The legend of Yangervis

Yangervis in action

The last two season Yangervis Solarte was one of the better hitters on the Texas Rangers AAA team, The Round Rock Express, but he did play in the PCL which is a league known for inflating offensive numbers and was not someone that would be considered a potential contributing big league player, keep in mind that his offense in AAA was something new as he had spent the previous seven years in the Twins organization not hitting, this is a guy who only signed with an agent because his uncle Rodger Cedeno asked his own agent to do so as a favor.  Which is why when the Yankees signed him to a minor league deal, nobody gave him any consideration as he looked like one of the many players that's brought in who had no shot of making the team. However Eduardo Nunez had dreadful spring, Brendan Ryan was hurt and so Solarte's great spring earned him a spot on the opening day team and he carried over his hot spring to a great start to the season and now its the middle of May and he still has not stopped hitting, in fact he is second in the American league right now in batting average.
On top of that Solarte is helping out in the field as he has played second base, third and even a little short stop and while he is not what you would ever call a good fielder, he inst a bad one either and his versatility really helps the team. In many ways I think that Yangervis is the player that the Yankees wanted Eduardo Nunez to become, a high contact infielder who doesn't hurt the team with his defense. The real problem for everyone is how Solarte just came out of nowhere and has been such a success, but I think we as fans are waiting for for bubble to burst; Solarte has been so successful and so out of nowhere that we don't believe it. Personally I have trouble believing it, he was 0-11 coming into the second game of the double header this weekend  and that doubt started creeping into my mind and then he went 2-4 with a clutch home run that was no Yankee Stadium special. If Solarte had been a prospect then Yankees fans would be ecstatic and not stop talking about this guy, but he really has not gotten much media attention despite his great play, really the Yankees have two Rookie of the year candidates on their roster right now in Solarte and Tanaka. Solarte has been a godsend for the Yankees as he has been able to be an everyday infielder for them on this team and turned the infield into a place where they must upgrade before the end of may into lets find a player who is better than Brian Roberts or Kelly Johnson before the trade deadline.
The thing everyone was watching Solarte for was his high BABIP to start the year and his .313 BA is supported by a .322 BABIP, but thats not so far out of the range of possibilities to be true and really we have no data to really know what Solarte should be doing and none of his batted ball numbers really jump out as way to good to keep going, his line drive percentage are right around league average and his ground ball percentage of 41% is a little better than the league average of 44%, obviously these numbers could change quickly but they are pretty exactly where we would expect this type of hitter to be at. Solarte's good line drive rate and low ground ball rate do help us believe that his numbers aren't just ground balls getting through but are coming from solid contact and if you have watched any of his game you would see that for yourself.
Another factor that some thought would hurt Yangervis is that often with guys first coming up they see a lot of fastballs but then teams start to adjust and diversify the pitches they throw the hitter and the hitter will regress, many people thought this would happen to Yangervis but now its May and he is still hitting, in fact according to fangraphs he has hit Sliders better than any other pitch and other non-fastball pitches haven't slowed him down much either.
There is also the fact that Solarte has been very good in terms of his walks and strikeouts, he currently sits at exactly 17 walks and 17 strikeouts which works out to 11% for each which is the lowest strikeout rate for anyone on the team with at least 100 Plate appearances and second in walk rate behind Mark Teixeira, although Yangervis is actually ahead of Teixeira in total number of walks due to Mark missing some time. His walk rate shows that he is not a hacker going up there and just getting lucky by putting the first pitch into play, he is showing plate discipline seeing 3.89 pitches per plate appearance which would rank him 4th on the team behind Gardner, Ellsbury and McCann. But we are still not believing this and it fells like Yangervis has really gotten very little press outside of New York and really not much local coverage either.
At this point we still don't know what Yangervis Solarte is, is he a flash in the pan or is he a legitimate big league contributed, at this point I don't know and I really don't think anyone really does but when I see him hit a home run like this:

I really think "maybe this guy can make it work, after all he wouldnt be the first guy to break into the big leagues as a solid player at age 26; Dan Uggla did it with the Marlins in 2006 after being taken in the rule 5 draft from the Diamondbacks and while he has been bad these last two years in Atlanta he was a very solid player for the previous seven seasons in Atlanta and Florida averaging around three Wins above replacement in each season, the Yankees would take that production from Yangervis in a second and they also have the versatility to acquire another infielder as they can easily play Yangervis at either Second or Third base. At this point even if Yangervis stopped hitting altogether, the Yankees have already gotten more production out of him then they would have dreamed of back when they first signed him and everything after this is just addign to the legend that is Yangervis.