NEW YORK — Daulton Varsho has a zone. He does not want to reveal its location, though some of his at-bats can expose the secret. Logic suggests it is not eight inches above home plate, but that’s where Varsho’s bat dipped with the bases loaded Friday night.Somehow, Varsho made contact with a two-strike sweeper that almost scraped the dirt. The baseball sailed into shallow right field, chasing home two of the Houston Astros’ runs in their 3-1 victory against the New York Mets.It is the sort of swing Varsho is trying to avoid, even if he and his new teammates aren’t complaining about the outcome. It prolonged an encouraging period amid a trying season, one turned upside down earlier this month when Varsho became the lone acquisition of the Astros’ underwhelming trade deadline.Three weeks into his Houston tenure, Varsho acknowledged: “I probably put a lot of pressure on myself to do more than I need to.” Other players who move during the deadline express a similar sentiment every season, but Varsho’s pressing predates his arrival. He is playing in a pivotal platform year, one he entered with the intention to “become a better overall hitter.”“Try to hit for a better average, walk more,” Varsho said this week. “A lot of those things that you see in a lot of great hitters in this game — they all have it. Obviously trying to strive for something better.”Who the Astros should hire as their next GMKeith LawVarsho is a career .228 hitter who has not finished a season with an on-base percentage higher than .300 since 2022. His 24.1 percent strikeout rate is two points higher than the major-league average.Hitting 85 home runs across the past three seasons helped to mask those deficiencies. Varsho’s power has never been in question, but pairing it with better pitch selection and a higher contact rate would raise his offensive profile and, perhaps, make him more attractive on the open market.Instead, Varsho exited Friday with a .234 batting average and .297 on-base percentage. He has just 10 home runs across his first 454 plate appearances, which he pointed to as the main source of the stress he’s placed upon himself.“I’m not really disappointed in the year that I’m having, but it’s definitely a learning curve of, ‘I need to be a little better at this than I’ve been,’” Varsho said. “For me, it’s my pitch selection. Getting my pitch, an understanding of when to take a shot and when to not and so it’s been a good year for me for that.”Varsho is chasing outside the strike zone at a career-high 36.5 percent clip. As a result, he has seen a career-low 45.3 percent of pitches in the strike zone. Varsho has lowered his whiff rate to 21.4 percent — four points below his lifetime average — but the quality of his contact is nowhere near his norm.“I have to be able to get the pitch in my zone, my part of the plate and drive it,” said Varsho, whose inability to pick better pitches to drive has resulted in lower power numbers. Aggression has always been part of Varsho’s profile — his swing rate as a major-leaguer is over 50 percent — but finding a more measured medium is mandatory.“Being OK with taking a strike when it’s not my pitch, that’s the bigger thing,” Varsho said. “Overall, kind of taking what they’re giving me and being able to be OK with that.”