Five Questions with Jeremiah Vargas ’20

Baseball has always been an integral part of Jeremiah Vargas’s life. When he was young, his dad coached and ran a travel baseball organization in his hometown of Waterbury, Conn. After playing in youth leagues and then varsity ball at the Taft School, Vargas ’20 pitched and played short stop and second base for the Skyhawks.

“Baseball has been ingrained in my daily life for as long as I could remember,” Vargas says. While he no longer plays competitively, he is still involved in the sport day in and day out. As the co-founder of Tater Baseball, a family-owned company that specializes in handcrafted wood bats, Vargas relies on the lessons learned as a Skyhawk on the field and as a finance major in the Meehan School of Business. 

“My favorite class was Investments with Professor Michael Mullen,” he recalls. “It introduced me to risk analysis and taught me how to project company valuations. These are skills that I use all the time while running Tater. That class really opened my eyes to the importance of being strategic when making decisions while scaling.”

Vargas shares how he, along with his father and brother, launched Tater Baseball, the importance of business strategy and the lesson Stonehill baseball taught him about always showing up. 

What is your earliest memory of playing baseball?

My family has always been serious about baseball. My earliest memory of playing baseball
would be traveling at a young age to my older brother Freddie’s games. We have a 6-year-age gap, so we would practice in our driveway, and I was always his team’s bat boy until my game schedules became more demanding.

How did Tater Baseball come to be? 

Tater officially started in 2015 in a small shed in my parents’ backyard. I had just wrapped up my junior year of high school and was beginning a busy summer baseball circuit. We started Tater based on a concept of a training bat my dad designed to help my hitting development as well as to help me become a better overall player.

We began manufacturing these training bats for friends and family which quickly transformed into manufacturing premium wood game bats for myself and teammates. That first summer, we sold over 300 wood bats as our first entry into the baseball market.

Since 2015, we’ve increased our product line outside of just bats to become a full-service
baseball brand. We now provide batting gloves, fielding gloves, apparel and protective gear to baseball players of all ages. Our products are also consistently used in Major League Baseball with over 13 MLB players and hundreds of Minor League players representing the Tater brand. We’ve grown significantly, but our focus has remained the same: superior quality, performance and helping athletes of all levels get better.

You were a finance major at Stonehill. How has this helped you in your role at Tater?

My background in finance has been invaluable to my role at Tater, especially as we scale. While at Stonehill, I was able to apply the same concepts I was learning in class directly to Tater in real time. Everything from risk analysis and how to forecast to project growth has allowed me to make smart decisions as we grow.

Being a finance major provided me with the framework to analyze the business from a strategic perspective and ensure that Tater stays financially sound while continuing to invest in new product lines and growth.

What is a lasting lesson you learned from playing baseball at Stonehill?

Discipline, resilience and being a sound leader, all key traits that have stayed with me during my post-playing years. I also learned important lessons about navigating failure and understanding that it is necessary for growth.

Playing baseball at the collegiate level is challenging and requires discipline to show up every day and be your best self—whether you’re mentally or physically fatigued, your team relies on you to show up for them.

Stonehill’s motto is Lux et Spes or Light and Hope. What does this mean to you?

It’s about bringing light and hope to others through what you do. At Tater, we aim to inspire young athletes by providing them with the tools they need to succeed, not just in baseball but also in life. We’re passionate about helping players grow and giving them products they can trust, which allows them to have confidence and excitement on the field. In that way, I believe our work carries the same spirit of Light and Hope that Stonehill instills.