While they were finalizing a one-year deal with Moises Alou and declining their $14 million team option on the waffling Tom Glavine, the Mets made a four-player minor league deal with the Marlins. The Mets send relief pitchers Henry Owens and Matt Lindstrom in exchange for Jason Vargas and Adam Bostick. The most exciting part of this deal is that the Mets traded a 26-year-old and a 27-year-old for two 23-year-old lefties.
Here's what Vargas has done since graduating from Long Beach State in 2004.
Year Lvl Lg ERA IP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 K/9 --------------------------------------------------------- 2005 A SAL 0.80 33.2 4.28 0.27 2.67 8.82 2005 A+ FSL 3.42 55.1 7.64 0.98 2.28 9.76 2005 AA Sou 2.84 19.0 6.16 1.42 3.32 11.84 2005 MLB MLB 4.03 73.2 8.67 0.49 3.79 7.21 2006 AAA PCL 7.43 69.0 12.78 1.43 3.65 6.65 2006 MLB MLB 7.33 43.0 10.47 1.88 6.28 5.23The Marlins put Vargas on the fast track through their system, pushing him from A-ball all the way up to The Show in the span of half of a season. Vargas was pretty dominant in the minors in 2005 and was pretty solid when he finally made it to the big leagues after three grueling months on the farm. He pitched well enough with the Marlins that year to finish eighth in the rookie of the year voting. He's young and he's lefty and he's a starter, and you can never have too many of those in your system.
Vargas showed good control prior to his stint with the Marlins in 2006, and posted very good strikeout numbers through AA, though the strikeouts fell quite a bit once he got to AAA and the majors.
Bostick has had some control problems in the minor leagues but he has good strikeout and homerun rates.
Year Lvl Lg ERA IP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 K/9 --------------------------------------------------------- 2005 A+ FSL 3.84 91.1 9.36 0.69 3.55 9.26 2005 AA Sou 4.67 44.1 8.53 0.61 5.08 7.92 2006 AA Sou 3.52 115.0 7.83 0.55 5.24 8.53 2006 AAA PCL 4.67 27.0 13.00 1.33 4.33 10.00Far from terrible, but he walks far too many batters to be effective at the big league level right now. If he can improve his control and lower his walk totals considerably he might project to a back-end of the rotation guy. Right now he's just trade bait.