What Does Andrew Vaughn’s Career Revival Say About The White Sox?

Baseball is a non-linear sport for all but the truly great players. Given the vagaries of health and the random nature of both good and bad fortune, performance can be like a roller coaster ride — up and down, almost on an annual basis.

Yet that doesn’t cover the emergence of 27-year-old Brewers first baseman Andrew Vaughn, who had somehow compiled a -0.5 WAR over 610 games for the White Sox. They were thrilled to draft him third overall in 2019 and brought him to the majors after only 55 games in the minors.

Vaughn had been voted as college baseball’s best player as a sophomore at the University of California. He had five more home runs than strikeouts that season (23-18), hitting .402 and looking like a guy who could handle advanced pitching.

But Vaughn lost his 2020 season to the Covid-19 pandemic. He flashed his promise before regressing steadily over his last three seasons in Chicago. The Sox won 93 games when he was rookie, with him adjusting to a corner-outfield role while Jose Abreu played first base.

Tony La Russa platooned the right-handed-hitting Vaughn with Gavin Sheets in the American League Division Series in ’21, and he joined Luis Robert Jr. and Sheets among the team’s most effective hitters in the four-game loss to Houston. But La Russa could get the genie back in the bottle the next season.

With Abreu in the last of his nine seasons playing for the White Sox, confusion often reigned during an 81-81 season that concluded under interim manager Miguel Cairo. Vaughn led a surprisingly punchless lineup with 17 homers and 76 RBIs while hitting .271, and with the chance to play first base its ’23 it seemed the arrow pointed upward.

Either there was a disconnect somewhere or Vaughn was wildly overvalued when he arrived in Chicago. Consider this breakdown of Vaughn’s hitting with the White Sox:

— 2021-22: 261 games; .255 batting average, home run every 29 at-bats, 72/197 ratio of walks to strikeouts.

— 2023-25: 349 games, .243 batting average, home run every 29.4 at-bats, 81/304 ratio of walks to strikeouts.

It’s easy to see why the White Sox management — and fans — were frustrated by his inability to launch. He was one of the few everyday players for a franchise that declared its intention to rebuild by trading pitchers Dylan Cease, Lucas Giolito and Garrett Crochet and couldn’t elevate his performance during his team’s slide to 121 losses last season.

The bottom dropped out for Vaughn this season. He was hitting .189 with a .218 on-base percentage and a .531 OPS on May 21, on pace for 17 home runs but only 23 walks to go with 145 strikeouts. General Manager Chris Getz made the decision to send him to Triple-A, then traded him to Milwaukee for veteran pitcher Aaron Civale (and cash).

The deal was largely seen as having upside for the White Sox, for at least a couple reasons: Vaughn was a strong candidate to be non-tendered in the off-season, and Civale was pitching well enough when he was squeezed out of the Milwaukee rotation (4.91 ERA over 22 innings) to create trade value. But the only interest in Civale came after the deadline, when the Cubs selected him off waivers.

Getz lost both ends of the transaction, and the Vaughn side has been a slam dunk. He hit the ground running at Triple-A Nashville, then became a consistent run-producer when an injury to Rhys Hoskins created a shot to play in Milwaukee.

Vaughn’s .308 batting average and .869 OPS over 64 games were career-bests, and he homered twice in 14 at-bats as the Brewers beat the Cubs in the National League Division Series. Rather than being a likely non-tender for the White Sox, it seems likely Milwaukee will reject its side of Hoskins’ mutual option to keep Vaughn as its first baseman in 2026.

MLB Trade Rumors’ Matt Swartz estimates Vaughn’s 2026 value at $7.8 million as a four-plus arbitration-eligible player. Talk about a happy ending.

“The game humbled him,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said during the postseason. “(He’s) back into a spot where he feels great about who he is and how he contributes.”

Getz, White Sox manager Will Venable and hitting director Ryan Fuller meanwhile must try to learn from what blocked Vaughn from a breakout in Chicago.

It couldn’t have helped that he worked under six different White Sox managers, including Rick Renteria, Pedro Grifol and Grady Sizemore, and as many as nine major-league hitting coaches. Contrast that to Harold Baines starting his career with four seasons under La Russa and hitting coach Charley Lau, and Frank Thomas getting six seasons under managers Jeff Torborg and Gene Lamont and hitting coach Walt Hriniak in his developmental years.

Baines and Thomas had Comiskey Park and U.S. Cellular Field rocking. While the Sox were relevant in Vaughn’s rookie season, there hasn’t been a lot of joy on the South Side since an eight-game losing streak in April, 2022.

Vaughn has always seemed diplomatic about the White Sox, taking accountability for a disappointing outcome. This isn’t the best time to expect him to be forthcoming, as he’s in the moment of his resurgence, but it will be interesting to see how he reflects on the Chicago years when he gets to Arizona next spring.