PERFECT EXAMPLE OF LATE BLOOMER
How did the Giants find Solano, and why did everyone else miss him?
Less than a month after the Giants added Donovan Solano to their big league roster during the first half of the 2019 season, a rookie pitcher took the unusual step of advocating for him to see more opportunities.
During their time together at Triple-A Sacramento, Giants right-hander Shaun Anderson became so convinced that Solano could help a major league team that he vouched for the part-time veteran player to get more at-bats.
“Everybody said it, he needed to be on the big league team,” Anderson said in June 2019. “He can play his position, and he can swing it. He’s just a great guy in the clubhouse, brings a lot of energy. It’s fun to play with him.”
Anderson’s comments came after Solano had just recorded his second consecutive multihit game, which helped the thenrookie starter earn the second win of his big league career. It had been three days since Solano was last in the lineup, and it took a single and a double in a 4-2 win over the Padres that day for the infielder’s OPS to finally climb above .600.
At the time, Anderson seemed overly grateful for the run support from a teammate with whom he’d grown close. Sixteen months later, it’s difficult to fathom how Solano, 32, was stuck in the minors for so long.
With two weeks left in the regular season, Solano’s .349 batting average ranks
second in the National League to that of Washington Nationals star Juan Soto, who has posted a .354 mark in 10 fewer games. Solano’s .911 OPS is easily the best of his career as it’s more than 220 points above the .692 OPS he’s compiled in parts of seven major league seasons, but this version of Solano is the only one the Giants have ever known.
Solano has a .338 average in 123 games and has emerged as one of the most consistent hitters in the majors since debuting with the team on May 9, 2019. A batting title is well within reach for the Colombia native, who spent his age 29 and 30 seasons sharing time in the infield for the Yankees and Dodgers’ TripleA affiliates.
“I don’t imagine myself winning a batting title,” Solano said through Spanishlanguage translator Erwin Higueros. “It’s not something I think about. I’m aware of what I’m doing; I’m aware of my numbers, but it’s not something that I take with me every time I go to bat. I just have faith in what I’m doing.”
From 2012-2015, Solano played in 361 games for the Miami Marlins and batted .257 with a .634 OPS. His 75 OPS+ across those four seasons made him one of the least productive hitters in baseball. After being non-tendered following the 2015 season, Solano said the Giants showed interest in bringing him aboard, but he signed a minor league deal with the Yankees and spent most of the next two years at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
It wasn’t until Solano signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers ahead of the 2018 season that his alarming groundball rate began to fade away. As a platoon player with Triple-A Oklahoma City, Solano began driving the ball in the air and enjoyed the best season of his professional career.
A loaded Dodgers major league roster had no space for Solano, but when general manager Farhan Zaidi left to become the Giants’ president of baseball operations, he made the veteran infielder a target in free agency. Following multiple efforts from former general manager Bobby Evans to sign Solano, he finally joined the organization under Zaidi and began the 2019 season with the Sacramento River Cats.
Nearly two years later, Solano is still driving the ball in the air. And with a refined approach at the plate thanks to the club’s new hitting coaches, he has transformed into one of the toughest outs in baseball.
“One of the things I notice is that they simplify each atbat,” Solano said. “They teach you what to do with certain pitches, when to chase and when not to chase and I think that’s one of the things that they have done so good this year is you can go ahead and concentrate on one single aspect of each at-bat.”
Over the past 10 years, an emphasis on driving the ball in the air has resurrected the careers of many hitters across the sport. It’s most often seen when a player’s home run total spikes and his slugging percentage skyrockets, but improving his launch angle has given Solano a path to an everyday job and in a traditional season, a possible AllStar nod.
Solano isn’t the type of hitter who’s suddenly knocking the ball out of the park, but changes to his swing have turned routine groundballs into hard-hit singles and doubles. His home country of Colombia has never produced a batting champion, but with two more weeks of sustained success, Solano hopes the conversation back at home will turn from soccer fans talking about line drives into the net to baseball fans discussing his latest line drive into the gap.
“I hear from everybody,” Solano said. “I know that I’m one of those that can bring the message to make my country proud of me. The city that I come from is very proud of me and I guess I’m helping so that Colombia doesn’t talk about soccer much anymore, it’s baseball.”