Coach by day, independent league ace by night: Matt Solter fights to keep pitching

Matt Solter started his Wednesday at work.

He observed 8ctane Baseball’s weight room, a converted garage with two benches between racks of weights and gray walls. Some players lifted. Others stretched outside under a covering.

Solter doesn’t hover. He prefers to give athletes a sense of autonomy. Only when they ask him questions, or if sees incorrect form will he step in. Some days, he has to remind himself that he can’t expect every kid to be obsessive about baseball or want it as much as he does.

As the Director of Performance at the Raleigh training center, Solter oversees conditioning for high school softball and baseball players as well as college and professional athletes. He mentors 40-60 people every afternoon. Most are trying to improve their pitching velocity. He knows that feeling well. The rest just want to get stronger. He’s their guiding hand.

“We don’t have a job if we don’t get these kids better,” Solter said.

But it’s not his only job.

It’s game day. At 1:30 p.m., Solter grabbed his keys and packed up to leave Raleigh. He drove nearly two hours to Truist Point Stadium on that Wednesday in June, nestled in High Point’s downtown. He arrived a few hours before the 5 p.m. first pitch.

He replaced his 8ctane gear with a bright red jersey and blue hat. He hung out with his teammates. It’s the only time he sees them.

Most days, he’s coaching from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. But once a week, he shows up in the clubhouse of High Point’s independent league team, the Rockers, ready to step in and pitch — to chase his childhood dream.

It’s unconventional. Most teams wouldn’t allow it. He himself has never played on a team that he doesn’t practice with or see in the dugout everyday. But this is the only way to keep going.

Baseball has always been that constant. Every day, he’s been fighting to make something of it.

But he’s 32 now. For one last season, he’s making a final push to hold onto baseball for just a little longer.

“It’s the love of my life,” Solter said. “No matter who I’m playing for, I love competing. I love training. I love getting better. But I want to prove that I have something left of this game [for] the highest level.”

He walked out to the mound.

The High Point pitcher

Solter rarely broke his stoic mask standing on the turf of Truist Point Stadium. No celebrating after strikeouts to end innings. No outburst when he gives up a home run in the top of the third. All business. Focused. Even-keeled.

“Whenever I’m there, it’s just second nature at this point [to] just shut the world out,” he said. “This is my time to just feel free and unburdened.”

He has to be; his future depends on it. Solter decided this will be his last season if he doesn’t get signed somewhere in Asia, where he can make more money, or with another professional team.

But High Point’s relying on him.

“We might need seven from you today,” Zach Vennaro, a fellow Rockers pitcher, told Solter when he arrived in the clubhouse earlier that afternoon.

It’s a routine. Every time Solter shows up for his weekly appearance, Vennaro asks for seven innings of his pitching. It started during the fourth game of the season — the first of a series in Gastonia. The Rockers had just played a three-straight versus Southern Maryland. The bullpen was tired and hurting. They needed him.

Solter delivered. So began the tradition.

He did just that in June, too, pitching a complete game for a club-record third time this season in the first seven-inning outing of the doubleheader against the Long Island Ducks.

Scattered groups of spectators filled in High Point’s blue stands. Flocks of little kids squealed from a colorful playground off the left-field line. Independent league baseball is a niche, but it’s one Solter claims. It’s always been his path forward.

The Rockers are team No. 13 of Solter’s professional career. Most of which have been Indie ball.

Some weeks, he only makes that two-hour drive to Truist Point. Other times, he drives longer for starts in Gastonia, Lexington and West Virginia or hops on a plane for a game in New York. No matter what, he’s always back in Raleigh by the next day.

It’s not always easy.

“I really miss the camaraderie,” Solter said. “It’s part of what’s kept me playing for so long because those relationships are super special.”

He left High Point at 11 p.m. on that night in June, after allowing two runs on seven hits. He spent extra hours watching the second game from the dugout and chatting with teammates in the clubhouse.

When he’s not on the mound and not working, he’s training — at home or at 8ctane. Mobility work and throwing 45 minutes a day. Lifting twice a week.

The Rockers might need seven innings out of him each visit, but he’s willing to give more.

‘Back against the wall’

It took years to get to this point.

After a stint playing in Mexico in 2023, Solter waited four weeks for another team to sign him. He grew antsy. He didn’t want to sit out for two months and no longer be in shape.

A few friends on the Rockers wanted Solter to join them. Finally, High Point picked him up.

He struggled with his pitching velocity. He couldn’t throw as hard as he used to. A bone spur in the shoulder of his pitching arm in 2021 — which stabbed his shoulder like an ice pick and needle — required surgery, and the recovery was slower than initially expected. Although doctors told him he would be back throwing after six to eight weeks, the rehab process was more like two years.

Solter wasn’t in pain. He could pitch 180-190 innings in a season after surgery. But he went from touching 95 mph to dropping to 90 mph on his best days. His average sat at 87 mph.

“In today’s game, you have to have velocity, you have to have stuff,” Solter said. “And I didn’t really have either.”

With his first few starts with the Rockers, he didn’t pitch well. High Point released him. He managed to get picked up again four days later, this time by Long Island, his velocity still stunted him.

Solter returned to Raleigh to train for the 2024 offseason. Ryan Weiss, a former Rockers teammate and his best friend, recommended 8ctane to Solter. By the fourth time of hearing about it, he finally agreed.

After years of frustration with his velocity and not trusting the way he’s pitched his entire life, everything started to improve. He tweaked his mechanics. Speeds of 93 and 94 popped up again. Then 96.

“Matt’s a guy that does better when his back’s against the wall,” 8ctane CEO Bobby Wahl said. “When he came here, it was his last shot when he started training. Knowing that, it almost freed him. It was like, ‘Who cares what happens? I’m just gonna go all in.’”

High Point noticed and brought him back in July 2024.

Shortly after, 8ctane had a position open. Wahl called Solter. He admired Solter’s work ethic and his love for the strength and conditioning side of training. Younger athletes always gravitated toward his warm personality.

“It was kind of a back-and-forth because I was like, ‘I’m still playing,’” Solter said. “‘I’m finally throwing hard again. I don’t suck anymore. I got to see what happens.’”

Wahl and the rest of the 8ctane leadership promised to work with his High Point schedule. Finally, he accepted — his first job outside of playing baseball.

After switching to a bullpen role later in the season, the Rockers asked him if he’d been pitching on his own. He said yes. High Point asked him to start the next day. He went six innings, giving up only two runs. Finally, he earned a place to stay.

“I guess there’s a silver lining,” Solter said. ”[The injury] just cost me two years of my prime, but hopefully I’m still in my prime.”

A constant

Uproot life. Move schools. Make new friends. Pack it all up six to eight months later. Repeat.

Solter grew up in this repetitious cycle. That’s life in a military family.

Until they settled in New Bern, North Carolina, when he was in fifth grade, wherever the Marine Corps stationed his dad, Alan, the entire Solter family followed. As a kid, he searched for sources of stability.

He had one thing: baseball.

“When you’re a kid, you’re moving around all the time, you don’t have a lot of normalcy and your dad’s deployed a lot, that was my safe haven,” Solter said.

Solter’s parents signed him up for baseball when he was 3. Back then, he was terrible. He was unathletic. Uncoordinated.

But if anyone asked, he’d always tell them he wanted to be a professional baseball player. There was never a doubt in his mind: that was the future. He wanted to hold onto the sport for as long as possible.

“I was thankfully blissfully unaware of how terrible I was,” Solter said.

In his senior year of high school, he went from the outfield to pitching. He could only throw about 80 mph, but he chased a faster speed. A coach put him through his first-ever velocity program, and he threw 91 mph for the first time. From there, Solter was obsessed — with the process and the pursuit for results.

His velocity jumped over a three month period. Good enough to get noticed by Division I Furman.

He played four years of college baseball there, working his way up to primary closer in his sophomore season to the starting rotation by his junior year. The hunt shifted to the major leagues.

He didn’t get drafted out of college, but earned enough recognition to get picked up by the San Francisco Giants in 2016 and Cleveland Guardians in 2019 for short stints at spring training and in the minors. His mom cried in an airport watching him pitch on TV in a Cleveland uniform for the ninth inning of a spring training game.

At 26-years-old, Solter reached the Double-A level with Cleveland in May 2019, going 5-1 with a 3.66 ERA in 13 starts and trending upward in his performance on the bump.

Then, toward the end of the 2019 season, Solter tested positive for Clomiphene, a performance-enhancing drug in violation of the minor league’s drug program. He was suspended for 80 games.

“I got some bad advice from a buddy,” Solter said. “He said, ‘Hey, this would be a really good supplement to take.’ I said, ‘Alright, sure.’ It was somebody I trusted, but that’s not to defer blame. I’m responsible for what I put in my body. I have to own that. I was dumb for not looking into it more and for trusting somebody with something that would be so impactful.”

That constant he could always hold onto was gone.

At least for a while.

He knew it wasn’t a life sentence. The dream stayed the same. And in the time away from games, he focused on training. The COVID-19 pandemic postponed his return, but he turned to independent baseball starting in 2020 and followed the opportunities to play. Minnesota. Milwaukee. Mexico. Venezuela. The Savannah Bananas. High Point.

He fought to hold on.

Solter’s last chance

On the part of the wall in the 8ctane weight room that doesn’t have initials and doodles scratched into it, names in bright orange marker stand out from the gray paint. Fourteen names fall under the “95 mph” list — used to designate what pitchers 8ctane trains that have thrown that velocity.

Solter is the 12th. Bold print. Easy to spot.

While nearly four times that number of names fall under the 90+ club on the adjacent wall, Solter has earned the coveted honor of 95. He received the distinction earlier this year — a product of a comeback he wasn’t sure was possible.

“The body of work that he put together this year just makes me smile,” Rockers manager Jamie Keefe said. “It’s incredible to watch somebody basically revamp their whole career and really put himself back up on the radar with an opportunity to not only help us as an organization, but more importantly put up enough that he can open some eyes and hopefully get him another chance.”

After the game against Long Island, he spoke with a scout from Korea. A week later, another team from Mexico, the Toros de Tijuana, watched him pitch versus Staten Island.

Solter returned to 8ctane after the Long Island doubleheader. On this Thursday, it was a recovery day for his athletes, who trickled in and out of the weight room. Tuesdays and Thursdays, that’s when everything slows down. He can focus on one-on-one interactions.

He exchanged jokes with athletes and answered questions. He modeled squats and stretches for a few high school baseball players. And when Aly Sauerbrei, a 16-year-old softball player who he nicknamed “Breezy,” marched from her car straight to Solter, he insisted they practice their handshake before she went into the treatment room.

These are the kind of interactions that motivate him. He wants to be the trusted mentor he lacked before his suspension and the push young players need to stay on the right path.

This job wasn’t in the original life plan. Neither was this journey.

Last Thursday, he signed with the Toros de Tijuana. He starts on Wednesday. He’ll hold onto baseball, like he always has.

He’ll return to the mound. Pitch and pitch. Chase and chase.

That’s all he wants.

That’s all he knows.

The News & Observer’s Inside Look takes readers behind the scenes to illuminate the people and places in our community.