The Hanshin Tigers have a long history of odd happenings with import talent:

Gene Bacque finds himself in a brawl, breaks his thumb while punching a Giants’ coach, gets released at season’s end.

Mike Greenwell plays all of seven games (at a ¥350-million price tag), fractures a bone after fouling a pitch off his own leg, calls it a career.

Darrell May refuses to play for Katsuya Nomura anymore, leaves the team and hands out a written statement to media on his way out of town (and signs with Yomiuri).

That’s just a few of the odd, quirky incidents we’ve gone through. Add to the list (to a lesser degree) Yangervis Solarte. With the team in desperate need for an offensive spark, they brought the 32-year old Venezuelan on board back at the end of July. Within 5 days of his arrival in Japan, they have him on the bullet train to Tokyo to face the Yomiuri Giants. He had one farm game of experience under his belt.

He hit the go-ahead home run in that game, and a few days later, hit an exciting walk-off home run against the Chunichi Dragons at Koshien Stadium.

Barely three weeks into his stint with the team, his defensive woes and slumping bat were enough for the team to send him to the farm (August 19). Three weeks down there were apparently enough to fix what was wrong with him, because they called him back up on September 5, hoping he would propel the team back into the playoff picture.

So September 6, he got on a bullet train to Hiroshima. Arrived at the hotel, changed into his uniform, got on the team bus, and arrived at the ballpark. But before he even set foot on the field, he talked to his manager, Akihiro Yano, in the dugout hallway. Apparently he said he could not get himself motivated to play that day. After talking it over, the skipper sent him back home, and now there is speculation that he will be released before season’s end.

My take is this: Solarte is everything that is wrong with Hanshin’s scouting and treatment of import players.

They brought him in mid-season. This is the third straight year that the club has signed an import during the campaign, which is a sign they are not doing their offseason work properly. Scouting issue? Perhaps. Vision issue? For sure. They ought to have known that they needed more firepower than they had at the end of 2018. They gave him all of 20 games to prove his worth. Two game-winning home runs were apparently not enough. He was a Messiah when he won the team games, and the antichrist when his defensive lapses cost the team runs. He got farmed and everyone said he needed to fix his issues. He got called up and the whole process was about to start over again… save us, Solarte! Lead this team to the promised land, Messiah! (And if you don’t, you will face the wrath of the front office, media and the fans!)

Yes, I know he is a professional baseball player, and criticism and expectations are part of the territory. But I also think this team has to take a long, hard look in the mirror and recognize that something is not right here. And it ain’t just Solarte.

One of my favorite artists said in one of his songs: “If your brightest stars are always dim, something must be wrong with your glasses. If every place on your body you touch hurts, then your fingers must be broken.”

Gaze deep into your soul, Hanshin. You can have your cute self-pitying stories about foreigners that betrayed the team with their actions, or you can start trying to become more international-minded and try to run the business like a winner.

H-TEN will keep you updated on this story as it continues to unfold.

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