PHILADELPHIA — A warm smile creeps across any Dodgers veteran’s face at the mere mention of White Sox third baseman Miguel Vargas.
“We’re always in touch, we talk all the time,” his good friend Andy Pages said through a translator. “I know how much work he put into it. I know how much has gone into it.”
“He worked hard and didn’t complain about anything,” Max Muncy said. “He had a broken finger and a broken thumb and whatever else and he never complained about it and we all knew it was bothering him. The fact that he went out on the field every single day and worked and tried to be the best player he could be, dealing with all of that and never complaining about it to anyone, that deserves a lot of respect in our club.”
“I’m so happy for him, what a great kid,” Freddie Freeman said. “He’s always happy. He’s fun to be around. He works a lot. He just loves the game of baseball. Baseball was his whole life, and so was his father. So you can just see the joy he gets from it.”
It fits with Vargas’ reputation in the Dodgers organization when the trade that brought him to the White Sox first went down, but upon arriving in Chicago two years ago, it wasn’t as easy to see the joy as it was for Freeman. For much of last season, even with improvements that earned him AL Player of the Week honors in mid-May, Vargas simply wasn’t in the conversation for 2024 depth. Sometimes it was accompanied by the athlete’s usual cliché about focusing on the present, sometimes with a playful “I don’t remember” that matched the style of humor he barked at his Chihuahua after a satisfying workout at Citizens Bank Park on Monday. But neither 121 losses nor a .387 OPS seemed like topics he wanted to return to.
The dam broke a little last week when Vargas was selected to the All-Star team, confirming his journey full circle to the energetic leader of a young and hungry first-place Sox team. Only now that he had been fully restored did he admit that for a time he had lost faith in his ability to enjoy baseball. But as understandable as that sentiment may be to anyone who has watched the White Sox’s lows and only recent highs during Vargas’ tenure, he hesitates to let them reach this point.
“You were there at this club a couple of years ago, so I think for me it’s more of a reward because I never expected to be here so soon,” Vargas said. “I don’t know, I think I was young. I was 24 years old at the time and moved to a new team. I was young and probably immature at that moment. I think now I understand what my purpose is in this organization.”
“His father was a great player,” Pages said through a translator. “So for him to put a little more pressure on himself to make it to the big leagues, that’s kind of what he puts on himself.”
Speaking to the media on Monday, Freeman said all major tournament players work hard, but the players who are able to maintain their results and/or bounce back from poor seasons are those who are brave enough to work differently and look for uncomfortable solutions to prolong their careers. Likewise, the defining element of Vargas’ story is that when he says he struggled to find joy in baseball, it was then that he subjected himself to severe physical and mechanical transformations. He bulked up after the ’24 season, when Sox officials said they wanted him to be unrecognizable by the time he arrived in the spring. Early in ’25, he changed his setup at the plate, which he admitted was uncomfortable until it became his new normal.
There’s a snippet of the Rate Field scoreboard where Vargas describes his father Lazaro as “the most famous person on my phone” and boasts of the two Olympic medals he earned from playing for Team Cuba. At the same time, Vargas is eyeing an opportunity to play in Major League Baseball, which his father never got. And what looks like an extra dose of pressure he’s put on himself now looks like a source of lasting determination.
Miguel VargasJames Fegan/Sox Machine
“That’s why I wear his number and last name on my back,” Vargas said. “For me, this is an opportunity when we’re here (at the All-Star Game), I feel like we both made it. I am him, in my body. That’s all we’re trying to achieve. I’m just trying to represent him and my whole family. It means a lot.”
Of course, if you give him the opportunity, Vargas will just start giving credit to his entire support system. Subsequent questions about where he found the strength to persist merely give him leeway to extend the applause.
“Will Venable, our manager, he was a great person at the club,” Vargas said. “He’s a guy who’s played in the big leagues as well, and we have a very young group of guys, and he understands that. He has excellent communication with every person. He just wants us to go out there and have fun every night. The club was incredible. The atmosphere, the spirit of every guy, every day is incredible. This is a group of guys. They want to come, work and win every single day. for me, I just want to be part of this group.”
Few players better represent the White Sox’s newfound ability to find solutions than Vargas, who turned subpar power into exceptional hitting, enhancing the impressive contact ability and quality solutions he has always provided. And Vargas seemed to capitalize on the opportunities they had to offer.
“What a great team; They beat us in the series there too, so we know firsthand how good they are and we’re happy for Miguel,” Freeman said. “Sometimes all you need is a runway, and to get at bats every day and for him to be able to go out there and get those at bats, now you can see what kind of player he is and we all thought he would be. Sometimes it’s not the team you think it is, it’s a different team, and you couldn’t be more excited for him.”
The details of Vargas’ turnaround are largely ephemeral, according to former Dodgers teammates. The player they knew was simply always going to work to figure it out and become a star, no matter what his path entailed. He was always good enough, even if sometimes he needed a reminder.
“I kind of kept him motivated,” Pages said through a translator. “Telling him what a great player he is, knowing he’s a great player, and being able to not only make changes, but push himself to do those feats and get better every day.”
“He looked like the guy we knew,” Muncy said of playing against Vargas in June. “Some guys can just hit, and he can hit. After all, hitting is just in his blood. You look at what his father did in Cuba and you know he was born to hit. That’s what he’s going to do.”