Dodgers News: Miguel Vargas Working with Coaches to Get Swing Back to a Good Place
Dodgers rookie Miguel Vargas has had an interesting start to his 2023 season.
Vargas entered spring training knowing exactly where he stood as the starting second baseman for the Dodgers. Only problem: He needed to learn the position.
Vargas spent all of camp working at second, even when a finger injury didn’t allow him to swing the bat.
Vargas ended up playing in spring training games as a designated fielder of sorts, not swinging the bat when he went up to the plate.
Then, the regular season began, and Vargas showed off his great eye drawing a ton of walks. He was an on-base machine, but then he got hit with a pitch on the thumb.
While it didn’t force him to miss time, it did mess up his approach at the plate, He ended up going into a mini slump.
Dodger fans were starting to worry about the young infielder, but he was putting in the work behind the scenes to get things right.
After Vargas’ best game of his young career in Tuesday, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts spoke about the work he’s been doing to fix his approach at the plate (per the SNLA postgame show on Tuesday).
“I think that initially, Miguel was controlling the strike zone well, taking walks,” Roberts said. “Then he got hit on the thumb and I think there was some tentativeness with the swing, understandably. Then the indecisiveness of the swing kind of led to some bad habits but our guys worked through some things with Miguel and right now he's in a good a spot as we've seen. ... To have him where he's at in the order to be productive really adds length.”
The work seems to being paying instant dividends, as Vargas has started to swing a pretty good bat.
Vargas, who was hitting as low as .179 earlier this year, has raised his batting average to .236, and, like I said, is coming off the best game of his young career, going 4-for-5 with three doubles and three runs batted in.
Vargas’ OPS has climbed to .749, and that’s sure to keep going up with the way his approach looks right now.
Vargas is still just 23 years old, and is going to be an everyday player with the Dodgers for a very long time. It’s nice to see how determined he is to be great, and I’m sure it feels good for him to see his hard work starting to pay off.
