As Rangers continue workouts, one issue remains: Where does Nick Solak belong?

ARLINGTON — When spring training shuttered in March, the Rangers were really no closer to solving the Nick Solak situation than when camp started a month earlier. The situation was this: The Rangers wanted to get Solak regular at-bats, they just didn’t know where.

He was in the mix in center field, a position he began to learn over the winter, but Danny Santana was to begin the season with the majority of the playing time there. He was in the mix at second base, but Rougned Odor was there. For the time being, anyway. He had dabbled at third, but Todd Frazier is the starter there and Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s big offensive showing similarly pushed him into the picture there.

If anything, the shutdown made things only murkier.

In between building a backyard baseball/whiffle ball field and familiarizing himself with the complex relationship between owners and players when it comes to labor, he started to ramp up workouts at first base. The Rangers still don’t have any answers there either.

“I see this as an opportunity,” Solak said Saturday before the Rangers’ simulated pitching duel between Mike Minor and Corey Kluber. “I’ve been able to get work at all kinds of positions. It’s a process of constant improvement.”

Here is what is not murky: The Rangers must find a way to play him.

Solak’s best skills are all on offense. In a 60-game season — provided MLB gets that many in — early-inning offense is essential. Teams that score first generally win about 70% of games. Last year, on the way to an overall losing record, the Rangers were still 49-23 (.681) when they scored first.

And those numbers are for a 162-game season, when there isn’t the same sense of urgency. Give managers a chance to protect a lead with extra bullpen arms and extra defensive specialists, as will be the case for the first half of this season, and they will employ them without hesitation. Run production early, run prevention late.

It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Solak, 25, isn’t one of the nine most productive offensive players on the Rangers’ roster. Hitting has never been an issue with him; it’s always been about where on the field to play him. His .393 OBP last year, albeit over the small sample size of 135 plate appearances, was the best on the team. His strikeout-to-walk rate of just under 2-to-1 suggested a mature approach at the plate. If anything, Globe Life Field should only accentuate his offensive skills. He’s a line-drive hitter in a park where the gaps are more like chasms.

The first goal of Summer Camp was to keep everybody healthy, even more significant because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second has to be to lay out a strategy for maximizing Solak’s time in the lineup.

On Saturday, quite literally, I asked Rangers manager Chris Woodward: “Hey, what’s the deal with Nick Solak?”

Woodward: “It’s a great question. We’ve worked him in center field some, we’re going to move him around some. I’m going to do everything I can to get him in the lineup.”

But he’s the manager. Doing everything to get him in the lineup constitutes this: Writing his name down.

Woodward isn’t quite ready to go there. Opening day may be less than three weeks away, but it was also only the second day of Summer Camp. The intrasquad games don’t even consist of nine fielders yet.

“His offense is a threat,” Woodward said. “Do I believe in Nick Solak? Yes, for sure. I’ve been really impressed. But we also have a pretty deep roster. He’s still got a lot to prove at this level. I’ve told our guys that if a guy gets hot, I’m going to ride that guy a little bit.”

For now, that means more work at first base. Woodward said the Rangers had planned to transition him to working more at first in the second half of spring training. The pandemic squashed that. But, after he came to Dallas in early May, he started working regularly with coach Don Wakamatsu and staffer Alex Burg on the position.

First is also where the greatest immediate opportunity may lie. Nobody had lay claim to the position in spring training. It’s not even clear if Ronald Guzman has passed COVID-19 protocols; he has not appeared on the field during the first two workouts.

Then again, right field could offer the same. Joey Gallo has also not yet appeared. The Rangers have stayed mum on whether the pair is even eligible to participate at the moment. If Gallo isn’t available, Shin-Soo Choo and Solak could split right field and DH.

The issue still remains the same: The Rangers have to find a way to get Nick Solak regular at-bats. They have less than three weeks to determine how.

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