Pirates’ Isiah Kiner-Falefa Explains Why He Passed Up Chance at $200,000 Bonus

Dan Gartland | 2 Hours Ago

Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

Pittsburgh Pirates infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa narrowly missed out on earning a $200,000 performance bonus this season after he was not in the lineup for the team’s final game against the New York Yankees on Sunday, but the 29-year-old said after the game that he had been given the option to play in the game and decided against it.

Kiner-Falefa’s contract included a clause that would pay him $200,000 if he made at least 500 plate appearances during the season. After batting leadoff in Saturday’s game in the Bronx, he was sitting on 496 plate appearances. If he had been slotted into the same spot in the lineup for Sunday’s season finale, he almost certainly would have gotten the requisite number of plate appearances to earn the bonus. But Kiner-Falefa wasn’t in Sunday’s lineup—partly due to his own choice.

Kiner-Falefa said on the SportsNet Pittsburgh postgame show that he had seen the lineup for Sunday’s game the night before and when he saw he wasn’t in it, he “had no problem with it.” About an hour before the game was set to start, once the team realized how close he was to triggering the bonus, he was offered a spot in the lineup. Kiner-Falefa passed it up.

“At that point, I had kind of already checked out,” Kiner-Falefa said. “I didn’t think it was fair to take Peggy [Liover Peguero] or one of the young guys who hasn’t had the opportunity to play at Yankee Stadium away from them.

“I got hurt this year and missed a month. If that doesn’t happen or we’re actually in a real (playoff) race, I crush those incentives by a long shot. At the end of the day, I feel like I didn’t deserve it. From that aspect, it was nothing the team did. They tried to make it right at the end. That meant a lot to me right there.”

Pirates manager Derek Shelton said he was impressed with how Kiner-Falefa handled the situation.

“When I did find out about that situation, I called him in and said, ‘Hey, you’re this close. I’ll be more than happy to adjust the lineup,’” Shelton told SportsNet Pittsburgh. “I think that speaks to the leader that he is. He said no. We had multiple conversations about it. I wanted to make sure that he was in a spot that he understood that we would make that adjustment, that I would make that adjustment.”

Kiner-Falefa’s pursuit of the bonus drew extra attention because the Pirates released first baseman Rowdy Tellez last week when he was just four plate appearances shy of triggering a $200,000 bonus. General manager Ben Cherington said the looming bonus had “zero factor” in the decision to cut Tellez, who batted just .116 in the month of September.

Kiner-Falefa was acquired in a trade with the Toronto Blue Jays just before the deadline. He is under contract for one more season and will earn $7.5 million next year.

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