Jhonatan Solano: I Know What You Did Last Winter

Note: This was originally supposed to appear on Nationals 101 as a “Who Should Be the Backup Catcher” kind of post. With the Nats trading pitcher Nate Karns to Tampa for José Lobatón and two minor leaguers, this post has been overtaken by events. Still, it would have been a shame to let this go to waste.

In the winter of 2011-2012, The Onion played for the Tigres del Licey, the powerhouse of the Dominican League. He made 36 appearances, batting .with a slash line of .221/.308/.317. In 2012-13, Solano was back with Licey, making 12 appearances, batting .333/.400/.583 with 3 doubles and 2 HR–small sample, but maybe an improvement.

Ever since, he has played closer to home, in Colombia, in the decidedly less well regarded Colombian League for his hometown Caimanes de Barranquilla. How’s he doing? In 3 appearances, he’s 3 for 11, with 1 double. That’s .273/.363/.364–this, in a league that features only two big-leaguers: The Onion and his brother, Donovan. Oh, and the Caimanes? They went 10-32.

The good news is that The Onion has been consistent. Wherever he’s been, he’s been the same slap-hitting catcher that we’ve come to know in the Nats organization.

The bad news is that he’s made only 3 appearances for what can only be described as a shambolically bad Caimanes team this winter. That’s bad on two fronts. First, here’s a guy who usually plays 20-30 games a winter down to six. What happened? Injury? News is pretty scarce out of the Colombian League. Second: Solano used to play in the Dominican league, a league studded with talent. Even if he never hit very well, at least he got a chance to catch guys who had been or might have a chance at becoming big leaguers–in 2011, he would have had a chance to catch former Nats greats Jesús Colomé and Atahualpa Severino, as well as Ubaldo Jiménez. In Colombia he has caught…well, nobody.

I love Solano, and he’s a very easy Nat to root for. He has one of the greatest “how I got to the Show” stories in baseball. But looking over his last few winters’ worth of work makes me pray even more fervently for Wilson Ramos’s continued good health.

Postscript: Jhonatan Solano is called “The Onion” in English. Some have attempted to back-translate this into Spanish by calling him “Cebolla,” which is literally “onion.” But I hate giving male ballplayers nicknames that are female nouns, so I call him “El Cebollín”–the little onion.