I don’t want to be THIS RIGHT about Andrew Vaughn!

We are one month into the 2024 White Sox season and former 1st round pick (#3 overall in 2019) and current first baseman Andrew Vaughn (through 120 Plate Appearances) is slashing .193 / .258 / .239 for an OPS+ of 45 (that’s 55% below league average). Per Baseball Reference bWAR he’s at -0.7. Per Fangraphs fWAR he is at -0.8 and is the second worst qualified regular player behind Nick Castellanos (and there’s a deep drive…).

Even Vaughn’s career stats to this point, through 1759 Plate Appearances have him with 0.3 bWAR a 98 OPS+ and a career slash line of .252 / .311 / .408. This is a replacement level player picked at the top of the draft. OOF! Unless you have been living under a proverbial rock, you know that I have long been a skeptic of Andrew, but ain’t nobody want to be THIS RIGHT!!

My Vaughn Skepticism Through the Years

Way back in the contention window year of 2021, I wrote a blog about my concerns with the history of bat-only prospects being picked high in the draft, as well as being high up on prospect rankings. From the get-butt I hardly thought he would be a shoe in to stand tall with the litany of elite cold corner bats of my White Sox youth. Although at the time, the streets were making many excuses for AV, specifically that he had to stand on grass and that if he got to stand on the dirt at his natural position, things would be “DIFFERENT”….fast forward to that era…

At the start of 2023, a couple of years into Vaughn’s career, I did the second episode of my solo podcast called The Au Jus with Josh Nelson talking in detail about our concerns. Josh’s analysis was more technical, specifically on Vaughn’s ability to hit and recognize breaking pitches from right handed pitchers. Mine was more anecdotal and empirical, discussing how his diminutive size and lack of athleticism would likely cap his power potential. You can (and should) watch the entire video below.

Finally, at the conclusion of the 2023 season, I made a video about you (the fan) and your understanding (or lack thereof) of how big of a problem that Andrew Vaughn actually was in the construction of a good White Sox team. It’s below and it is pretty short….WATCH IT!

Fuck me. All I was tryna do was think through my three main tenets of why I didn’t think Andrew Vaughn would be good.

1 – He’s too small and unathletic to ever generate the power he’d need to survive a bat-only profile

2 – Bat only players picked high in the draft almost always disappoint (he’d be a long-shot not to)

3 – Advanced College bats that don’t hit right away tend to not hit very much. In an age of travel teams and advanced training, these dudes (anecdotally) feel maxed out when they get here, so you got what you got.

Being THIS RIGHT…SUCKS!

I’ve long been a proponent that “being right” specifically in #content is pretty useless. People don’t really remember anyways and you sound like a fucking jerk-off reminding everyone (just like I probably sound writing this blog). Being contrarian (as I tend to be at times) also has limited utility. Why do you think I end my podcast (the Au Jus, Monday nights at 6pm CT on YouTube LIVE) with the phrase “We Aren’t Trying to Be Right on this Show, We are just trying to understand.”

At this point, I have even taken to trying to change the karma on ole Vaughny, renaming him Andre and hoping for bigger, stronger, tougher results.

Andrew Vaughn is now Andre Vaughn pic.twitter.com/20mBKxYEWH

— BeefLoaf🥩 (@MrDelicious13) March 31, 2024

The bottom line is, being this right……..SUCKS!! I would absolutely love it if Andre (he’s Andre for good now) came out of this slump and had a monster 2024 season, sticking all these years of analysis right up my flat as a pancake ass! I’m even rooting for it at this point. I hope that John Schriffen has a great Andre home run call so I can be included in the “HATERS” and revel in the moment!

-BeefLoaf