ARLINGTON -- Rangers utility player Nick Solak has taken to hitting golf-ball-sized plastic balls for batting practice.
His fiancée, Roxanne McVey, likes to take her cuts, too, and she took the pitching machine deep in their backyard in the Houston suburb of Jersey Village.
The pitching machine didn’t like it and drilled Roxanne with a pitch, as can be seen in the video made by the couple during a recent workout.
“I don’t think the pitching machine liked her bat flip,” Solak said by phone on Wednesday night.
Roxanne bought the house about 18 months ago and has been busy remodeling it. Her father, Glenn McVey, owns a paint and wallcovering business in the Houston area.
When it came to the backyard, Nick and Roxanne set up their own baseball field where he could take batting practice. Check out how carefully they laid out the field with precise measurements and an on-deck circle.
That’s her dad’s company emblazoned on home plate.
Solak, the Rangers' No. 5 prospect, began by hitting off a tee and off underhand pitches from Roxanne into a net. Then Rangers hitting coach Callix Crabbe recommended the small-ball pitching machine. It was a legitimate suggestion. Hunter Pence used one extensively last year with the Rangers.
“Hunter swears by it,” Solak said. “You can do different colored balls. Blue ball you bunt, green ball you take, red ball you swing away. And you can mix them up. You can adjust the speed, move it closer or farther back. It’s great for hand-eye coordination.”
This is how Nick and Roxanne, as they put it, “quaran-team.”
There is also a vacant lot down the street with three old backstops no longer in use. Until now. Solak does his throwing program into the backstops.
Or Roxanne can hit balls to him using a tennis racket. She uses baseballs to hit grounders and tennis balls to hit fly balls. An excellent athlete in her own right, she was co-captain of the University of Louisville volleyball team that won the Atlantic Coast Conference championship.
“[Manager] Chris Woodward’s wife, Erin, coaches her own son’s team,” Solak said. “When Roxanne heard about that, she totally bought into one day managing her own team. I told her this would be good practice.”
Solak said he tries to do something every day to stay sharp while waiting for baseball to start up again.
“I’m not going too crazy,” Solak said. “It feels like the offseason, it’s just weird timing. We are all ready to get started again, I’m just trying to stay refreshed and find a way to get better until it’s time to get back.”