Two young sluggers who hope one mighty swing of the bat can help them to change course will go head-to-head Friday night when Andrew Vaughn and the Chicago White Sox visit Brent Rooker and the host Oakland Athletics.
The White Sox will be riding a two-game winning streak into the opener of a three-game series, while the A’s are saddled by a two-game skid. The clubs are meeting for the first of seven times this season.
Each team has had multiple problems that have led to non-contending seasons. And one of those problems is a below-expectations performance from a player expected to anchor the middle of the lineup.
Vaughn has struggled to get his above the .250 mark, and was in the .230’s before going 5-for-10 in the first three games of Chicago’s just completed road series against the Los Angeles Angels.
He then began Thursday’s series finale 0-for-4 before launching one of his biggest hits of the season — a run-scoring ninth-inning triple, after which he scored the team’s final run — to provide the difference in a 9-7 win. He left Anaheim with a .247 average and still leads the team with 50 RBIs.
The third overall pick of the 2019 draft, Vaughn hopes a rare homecoming helps keep his nice run alive. The 25-year-old is a native of Santa Rosa, a town on the north side of the San Francisco Bay, and his stellar college career at Cal led to his lofty draft position.
Vaughn has one career home run in 13 meetings with the A’s, and that came at home in August 2021. He stood out in one game in Oakland last September, contributing three singles, a double and two RBIs to a 10-2 White Sox win.
After fast starts and slow finishes in the first two seasons of his big-league career, Vaughn said he’s prepared himself to improve as this season progresses.
“Endurance. Getting the legs ready and being able to do 162. That’s the goal,” he noted. “Work on getting better throughout the season. Not hit that wall and get over it.”
Vaughn has never faced rookie Luis Medina (1-7, 6.84), Oakland’s scheduled starter in the series opener. The right-hander is winless in his past three starts, having allowed nine runs (eight earned) and 16 hits over 14 innings to the Tampa Bay Rays, Cleveland Guardians and Toronto Blue Jays.
The White Sox left Anaheim on Thursday not having announced a starter for Friday’s game.
Whoever it is likely will face Rooker, whose 1-for-30, nine-game slump earned him a spot on the bench in Thursday’s series finale against the New York Yankees until he appeared in the eighth inning as a pinch hitter. He ended a 10-game RBI-less skid with a solid single to center field.
It was one of the few bright spots in the A’s 10-4 loss, which was the 12th in their past 14 games.
“He was a big part of our offense from the middle of April to the first of May,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said of Rooker after the game. “He’s continued to work. Today was a good sign of that. A base hit like that can sometimes get you going. That could be a big key for us if we could get him back to where he was in that (earlier) period of time.”
Rooker’s average at the end of April was .353. Thursday’s hit left him at .239.