CHICAGO -- Mired in a scoreless game in the bottom of the fifth, Paul Skenes needed some assistance to get the final out of the inning.
After walking Ian Happ with two outs, Kyle Tucker lined a double off the wall in left-center field. Happ got the windmill to go home from third-base boach Quintin Berry -- a no-brainer given the game circumstance -- but Oneil Cruz delivered a one-hopper to shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who dotted his own one-hop throw to Henry Davis from the outfield grass to catch Happ.
"That was huge," Skenes said. “Especially at that time of the game, it was great.”
“Those two guys connect on that and a one-hop strike to home, it was unbelievable,” manager Don Kelly said.
For Kiner-Falefa, that one-hopper home was deliberate.
“I knew the grass was going to be wet, so I wanted to give Henry a chance,” he explained. “I knew the ball was going to bounce a little further, so I just wanted to get it straight down and make it happen. But everyone did a good job all-around on that.”
That play helped secure was a seventh consecutive start for Skenes where he allowed one run or fewer, one of his most dominant stretches in his outstanding start to his career. Of course there’s the personal and team aspects of why a play like that means a lot for Kiner-Falefa, but he also had his pitcher on his mind.
“It’s Paul’s run,” Kiner-Falefa said. “I really, really, really want Paul to win the Cy Young this year. And if you’re not going to get the wins, like he hasn’t been, you gotta get the ERA down, the WHIP, everything. All the metrics have to be a blowout for him to have an opportunity. If we’re not going to score runs, we have to make sure that he doesn’t give up any. [That’s] on us. I just wanted to make that play for him.”
That relay may have been the most impactful play Kiner-Falefa made in the field Friday, but it was hardly the last. In the eighth, he laid down a sacrifice bunt to set up an RBI fielder’s choice for Cruz, In the ninth, he made a barehanded pick and throw to rob Matt Shaw of an infield single.
And then in the 10th, Kiner-Falefa lifted the deciding sacrifice fly to left, as the Pirates went on to beat the Cubs, 2-1 at Wrigley Field. For a team that came into the year stressing that they had to do the little things right to win, 30-year-old shortstop made a big impact doing just that.
“That’s normally what I do,” Kiner-Falefa said. “I’ve not been playing my best defense this year, so far. We got a long season and I think it will be where it always is at the end, hopefully a little better.”
Kelly has stated that the Pirates’ internal metrics have Kiner-Falefa graded very well, but the public analytics are less complimentary. He has zero defense runs saved, and going by Baseball Savant’s data, he has been worth -4 Outs Above Average.
Last year, Kiner-Falefa played more games at second (56) and third base (48) than shortstop (43), and he won a Gold Glove Award at the hot corner in 2020. He takes pride in his defense, and games like Friday where he makes multiple highlight-reel plays have not been as common at shortstop.
Kiner-Falefa thinks some of that can be attributed to him coming back from a right hamstring injury. He’s been working on more game situations in his practice to help better prep for moments like Friday.
That could help, because there is obviously a great foundation to pull from with his athletic skills and baseball IQ. You don’t make a relay like the fifth inning -- and know it should probably bounce on the way home -- if you don’t have both.
“We [have] got a long way to go,” Kiner-Falefa said. “Working on it every day, still getting used to being back at shortstop. So, anytime you have those games and make some plays, just build off the momentum. Just doing the best I can out there, and I think it’ll get better.”