Andrew Vaughn Remains With White Sox as Trade Deadline Passes

The former Cal star hit his 12th home run of the season on Monday for MLB's worst team

Former Cal star Andrew Vaughn / Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

For better or worse, Andrew Vaughn remains a member of the most wretched team in baseball.

Major league baseball’s 3 p.m. PDT Tuesday trade deadline came and went and the White Sox held onto Vaughn, the 26-year-old first baseman from Cal.

Vaughn hit his 12th home run of the season Monday night, but the White Sox lost 6-3 to the Seattle Mariners. That was their 15th straight defeat and Chicago became the first MLB team in 89 years to post two losing streaks of 14 games or longer in the same season. 

Update: Vaughn homered again on Tuesday night, his 13th of the season. But the White Sox lost again, dropping to 27-83.

There actually was minimal speculation that Vaughn, the No. 3 pick in the 2019 MLB draft by the White Sox, would be sent packing. That’s kind of surprising, given that Chicago had to be in a seller’s mode and that Vaughn remains a player with big upside and a modest contract ($3,25 million) who cannot become a free agent until 2027.

So he remains in Chicago, which takes a major-league worst 27-82 record into Tuesday night’s game against the Kansas With Royals. The White Sox are 55 games below .500 for the first time since 1932, are 39 games back of AL Central leader Cleveland and have been outscored by 221 runs.

The Sox are just the fourth team in history to lose at least 81 times in the first 108 games of a season and the first to do so since the 1932 Red Sox.

Vaughn has endured a season that started horribly. Through the first 34 games, he was batting .183 with no home runs and seven RBI and the team went 7-27.

Since then, Vaughn is batting .260 with 12 home runs and 39 RBI in 65 games. Much better, without a doubt, but it hasn’t had much affect on the bottom line: Chicago is 19-46 over that span.

For the season, the fourth-year major leaguer is hitting .234 with 46 RBI, best on the team. Vaughn also leads the White Sox with 376 at-bats, 88 hits and 20 doubles and is second with 37 runs scored. 

His home run Monday night was the 65th of his career and he now has 250 RBI since his debut in 2021. After Paul DeJong and his 18 homers were traded Tuesday to the Royals, Vaughn shares the team lead with 12.

But with 94 strikeouts in 99 games, Vaughn also is on pace to top his career-high total of 129 last season.