LOS ANGELES — The White Sox appear years away from contending for a playoff berth, let alone a World Series title, but at least one member of their last-place team got to feel what it was like to be a champion Tuesday.
Miguel Vargas, traded from the Dodgers to the Sox last summer, received his 2024 World Series ring from Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and general manager Brandon Gomes about two hours before the opener of a three-game series, which the Dodgers won 6-1.
“It feels good, you know?” said Vargas, who was slotted in the cleanup spot and at first base Tuesday. “A lot of players dream about something like this. It’s always good to have that type of reward.”
Vargas, 25, played in only 30 games for the Dodgers in 2024, batting .239 with a .735 OPS, three homers and nine RBI before going to Chicago in a three-team deal at the trade deadline. On July 27, he made a pinch-hit appearance in the ninth inning for a 98-win team that was headed for its second World Series title in five years. Three days later, he was starting at designated hitter for a team that was mired in a 21-game losing streak and would go on to lose 121 games, the modern-era record.
Vargas hit .104 with a paltry .387 OPS, two homers and seven RBI in 42 games for the Sox. He said the shock of the trade wasn’t the cause of his struggles at the plate.
“I think it was the best thing to happen to me and my career, to come to this organization and to have the opportunity to play every single day,” he said. “I feel, coming into this year, I understand that a little bit more.”
Vargas, who signed with the Dodgers out of Cuba in 2017, was considered the best pure hitter in their farm system, a gap-to-gap slugger who hit .313 with an .878 OPS, 49 homers and 265 RBI in 410 minor-league games through 2022.
The Dodgers were so eager to get his bat in the lineup that in 2023 they moved him from third base to second, a position at which he’d made only 27 starts in five minor-league seasons.
The 6-3, 220-pound Vargas is taller, with longer levers, than most big-league second basemen, and he looked awkward and uncomfortable at his new position for much of April and May of that season. Extensive work with Dodgers third-base coach Dino Ebel and veteran infielder Miguel Rojas helped transform him from a subpar defender to an adequate one by June, but a strange thing happened on the way to Vargas becoming more proficient in the field — he suddenly forgot to hit. He batted .195 with a .672 OPS, seven homers and 32 RBI in 70 games in the first half and was optioned to Triple-A Oklahoma City at the All-Star break.
Did the stress of learning a new position in the big leagues affect Vargas at the plate?
“I don’t think so,” Ebel said. “He did it in the minor leagues, playing multiple positions, and he hit there. Maybe there was a little more pressure on him trying to stay in the big leagues and learn a new position, but watching him work, the mental part, he never complained about the defensive side bothering him on the offensive side.”
Vargas finished 2023 in the minors and split the first four months of 2024 between the big leagues — where he made 20 starts in left field and one at first base — and Triple-A before being sent to the Sox.
He seems more settled this season, playing third and first base. He entered Tuesday with a .229 average, .722 OPS, 10 homers and 34 RBI in 81 games.
“Obviously, last year wasn’t good,” Vargas said. “This year, I feel I’m in a better place. I’m glad to be back here.”
He hasn’t quite developed into the slugger the Dodgers envisioned, but the Sox view him as a key piece of their future.
“There’s more consistency to his power game, there’s more he can do defensively, there’s a lot of ways he can continue to impact a game, and I think he’s going to,” Sox manager Will Venable said. “He’s a 25-year-old guy who understands the game and works extremely hard. I anticipate his development is not done yet.”