Team No Nunez has prevailed. Solarte makes the Opening Day roster!
Yangervis Solarte played himself onto the Yankees' Opening Day roster with an incredibly impressive spring training performance, beating out Eduardo Nunez for the final spot on the 25-man roster. The move was announced this afternoon after all other spots on the team had already been filled prior to Saturday's rainout against the Marlins. Solarte and Nunez were left in limbo last night until the decision could be made. Nunez has now been optioned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
To get Solarte onto the 40-man roster, which currently sits at capacity, the Yankees will need some sort of corresponding move before Tuesday's game against the Astros in Houston. It's possible that some kind of trade is pulled off before then, otherwise someone is likely to simply be DFA'd. There aren't a lot of obvious names that you'd think the Yankees would be in a hurry to part with considering that Ichiro Suzuki and Nunez are probably the two that deserve it most. Neither seems very likely to be dispensed with entirely at this point. It could be bad news for Zoilo Almonte or Cesar Cabral. The latter seems like the better bet, if it came down to those two.
It was reasonable to believe that the Yankees would go with Nunez over the unproven Solarte, simply because of their completely unfounded affection for the error-prone infielder. For all the talk of his potential and bat speed, Nunez had really done nothing to deserve the rope he'd received. He was more than outplayed by Solarte and the Yankees made the right decision, for which we are all grateful.