There are a host of synonyms Jason Vargas‘ 2018 for the Mets: bad, ugly, wasteful, forgetful, and the list goes on and on. But would you believe me if I told you he could be a key to success in 2019 for the Mets?

Before I enlighten you on the potential asset Vargas could be, let’s look back at how we got here. The former All-Star signed a two-year deal early in the spring of 2018 with a club option for a third year. He got drilled with a line drive in the forearm during Spring Training that delayed his Mets debut, but he eventually got on the field for the first time in San Diego.

He was lit up. Badly. And that trend seemed to never go away. He ended the first half an awful 2-8 with an 8.60 ERA. It was ugly. But as the season went on, Vargas got better (it would have been hard to get worse).

He finished the season with a stretch of a 5-1 record with a 2.56 ERA over his last seven starts, and over his last ten starts, he went 5-3 with an ERA of 3.60, which was over the course of the final two months of the season.

It will be hard to move his contract, considering no one really wants an aging starting pitcher who at one point was the worst pitcher in baseball for an extended period of time last year. That being said, the Mets might as well make the most of a bad situation, and use Vargas in the best way possible: a left-handed, multi-inning reliever out of a suddenly formidable bullpen.

Vargas is at the back end of his career and struggled to make it over five innings in most of his starts. He will turn 36 by the time Pitchers and Catchers roll by.

With a small sample size, Jason Vargas threw five shutout innings on three days of rest of fewer in 2018, which was only one start. For his career in the same time frame, Vargas has eighteen innings and a 1.80 ERA.

His four-pitch combination of fastball (two-seam and straight), change-up, curveball, and sinker can become more dangerous out of the bullpen, where he no longer has to rely on all of them to succeed.

So the question becomes: how does Vargas adjust to becoming a reliever?

This isn’t a video game and you can’t just tell him he’s a reliever and expect all to be well. This change would require a change in approach and warm up, but those issues can be addressed in the off-season and throughout Spring Training.

Vargas is a cerebral pitcher that works at his best when he is in the head of a hitter and can mess with his approach at the plate. By putting him in the bullpen, he can zero in on a smaller selection of hitters and truly live in an at-bat.

Vargas is also a soft-tossing lefty, which can easily be effective and fill a hole in the Mets bullpen. As it stands, the only lefty in the Mets’ bullpen is Daniel Zamora, a rookie with ten Major League innings and reverse splits. Left-handed hitters have a lower OPS against Vargas than righties do in his career at .716 compared to .752.

If the Mets were to make this move, the team would have to invest in a starting pitcher on the free agent market, with Gio Gonzalez being a name the team has shown interest in this off-season according to Mike Puma of the New York Post.

The Mets appear to be very well stuck with Jason Vargas. That leaves it up to Brodie Van Wagenen and Mickey Callaway to adjust and play him to his strengths as the 2019 squad will not be able to endure another poor season from Vargas and somehow contend.