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Determined Vargas Vies for Mets Rotation
by Ben Shpigel, New York Times
February 15, 2007
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla., Feb. 14 — Five-year-old Jason Vargas scampered
around the batting cage, helping some of the Victor Valley High players
retrieve balls, when he reached a milestone in his development. Vargas
did not notice a pitch hurtling toward the plate when he trotted out to
grab a stray ball. The player lashed a sharp grounder that slammed into
Vargas’s jaw.
“It threw him for a loop,” Vargas’s father, Joe, then
the coach at Victor Valley in Victorville, Calif., recalled in a telephone
interview Wednesday. “It didn’t hurt him or anything, but
I think he realized then that he had to start paying attention to his
surroundings and doing as he was told. It was a wake-up call, his indoctrination
into baseball.”
Since then, Vargas has pursued his passion with an almost single-minded
motivation. He attended two high schools and three colleges searching
for the right fit before soaring through the Florida Marlins’ system
to make his major-league debut in 2005 at age 22, barely a year out of
Long Beach State. He watches video and consults weekly with a former pitching
coach and plays winter ball and trains like a fiend because he knows only
how to become better.
But there is another side to Vargas. He pays attention, but only to what
he can control. So when asked Wednesday what he thought of the other eight
pitchers competing for three slots in the Mets’ rotation, Vargas
nodded, as if he had the response figured out, and said that he did not
learn that the team had signed Chan Ho Park until Monday, three days after
it happened.
“I don’t follow transactions,” Vargas said. “I
know the names. I know there’s a good group of guys and that it’s
going to be competitive. After that, I can’t worry about it.”
That group also comprises two bonus-baby prospects (Mike Pelfrey and Philip
Humber), two playoff-tested young pitchers (John Maine and Oliver Pérez),
two veterans (Park and Aaron Sele) and two enigmatic right-handers (Jorge
Sosa and Alay Soler). Unless they implode this spring, Maine and Pérez
are the favorites for two spots, leaving Vargas — the only left-hander
— and the rest to vie for the final one.
Vargas does not see it that way. This is what he figures: The Mets did
not give up two hard-throwing relievers — Henry Owens and Matt Lindstrom
— to acquire Vargas from the Marlins in November simply to cast
him aside.
Since the conference call announcing the deal, team officials have consistently
mentioned Vargas as a prime candidate to win a job. General Manager Omar
Minaya has raved about his composure and his stuff. At the winter meetings
in December, Manager Willie Randolph brought up Vargas’s name without
prompting.
Looking back, Vargas said, the trade was a blessing. He can reunite with
his favorite catcher, Paul Lo Duca, whom Vargas called “the best
at knowing how to handle hitters at this level,” and Carlos Delgado,
who was the first teammate to shake his hand and welcome him on July 14,
2005, his first day in the majors.
But more so, Vargas is looking forward to proving that 2005 was not a
fluke. He ascended through two levels of Class A ball and pitched three
games in Class AA before joining the Marlins. In his first six weeks,
Vargas went 5-1, throwing a complete game, and last season he emerged
from a pack of young starters to win a rotation spot out of spring training.
He struggled with his slider, with his control, with everything, and was
demoted to Class AAA Albuquerque in May.
“It was the first time I’d ever been sent down at any level,”
Vargas said. “I didn’t really know what was going on with
me as a pitcher. It was difficult to make adjustments because even when
I was confident and thought I was coming around, I struggled.”
So in the off-season he worked out a mechanical kink in California before
leaving to pitch for Escogido in the Dominican Republic, where he let
2006 evaporate into the ether. He concentrated on pitching aggressively
and throwing strikes. He visualized how he felt after throwing a good
slider or a down-and-away fastball. Never a strikeout pitcher, Vargas
dared the hitters to hit the ball.
“There’s quite a marked change in him now,” Joe Vargas
said. “Last year when he left, he didn’t feel comfortable
with his mechanics and how the ball left his hand — ‘Am I
really ready for this?’ This year, he knows what he has to offer
and at this stage in the game, he’s quite a bit ahead.”
That assessment is from Joe Vargas, the coach, not from Joe Vargas, the
father. There is a difference. The father effervesces about his son’s
career arc. The coach reminds him to stay grounded, to remain impassive.
“That’s what I’ve learned most from him,” Vargas
said. “You can look at me on the mound and never know whether we’re
winning, 5-0, or losing, 5-0. You don’t show emotion out there.
He never let me get away from that.”
Growing up in Apple Valley, Calif., about 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles,
Vargas was ambidextrous. About age 5 or 6, he picked up a ball in his
left hand.
“My eyes lit up,” Joe Vargas said. “He had this beautiful,
fluid motion and I was like, O.K., we may have something here.”
But he never pressured his only son to do anything he did not want to
do. In fact, when Vargas, after his freshman year at Victor Valley, said
he wanted to play for rival Apple Valley, his father consented. Vargas
spent a year at Louisiana State, transferred to a California junior college,
then spent the 2004 season at Long Beach State, where, despite winning
seven games, he made his mark at the plate, batting .354.
If he makes the team, Vargas could challenge Tom Glavine as the Mets’
best-hitting pitcher. That would mean more time around the batting cages,
which, this time around, would be just as good.
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