Vargas Records Just One Out in Second Start of the Season

New York Mets lefty Jason Vargas made his second start of the season on Saturday night at SunTrust Park and it wasn’t very pretty.

Ozzie Albies lead off the game with an infield single, and things only went down hill from there. Vargas proceeded to follow that up by walking Josh Donaldson to put the first two runners on for Freddie Freeman.

Mere moments after Gary Cohen said that Freeman hadn’t drove in a run against the Mets in eight games, the slugger just missed a homerun as he flew out to Juan Lagares on the warning track for the first out of the inning.

Ronald Acuna then singled on a line drive into right field, and Michael Conforto couldn’t even come close to throwing Ozzie Albies out, giving the Braves the early 1-0 lead. Vargas then issued his second walk of the inning to Nick Markakis, loading the bases with just one out.

The lefty followed that up by issuing a six-pitch walk to Dansby Swanson to force in a run, and with that he saw his night come to an end. Mets manager Mickey Callaway felt Vargas was being squeezed a little, and he was ejected by home plate umpire Alfonzo Marquez for arguing balls and strikes.

According to Anthony Dicomo of MLB.com, during his postgame conference, Callaway told reporters on Vargas and his lackluster performance, “he’s just not getting outs at this point. That’s really all I can say.”

“He goes out there, he battles and he does the best that he can. Tonight, there were a lot of 3-2 counts, his pitch count was up. It’s just he was running out of pitches and the effectiveness wasn’t there so we had to get him out of there,” Callaway added.

Dicomo also said that Callaway mentioned the Mets may skip Vargas’ next start, but he stopped short of saying the team has imminent plans to replace him in the rotation. He threw out Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman as two potential options if Vargas were to be replaced.

As for Vargas himself, he told reporters postgame that he isn’t too focused on the future of his rotation spot right now. “I’m more focused on trying to understand what happened tonight. Not too focused on what’s going to happen in the future,” the veteran lefty said.

On the young season, Vargas is now 1-0 with a 14.21 ERA, 2.67 WHIP, and 6.96 FIP over two starts and one relief appearance. He has also put a toll on the Mets bullpen, as in those three outings, he has also only lasted a combined 6.1 innings.