Cal Baseball: Andrew Vaughn Goes From Spring Training Heaven to Summer Uncertainty

Ex-Bears slugger was batting .304 in Arizona spring ball before COVID-19 halted things

Photo by Tom Borowski

Andrew Vaughn was exactly where he’d always dreamed of being. In a major league spring training camp.

Drafted No. 3 overall out of Cal last June by the Chicago White Sox, Vaughn impressed the organization brass enough with his 2019 minor-league debut that he got an invite to the team’s Camelback Ranch spring facility in Glendale, Ariz.

“The big thing for me was getting up there, seeing the pitching, just getting a feel for the game at the highest level,” said Vaughn, who seemed to be doing just that, forging a .304 batting average through 13 games, including a home run against the Cleveland Indians.

The taste he got only fueled his drive to reach the Big Leagues.

“Obviously, I want to be there one day,” he said. “Hopefully sooner rather than later.”

Sooner than later became who knows when after the COVID-19 pandemic blossomed, shutting down baseball and pretty much everything else in mid-March.

Vaughn recalls the word coming the White Sox from manager Rick Renteria, who stepped into the clubhouse and glumly announced, “Guys, this is tough to say but we’re shutting down.”

Initially, a lot of players hung around, thinking baseball might be re-opened within a couple weeks. No one knew.

“I really had no idea,” Vaughn said. “Seeing the outbreak of all the cases and the unfortunate deaths, you never know. It was either going to climb . . . which it did climb a lot. It skyrocketed.”

Within days, it was obvious that more than spring training would be impacted. It’s two-plus months and counting and what’s next for Vaughn is uncertain.

No one is even sure whether there will be minor-league baseball this summer.

Vaughn wasn’t going to make the White Sox major league roster this season, but he might have found himself at Double-A Birmingham, with a chance to climb to Triple-A Charlotte, according to Brett Ballantini, who covers the White Sox for Sports Illustrated’s South Side Hit Pen.

“The White Sox are very cautious about hyping their young players and typically don’t say anything of real merit beyond the normal attaboy platitudes, but they are very tickled with Vaughn,” Ballantini said.

For now Vaughn waits. He bought a place in Arizona and he’s at home these days, swimming in his backyard pool, lifting weights when he can find some and trying to get in swings of the bat.

But while major league players and owners are trying to find a way to start their season, the picture is far less clear at the minor-league level, given that any sporting events resumed right now likely will be without fans.

The majors can survive playing in empty ballparks because MLB pulls in about $4 billion in local and national television money, according to ESPN. That revenue stream doesn’t exist for minor league teams.

“Our teams need the gates open and (people) in seats with a beer in one hand and a hot dog in the other, just to survive," Jeff Lantz, MiLB’s senior director of communications, told the Sacramento Bee. "If we play games but don’t open the gates, that’s zero revenue. It’s just not feasible with our business model.”

As a result, it’s not only unclear whether there will be a minor-league season in 2020, but whether some minor-league franchises will survive the summer.

Asked if it’s possible his second professional season could be one huge swing-and-miss, Vaughn doesn’t pretend to have any special insights.

“Shoot, I really don’t know. Obviously, everything comes from the major leagues. The minor-league season kind of follows suit with that,” he said. “For us minor leaguers, we’re waiting to see what the major league guys do. If they get their season going, hopefully we can start right after that.

“This is tough times for everybody. It’s a different world we’re living in right now. I personally hope everything turns out OK and this kind of washes away and we learn from it.”

TOMORROW: The White Sox evaluation of Andrew Vaughn's 2019 season and what they see for him going forward.

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo

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