Investigating the Growing Andrew Vaughn Dilemma

We all know there are lots of problems surrounding the Chicago White Sox right now. There's a laundry list of items that have resulted in the team being 17-29, 7.5 GB of first-place Minnesota, and the season all but lost before the calendar even flipped to May. There are still some clinging to a shred of faulty hope that this team will somehow right the ship and emerge as the worst division winner since the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals.

Going into the season, I highlighted a number of the concerns I had about this team and why I felt there were too many question marks to feel confident in them reclaiming their position atop the AL Central. Many of those question marks have sadly come to fruition as this group looks as if they are sinking into the abyss of baseball hell.

One of the major concerns discussed throughout the course of the winter, was former top prospect, Andrew Vaughn. Going back to the winter, I wrote and spoke on numerous occasions about his need to take the next step forward in his development to be a middle-of-the-order masher he was drafted to be back in 2019.

There was a great deal of back-and-forth within the fan base about the decision to move on from Jose Abreu and anoint Andrew Vaughn as the first baseman of the future. Granted, Jose Abreu has been one of the worst players in the entire league through the first six weeks of the season, continuing to show signs of decline that began following the All-Star Game a year ago, Vaughn has done little to assuage the concerns of many within the fan base.

Failure To Launch

I've been telling everyone for a while now that when you are a "bat only" right/right first baseman, you have to destroy the baseball. Over the winter, I said that Vaughn has to, at worst, be Rhys Hoskins but really needs to turn into Pete Alonso to have value on this team. He has been anything but to this point. The belief that no longer playing out of position and having dirt under his feet would allow his bat to show why he was a No. 3 overall pick, has not materialized.  

Sadly, Vaughn has been closer to former Oakland A's first baseman Daric Barton than Hoskins or Alonso, which is an alarming reality, to say the least. Don't believe me?  Let's look at the data through their first 1,219 career PAs.

This is not what you expect from the last high draft pick of a designed tank job. Vaughn outperforms Barton in only the SLG and home run departments, but that is questionable when you consider that Barton played 81 games a year at the spacious Oakland Coliseum, a notoriously bad park for hitters. At the same time, Vaughn has had the luxury of playing at the typically offensive-friendly ballpark at the corner of 35th/Shields.

To make matters worse, we all have seen Vaughn's defense and baserunning be net negatives for this team so far in 2023. Barton was widely considered to be one of the better defensive first basemen in the sport in his time by the Bay, something that I don't think will ever be said about Vaughn. If you would've told me back in 2019 shortly after he was drafted, that I would be comparing a former Golden Spikes winner to Daric Barton, I would've said you're crazy but here we are.

Vaughn was touted as being, perhaps, the best all-around collegiate hitter since Kris Bryant, and that scouting report has failed to materialize to professional ball. Ever since his ridiculous callup at the start of the 2021 season, I long called into question how being rushed to Chicago without the fortune of being able to see upper-level pitching in the minor leagues would hamper Vaughn's development. At this point, it's pretty clear that has been the case.

I fail to subscribe to the notion that a player that was a Golden Spikes winner and consensus Top 5 pick was misevaluated by an entire industry. Rather, the White Sox shortsightedness and inability to complete a roster has forced them to lie in a bed of their own making. Sadly, Andrew Vaughn's career appears to be stalling as a result of the White Sox organization once again not being forward-thinking enough to see a potential problem.

Future Building Block?

As the 2023 season has gone off the rails, there's more and more discussion about Rebuild 3.0 being on the horizon. Many are saying that Andrew Vaughn is still one of the organizational building blocks and I believe that to be a presumptuous position. The fact is, less regarded players such as Jake Burger and even Gavin Sheets have provided equivalent or, in Burger's case, far more value than Vaughn.

Is Andrew Vaughn a lost cause at this point? I think that is too strong of a statement to make, however, the notion that he should be penciled into this team's future plans needs to be seriously re-evaluated. The organization's negligence with his handling may prove to be too much to overcome at this point. He could very well end up being a player that needs to leave this organization for him to realize his offensive potential and that would just be another damning indictment of this front office that has failed at so many turns during this supposed contention window.

At the time of his selection in 2019, many believed Andrew Vaughn would be the next in an illustrious line of White Sox first baseman to be the centerpiece of the team's offense. Things have not played out that way to this point and with each passing day, the concerns grow greater and greater. Is there still time for Andrew Vaughn to flip a switch and live up to his draft pedigree, of course. But the clock is ticking.