If Andrew Vaughn was a free agent this offseason, I think he would still be on the market. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your point of view, he’s still employed by the Chicago White Sox. But after a disappointing 2024, Vaughn still has yet to show he’s a cornerstone first baseman the Sox thought they drafted back in 2019.
High expectations are a given when you’re the third overall draft pick. Vaughn was the 16th-ranked prospect by MLB.com going into 2020 while MiLB.com had Vaughn pegged as a third-best prospect behind Bobby Witt Jr., who’s become one of the most exciting players in the game, and CJ Abrams, another guy who’s shown the potential to be a top player.
Vaughn played well at the Class-A and Class-A Advanced levels but with the 2020 minor league season wiped out by COVID-19, he was called up to the White Sox in 2021 without the benefits of having faced stiffer competition in higher levels of the minors. Without minor league development, Vaughn has struggled to establish himself as an offensive player the Sox can build around.
Let’s first take a look at his defence. The Sox experimented with playing Vaughn mainly at the corner outfield spots, along with some first base, in his rookie season and in 2022, as Jose Abreu had the first base position locked down. The results were, to put it kindly, disastrous.
In 2021, Vaughn recorded an Outs Above Average (OAA) rating of -7. In 2022, his OAA was -20. Essentially, plays that Vaughn failed to make while playing the outfield gave opposing teams and extra 27 outs to work with over the course of two seasons. Vaughn’s full-time switch to first base at the start of the 2023 season didn’t drastically improve his defence, however. Vaughn’s OAA in 2023 and 2024 was -6 and -9, respectively. He was the 11th-worst overall fielder in MLB in 2024 and the third-worst first baseman.
If Vaughn can’t provide above-average defence, surely he can provide some pop in the White Sox order?
Despite normal rookie struggles, Vaughn put good wood on the baseball in 2021. He was in the 82nd percentile for average exit velocity, the 72nd percentile for barrel percentage, and in the 81st percentile for hard hit rate.
Vaughn was also middle of the pack when it came to xwOBA and xSLG, which is not a bad spot to be as a rookie. In 2022, he improved on almost all of those metrics and had a .277 batting average. His chase rate and walk rate left a lot to be desired, but he wasn’t striking out as much and he whiffed less than the majority of big leaguers.
The 2023 season is a bit of a mixed bag for Vaughn and depending on how you look at his metrics, he either improved offensively or he still wasn’t figuring it out at the plate. His average exit velocity and hard hit percentage were still above average, but every other batting metric fell.
His barrel percentage fell to league average and his launch angle sweet-spot rate fell nearly four points. Vaughn did hit 21 homers in 2023, a career-high, and his ISO was .171, but his batting average and his on-base percentage both fell.
In one sense, this could be seen as decent development offensively in Vaughn’s career. He still hit the ball hard, power was there as indicated by his above-average ISO, and for most of the season he was above league average in xwOBA. His BABIP was .299 and his wRC+ was 103, down from 113 the previous season but still above average and more acceptable when you factor in that it looks like 2023 was a season when he was trying to hit the ball in the air more.
If 2023 was a season of progress, then 2024 looks like a season of regression. Despite improving many of his batted-ball stats (xSLG, Barrel %, and Squared-Up% were all well over league average), Vaughn’s slugging percentage dropped nearly 30 points, his batting average dipped to 25 points below his career-high set in 2022, and his OBP fell almost 20 points.
You could argue that Vaughn simply suffered from some bad luck last season. Despite hitting .246, his BABIP was .285 and his xSLG was .440, 38 points higher than his actual slugging percentage. His wRC+ was 97, below league-average but there were other encouraging signs for Vaughn in 2024, like his walk rate ticking up and even adding a couple stolen bases.
Fortunately for Vaughn, projection systems like him going into 2025. They’re not predicting a massive improvement from him, but Vaughn projects better in almost every batting category, from walk rate to BABIP to wRC+. I don’t want to get too excited about forecasts – they’re predictions and come with probabilistic margins of error. But if Vaughn wants a new contract from the White Sox after the 2025 season, or any other team, he’ll need to show definite improvement at the plate this season.
Featured image of Andrew Vaughn by Katelyn Mulcahy
Article by Jack Turek. Watch out for more Chicago White Sox content from Jack during the 2025 season.
