MLB PLAYER NEWS

Yankees Solarte’s big night includes triple play, first homer

The Sports Xchange

April 18, 2014 at 3:00 am.

Rookie Yangervis Solarte has been a pleasant surprise for the Yankees. (Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — It’s been an interesting few weeks for Yangervis Solarte. It continued with an extremely interesting night at Tropicana Field on Thursday for the New Yankees rookie third baseman.

Purely statistically, he went 3-for-5 with two RBIs, raised his batting average to a team-leading .373 and played flawless defensively. But the good stuff was in the details. First, Solarte began a 5-4-3 triple play in the second inning when he snagged first baseman Sean

Rodriguez’s grounder on a short hop and made one step to stomp on the bag. Scott Sizemore, who had never played first base at any level, snagged second baseman Brian Roberts’ bouncing relay with a borrowed glove to complete the triple play.

“I was thinking if he hit the ball close to the base, I was would go to the base and try for a triple play,” Solarte said through an interpreter. “If he hit it to the other side, I would go for a double play.”

Then in the ninth, against hard-throwing Rays closer Grant Balfour, who was on for work in a blowout, Solarte muscled his first big-league home run into the right-field stands. The two-run blast capped the 10-2 Yankee win.

“Everything is good,” Solarte said. “We win the game, I hit a home run, and we get a triple play.”

Solarte said the home-run ball would be placed in a case and saved for his mother.

Not bad, Yankees manager Joe Girardi said, for a player who was added to the big-league roster so late that he didn’t travel on the team charter to the season-opening series in Houston.

“He’s done a lot in two weeks, hasn’t he?” Girardi grinned. “In some sense, he probably hopes he doesn’t wake up.”

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