Cal Baseball: Can Andrew Vaughn and the White Sox Turn Their Season Around?

Vaughn has warmed up the past week but the season has not gone well for him or Chicago.

Former Cal star Andrew Vaughn enters the month of June on something of a personal hot streak.

But he and Chicago White Sox also begin a weekend home series vs. Detroit Tigers on Friday with a record of 23-35, seven games back of the Minnesota Twins in the decidedly mediocre American League Central division.

Vaughn arrives at the start of this month slashing .255/.333/.443 — his numbers for batting average, on-base and slugging all below where he was at this point a year ago: .291/.339/.509.

Adam Kaplan, on the website Sox on 35th, asked this question on Thursday: Has Andrew Vaughn given the White Sox enough?

Kaplan went on to break down Vaughn’s season and argue that the 25-year-old first baseman, now in his third major league season, has not shown the expected improvement after being selected No. 3 overall in the 2019 major league draft.

Andrew Vaughn / Photo by Katie Stratton, USA Today

Here’s how Kaplan ended his story:

While I personally believe the Chicago White Sox messed up Andrew Vaughn’s development by thrusting him into the majors too early in 2021, we are now at the point in Vaughn’s career where he needs to start taking personal responsibility for his performance. He has seen enough major league pitching and has shown the ability to consistently hit against it, such that he should not be performing as poorly as he has been so far this season.

I am personally rooting for Andrew Vaughn to succeed. I would love nothing more than for things to click and for him to go on a run the way he did in the first half of 2022. Baseball is streaky, and there’s nothing to prevent Vaughn from doing that again. However, there’s nothing Andrew Vaughn has consistently shown this season that would lead me to believe things are going to get better.

Sadly, I think this version of Andrew Vaughn is generally what he is. I think he will be a player that will be poor defensively, only slightly above average offensively, and a player the White Sox organization hyped up too much. I hope I’m wrong.

Time will tell if Kaplan’s evaluation is accurate, premature, an over-reaction or merely wrong.

Vaughn’s numbers so far this season have mostly been ordinary, at best. He is batting .255 with seven home runs.

It hasn’t been all bad. Vaughn leads the White Sox with 39 RBIs, which is tied for seventh in the AL and as many as Yankees slugger Aaron Judge has through the first two months of the season.

He also is second in the AL with 17 doubles, which likely is a better gauge of his performance than home run totals. Through his first 317 career games Vaughn has 67 doubles and 39 home runs.

The White Sox dug themselves an early hole at 7-21 after a 10-game losing streak through late April. They may not be good enough to transform this into a winning season but the AL Central has no dominant team — the division-leading Twins are just two games over .500 — so there certainly is opportunity.

Vaughn has warmed up the past half-dozen games, batting .435 (10 for 23) with four doubles, two home runs and eight RBIs. His slugging percentage is .870 over that admittedly small sample size.

But the Sox won just two of those six games, so their troubles clearly extend beyond Andrew Vaughn.

Cover photo of Andrew Vaughn by Rick Osentoski, USA Today

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