Ildemaro Vargas Is the Hottest Hitter in Baseball No One Saw Coming

Of all the early-season surprises perhaps the most pleasant is blooming in the desert. That's where the National League leader in batting average, slugging percentage and OPS resides.

Ildemaro Vargas, a 34-year-old utility infielder whose previous nine Major League Baseball seasons have been quite nondescript, has not simply taken up position atop the leaderboards to look down on much more well-known hitters. Vargas, who has only reached the minimum number of plate appearances to be eligible for such honors this week, is riding a 22-game hitting streak. He's collected a knock in every single game he's played this year for the Diamondbacks to help them keep pace in an extremely tough National League West populated by the Dodgers and Padres.

This is a development no one could have seen coming. Even the most rose-colored glasses in the Phoenix front office are being cleaned for another look at the game logs and eye-popping statistics. There was nothing to suggest such an outburst was waiting to be unleashed from Vargas's bat.

Vargas entered the 2026 season with a career .249 average in 1,219 at-bats. His high-water mark for OPS came way back in 2019 and was still a modest .712. That was during his first tenure with Arizona and the same season he hit a personal best six home runs—a number he's already matched before the calendar turns to May. The career reserve bounced around an incredible amount between the years of '20-'21, playing for the Diamondbacks, Twins, Cubs, and Pirates before eventually finding his way back to the organization where he started. Those campaigns saw him post back-to-back suboptimal averages of .196 and .156.

The next season he split time with the Cubs and Nationals en route to a respectable .691 OPS. Vargas stayed in the nation's capital through '24 and was steady enough for the Diamondbacks to bring him in yet again last year and he rewarded that confidence with a .674 OPS in 38 games. For whatever reason he's come into this season scorching hot.

A 22-game hitting streak is the third longest to start a year and he undoubtedly has his eyes on the 30-game streak recorded by the Tigers' Ron LeFlore in 1976. Vargas ranks third behind Luis Gonzalez (30 in 1999) and Tony Womack (24 in 2000) for the longest such stretch in franchise history.

Now, if there's a fly in the ointment, it's that Vargas has only collected three free passes in 91 plate appearances. The bright side there is he's only struck out 11 times so he's proving himself to be a classic bat-on-ball guy. Which is also a tremendous attribute to have when one is trying to put together a historic hitting streak.

Vargas currently has a 36-point lead for highest average in the NL over Xavier Edwards of the Marlins (.336). So as long as he keeps getting run—and there's no reason to stop—he should enjoy the view from there for a little while.

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