Solarte earns EL Player of the Week honors

New Britain Rock Cats infielder/outfielder Yangervis Solarte has picked up Eastern League Player of the Week honors for the period of April 25th to May 1st. During that span, Solarte went 13-29 for a .448 batting average. He hit his first two home runs of the season, collected 9 RBI, scored 9 runs, had 5 doubles and stretched his hitting streak to eight games (now currently at 10).

Solarte is in his third stint with the Rock Cats after playing 32 games in New Britain in 2010 and 3 games in 2009. The 23 year-old Venezuelan native has a .368 batting average on the season, second best in the Eastern League behind Portland's red-hot Alex Hassan and his .427 average. Solarte is also near the top of leaderboards in hits (2nd - 32), doubles (T2nd - 11), total bases (2nd - 51), slugging percentage (3rd - .586) and OPS (4th - .961).


Joe Benson was the last Rock Cats and local player to pick up the Player of the Weeks when he snatched the honor for the last week of the 2010 season.

We congratulate Yangervis on being the first local player of 2011 to pick up the much deserved PotW honors.