maris’ Yankees record of 61, Kiner-Falefa is stuck at precisely zero long balls. Nada. Zip. Zilch. His 361 homerless plate appearances this season already rank third in Yankees history (Integration Era, since 1947) for most trips to the plate in a season without a homer.

That record is held by Álvaro Espinoza, a slap-hitting Venezuelan shortstop who compiled a whopping 544 plate appearances without going yard for the 1989 team. At his current pace, Kiner-Falefa should finish right around 540 plate appearances, within touching distance of Espinoza’s bizarre record.

"It’s been weird, man," Kiner-Falefa said to FOX Sports about his homerless season. "I feel I deserve at least a couple." 

He’s sort of right. On April 23 against Cleveland, Kiner-Falefa roped a ball 384 feet to left-center with a 102.6 mph exit velocity and a 29-degree launch angle. Of the 1,819 batted balls hit that hard and that high this season, 1,066 became homers. But the combination of a cold spring afternoon in the Bronx and the suspicious early-season deadened baseball robbed Kiner-Falefa of his best longball chance thus far.

Kiner-Falefa wasn’t exactly a slugger prior to joining the Yankees, but he certainly wasn’t this powerless. In 1,523 plate appearances in four years with the Rangers, he cracked 16 home runs, a reasonable total for a defensively gifted player with elite contact skills and a batting average around .275. Last season, he hit eight, only one fewer than Gleyber Torres, the man he replaced at shortstop.

So why has Kiner-Falefa’s power taken such a drastic step back this season? And is there any hope for a turnaround? Will the Yankees’ shortstop ever hit another home run?

On March 12, 2022, Kiner-Falefa was traded from Texas to Minnesota in exchange for catcher Mitch Garver. The next morning, Kiner-Falefa arrived at Twins camp in Fort Myers, met his new teammates and received a warm welcome by the club's Twitter account. But hours later, he was traded again, this time to the Yankees alongside Josh Donaldson and Ben Rortvedt in exchange for Gary Sánchez and Gio Urshela. 

Upon Kiner-Falefa’s arrival, Yankees GM Brian Cashman more or less proclaimed that the 27-year-old would be the team’s starting shortstop for the 2022 season. At the time, it made perfect sense: At worst, Kiner-Falefa would hit for a high average, steal some bases, knock a handful of home runs and play competent defense until top prospect Anthony Volpe is ready for the bigs at some point during the 2023 season. 

But it became clear during spring training that Kiner-Falefa had made a significant change to his swing in the offseason, adding a leg kick to try to increase the loft in his swing, which in turn would help increase his power output. Many big-league hitters have used that exact strategy to revitalize and revolutionize their careers, most notably Justin Turner, Josh Donaldson and José Bautista. Turner’s transition was particularly jarring, as he went from a soft-hitting utility player to a middle-of-the order centerpiece of the modern Dodgers dynasty.

Unfortunately, the leg kick was much less kind to Kiner-Falefa, and he struggled mightily at the plate in his first few months as a Yankee. And because there are high expectations and a Jeter-sized shadow floating over the shortstop position at Yankee Stadium, IKF and his big, fat zero in the home run column soon became a target of ire for pinstripe fans across the tri-state area.

"It comes with being a shortstop for the Yankees, right?" Kiner-Falefa said of the scrutiny he has received. "It's understandable that people want the big guy who hits home runs."

But after an underwhelming June, Kiner-Falefa was getting frustrated. So around the start of July, the Yankees’ triumvirate of hitting coaches sat the shortstop down and reworked some aspects of his swing. Most notably, they scrapped his new leg kick, believing it hampered him from making contact at the levels he’d shown as a Texas Ranger. 

"I think he was probably looking for more loft," Yankees hitting coach Dillon Lawson said of the leg kick. "And in that, he lost the ability to square the ball up as much."

"I felt like I was having a hard time being on time," Kiner-Falefa acknowledged. "With the leg kick, I felt like I was more focused on distance rather than hitting the ball square. Now with the toe tap, a miss on a line drive is still a hard ground ball that could get through. There's more chances to make things happen."

On July 5 in Pittsburgh, Kiner-Falefa unveiled his new, kick-less swing. Since then, he’s hitting .313/.343/.365 with a .708 OPS — not MVP numbers by any means but a notable improvement on the .258/.310/.305, .615 OPS he posted to that point. 

And somewhat counterintuitively, he is hitting the ball much harder without the leg kick; his average batted ball velocity is up from 85.6 mph (sixth percentile) to 87.7 (25th percentile). That 87.7 mark is higher than the full-season averages of many notable big-league hitters, including José Altuve, Marcus Semien and Jake Cronenworth, and it's just decimal points behind that of AL MVP contender José Ramírez.

But while Kiner-Falefa is finally hitting the ball hard enough, he’s still not hitting it high enough. His season average of 5.7 degrees of launch angle is 11th-worst in baseball. And quite simply, you can’t hit it out if you don’t hit it up. Still, he feels like a new and improved player since shifting his swing and his approach.

"That conversation gave me a lot of confidence," Kiner-Falefa said. "[The coaches] made me realize I needed to believe in who I was, to be the best at what I do, rather than searching and trying to be a type of player that might benefit me later but would hurt the team in the short term."

When Kiner-Falefa says "benefit me later," he’s admitting that power pays, both in arbitration and in free agency. That dynamic has led many players, incentivized by potential paydays, to swing up and aim for the fences. But that approach doesn’t work for everyone. So it’s understandable that IKF would give power-hitting a go and commendable that he has now accepted the reality that his skillset is better suited elsewhere.

"We’re leading baseball in home runs. So to be honest with you, he doesn’t need to hit a home run," Lawson said. "He needs to be on base when someone else does."

Despite his tater-less campaign, Kiner-Falefa has been a valuable piece of the October-bound Yankees. Not every player on a roster needs to be capable of launching 20 homers; there’s also something to be said for solid defense, on-base ability and baserunning acumen, even in today’s home-run-oriented league.

So will he hit a homer? The increase in exit velocity says yes. The extremely low launch angle says no. His hitting coach is adamant that Kiner-Falefa will hit one soon, but Kiner-Falefa himself is much more coy.

"Hopefully the homers are coming," he said. "If it comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. All I care about is winning and understanding that what I’m good at really helps the team."

Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.