Ex-Cal Stars Andrew Vaughn, Korey Lee Hoping For More in 2025

Andrew Vaughn and Korey Lee, both plucked out of Cal in the 2019 major-league baseball draft, could not have imagined that five years later they would live the nightmare that was the Chicago White Sox 2024 season.

The Sox lost 121 games last season, breaking the modern MLB record set by the expansion 1962 New York Mets, and there was nothing Vaughn or Lee could about it. Not that either delivered a difference-making season.

They officially flip the calendar to 2025 on Thursday with Opening Day at home against the Los Angeles Angels.

No one expects the White Sox to be quite as gruesome as they were a year ago but a major leap forward may be asking too much.

ESPN is projecting them to be 54-108, a 13-game improvement over last season but still suggesting a six-month slog with twice as many defeats as victories.

“The White Sox are going to be bad this season. Probably not 121-loss bad, but bad enough to make clear that their rebuild is still in the strip-the-roster-to-the-studs phase,” ESPN wrote in a story previewing the MLB season.

“If the White Sox climb over .500 and/or make the playoffs, rookie skipper Will Venable would be a shoo-in for Manager of the Century, much less the season.”

Vaughn is ready to start his fifth season in the majors, 

“Definitely have to change the mindset,” the first baseman told the Chicago Sun Times. “We have to turn the page. But we have to do it from Day 1, look forward to it and play hard from the very beginning. Just try to start that new cycle.”

Vaughn said the goal is to win every day, but that’s what every team wants to do.

“It started on Day 1 of spring training,” he said. “We have to break i down to more than just every day — it has to be every workout, every BP, every game played. Everything matters.”

Vaughn, who turns 27 next Wednesday, no doubt is expecting more from himself. The No. 3 overall draft pick after a Cal career in which he won college baseball’s Golden Spikes Award as a sophomore in 2018.

He struggled right along with his team last summer, batting .246 with 19 home runs and 70 RBIs. All three of those numbers dipped a bit from 2023, when he hit .258 with 21 homers and 80 driven in.