Analysis: Milwaukee Brewers sign Claudio Vargas
The Milwaukee Brewers have signed 33-year-old right-hander Claudio Vargas to a minor league deal, and the veteran pitcher will be playing in the MLB instead of in the Mexican League with Vaqueros Laguna (gap jeans) or staying retired. By the way, it is Vargas and not Sanchez, and this is in reference to a comment on MLBTR. Claudio Sanchez, for those who do not know, is the lead singer of the terrible rock band Coheed and Cambria (sorry, I can’t stand his voice). By the way, Claudio Sanchez, as you can see, was also the name of a Mexican League player who had a career 5.86 ERA in 390 innings. And by the way, he played for Vaqueros Laguna in 2009 and 2011, which means he might know Vargas. They are both 33 years old, so that’s another common link.
Now, back to baseball. Claudio Vargas spent time in 2011 pitching for the Colorado Rockies AAA team, but the Brewers were the last stop in his MLB career. In 2010, Vargas was worth -0.1 WAR with a 4.76 FIP in 19.2 innings. He struck out 8.2 batters per nine and walked 4.6, and Vargas owns a career 6.4 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9.
Claudio Vargas has a fastball at around 90, and a slider-changeup combination that are both around 81 miles per hour. He isn’t a terrible pitcher, but he is below-average, and he’ll probably be good for somewhere between 25 innings this year if he gets called up.
The Brewers are just looking to add some deep pitching depth to this team, and Vargas looks like a 5.00 FIP guy at this point. He doesn’t get grounders, has a subpar strikeout rate, and his control is also subpar. Thus, Vargas is a below-average pitcher overall, but he does help the Brewers out in terms of depth. It isn’t the worst thing in the world to have cheap depth, and he’ll probably end up staying in the minors anyway. In fact, I’m definitely taking the under on an over/under at ten innings.
He will report to AAA Nashville, for those of you who were anxiously waiting for that statement.
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