Diamondbacks' Ildemaro Vargas in danger of unprecedented fate

Diamondbacks’ Ildemaro Vargas in danger of unprecedented fate originally appeared on The Sporting News.
Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Ildemaro Vargas may be trending toward one of the most unlikely timelines for a single season of any MLB player ever.

He first began the year by hitting better than he ever has in his life. Vargas somehow took home NL Player of the Month honors for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

But since, he’s fallen off a cliff.

It has been so bad that Bleacher Report’s Kerry Miller predicts that Vargas will be designated for assignment — which means removed from the 40-man roster and placed on waivers.

“Has a player ever been named NL Player of the Month and later DFA’ed in the same season?” Miller writes. “As April’s NL POY, Vargas might be forcing us to look into that one, as his fall from grace has been jarring.”

MORE: A ‘gentlemanly’ baserunning move confused the umpires, and everyone else

The Diamondbacks have gotten healthier, which has made the roster more crowded, and Vargas is not making a convincing case to keep his job.

“At the end of play on May 1, the 34-year-old had a 1.131 OPS that led all qualified NL hitters, without a close runner-up,” Miller writes. “But since then, Vargas has a .458 OPS that almost ranks dead last among qualified NL hitters. And with Pavin Smith already back from the IL, Carlos Santana nearing a return and LuJames Groover called up for his MLB debut on Friday, Vargas could be getting squeezed out of a job.”

Vargas was never a potent hitter before this season. His rise came out of nowhere.

It makes sense to expect him to eventually settle somewhere in the middle and not just totally stay in this brutal valley. But it also doesn’t seem like he’ll rebound back to April’s level of play.

The dichotomy will make it tough for the Diamondbacks to make a final decision here, but they may be forced to do so at some point.

More MLB news: