Many pro players scrambled for jobs a year ago when the rules changed, and teams could only carry 165 players across their minor league system. One of those players who was cut a year ago was RHP Chase Solesky. No other MLB organization picked him up initially, and he signed on with an Atlantic League independent team in Hagerstown, Maryland called the Flying Boxcars. After pitching well for Hagerstown, the Nats came calling and signed Solesky to a free agent minor league deal. He was assigned to Double-A Harrisburg as a starting pitcher in mid-June.
In early 2023, Solesky was pitching well in the Chicago White Sox Double-A affiliate. He got promoted to Triple-A and his struggles began. What started as a promising year for Solesky just faded in the baseball abyss.
What could have ended his baseball career at the age of 26, Solesky did what few have done, and he went from Indy ball back to the minor leagues in a few months time. Not only that, Solesky pitched well for Harrisburg with a 3.02 ERA and 1.100 WHIP, and earned a spot on the Nats’ Arizona Fall League team. He finished so well on that team, Solesky earned a spot as an Arizona Fall League pick for the Fall Stars team.
What changed for Solesky was adding a new pitch with overhauled mechanics. That new pitch: the splitter. The new mechanics was dropping his arm angle, a wider base, and a little more closed. All of that led to more confidence as a pitcher as he felt more comfortable with the changes and tweaks.
Solesky went from a very typical linear delivery to more lateral that produced more “cross-fire” in his delivery. When Solesky delivers the ball, he is looking behind a right-handed hitter at address, then finds his way back to square, and it’s added a lot of deception, and the desired swing-and-miss. That new lowered arm-slot makes that fastball play up more on the reaction time.
Since his freshman year in college at Tulane, Solesky has been working with pitching coach, Brian Chaput, of Sport Matrix. The pair spends a lot of time together in each offseason. We asked Chaput about information overload since Solesky literally went from the White Sox organization to Indy ball to the Nationals farm system to Fall Instructs to the Arizona Fall League in about an 8-months span. The good news is Solesky came to him so mechanically sound that they mostly just worked on grips for the desired effect on the analytics.
“We are like brothers without the blood relationship. We work well together. I have to say the Nationals player development is extremely good. … He came to me with a little wider base and staying closed in the upper body and that increased his velo with those new [mechanical] changes. That is the vision we had, and where we wanted to be. He has the new setup and delivery. The Arizona Fall League numbers speak for where he is.”
— Chaput told us
“I loved where he was. Now we were working on splitter grip. Continuing to work on the cutter. Trying to just get ready for the Nationals camp. He’s ready. He’s the most prepared player I’ve ever worked with.”
A lot of credit has to go to Sam Narron, the Nats’ minor league pitching coordinator, who encouraged these changes with Solesky. Narron did not have Solesky for long because the right-hander was added to the Nats’ minor league roster in mid-June. You take the tweaks and then work on it until it feels natural. This is what player development is supposed to be about — and credit to what Eddie Longosz, the Nats VP of Player Development, has put in-place.
A source told us that Solesky then asked his coaches if he could add a splitter to his repertoire, and they gave him the green light. His September ERA for Harrisburg was 2.65 and that was after facing Double-A Bowie in two consecutive starts. In Solesky’s final two starts in 2024, he notched 12 strikeouts in 11-innings, and the splitter had become an effective pitch in his arsenal that he took with him to Fall Instructs where he could tweak some more in his delivery before he headed to Arizona.
While in the Arizona Fall League, the right-hander put together an amazing 20:1 K/BB ratio during his time with the Rafters. Solesky was throwing a low-90s heater, upper-80s cutter, mid-80s slider, and the new splitter. He notched 20 strikeouts in 13 innings while allowing just one BB.
What we saw on tape from the AFL was how free-and-easy Solesky was throwing against some of the top prospects in baseball. After a little over a month off of baseball over the holidays, Solesky headed to a baseball lab for offseason work. Solesky’s offseason work on refining his splitter grip and working on the spin analytics on the Rapsodo and Trackman systems were the tweaks he need to feel comfortable. He added more depth while maintaining velocity.
From his personal offseason work, Solesky headed to Florida and was an early arrival to West Palm Beach at Nats’ camp. The early birds get to work with the minor league pitching coaches, but also Nats’ assistant pitching coach, Sean Doolittle, was in early camp.
All of these tweaks for the 6’3″ righty who arrived into the Nationals system just eight months ago, might have changed the course of his career. Now he must standout among his peers to get on general manager Mike Rizzo’s radar.
Now Solesky didn’t earn a non-roster invite (NRI) to big league camp. He’s not on the 40-man roster or the MLB Pipeline Top-30 prospect list. That means he will have to impress on the minor league side of camp and then when the season starts he will also be judged by his stats. Somehow he must have impressed someone at FanGraphs because they listed him as making his MLB debut in 2025 with 12-innings pitched.
It is hard to say if Solesky will start in Double-A or Triple-A due to the volume of pitchers. Wherever the right-handed pitcher goes to start his MiLB season, he will need to impress enough to get his shot at the big leagues. That is the goal. All of this has led me to add Solesky to our Watch-List.
