Miguel Vargas hit his 31st home run of the season on Monday 14 September, a two-run shot to left field in the top of the sixth at Cleveland that scored Kyle Teel and sent the Chicago White Sox to a 7-3 win. It was the most consequential home run of his career in the plainest sense: it came against the team chasing them, and the White Sox go into the last fortnight of the season leading the American League Central at 77-74, half a game clear of the Guardians.
It also put the Havana-born third baseman into a very short list in franchise history — though not quite the list that has been circulating since Monday.
Where 31 actually sits in White Sox third-base history
Single-season home run totals by Chicago White Sox third basemen:
| # | Player | HR | Season |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Todd Frazier | 40 | 2016 |
| 2 | Robin Ventura | 34 | 1996 |
| 3 | Bill Melton | 33 | 1971 |
| 4 | Bill Melton | 33 | 1970 |
| 5 | Miguel Vargas | 31 | 2026 |
| 6 | Joe Crede | 30 | 2006 |
Spanish-language coverage has described Vargas as the fifth third baseman in club history to reach this level. That conflates two different counts. His 31 is the fifth-highest single-season total, but Bill Melton owns two of the four above it, so Vargas is the fourth different third baseman the franchise has had at 31 or more. The distinction matters if you are the kind of reader who cares whether a record is about seasons or about people.
One caveat we will state rather than bury: these are full-season home run totals for players who were their club’s regular third baseman, not home runs hit while standing at third base. Vargas has played 130 games at third this year with 120 starts, plus 31 at first base and six at designated hitter, so the description holds comfortably in his case. Every total in the table above was checked individually against the MLB Stats API rather than taken from the list it came from.
A jump nobody had priced in
Vargas is 26, born in Havana on 17 November 1999, and he is in his fifth major league season. None of the first four suggested this one. He debuted with the Los Angeles Dodgers on 3 August 2022 and never established himself there, hitting .170, .195 and .239 across three partial seasons. The Dodgers moved him to Chicago during 2024, and his 42 games in a White Sox shirt that year produced a .104 average — a figure that would end most careers quietly.
His 2025 was the first sign of something: 138 games, 16 home runs, a .234 average. That 16 was his career high until this season.
| Season | Club | G | AVG | HR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Los Angeles Dodgers | 18 | .170 | 1 |
| 2023 | Los Angeles Dodgers | 81 | .195 | 7 |
| 2024 | Dodgers / White Sox | 72 | .150 | 5 |
| 2025 | Chicago White Sox | 138 | .234 | 16 |
| 2026 | Chicago White Sox | 149 | .249 | 31 |
He was named an All-Star for the first time in July. Doubling a career-high home run total in a single year, at 26, after a .104 stretch two seasons earlier, is not a normal shape for a career.
The numbers, as of this morning
Through 15 September: 149 games, .249, 31 home runs, 84 RBI, 19 stolen bases, 98 runs, an .833 OPS.
Two of those are worth flagging, because the figures moving around in coverage of Monday’s home run are already out of date. The RBI total is 84, not the 81 that was accurate when the milestone was written up — he drove in three more on 15 September. And the home run count is still 31 as of this morning; two more would tie Bill Melton’s 33, and three would tie Robin Ventura’s 34 for second in club history at the position.
Where it sits in the Cuban season
Vargas is Cuban-born on the standard this site applies: the MLB Stats API gives his birthplace as Havana, which is the test, rather than the looser use of “cubano” in Spanish-language coverage that sometimes sweeps in players born in the United States.
He is one of the quieter parts of what is already the deepest year Cuban-born players have had in the majors. Seven were named All-Stars in 2026, Vargas among them for the first time, and the season has produced a steady run of individual marks — most recently Víctor Mesa Jr. taking American League Player of the Week for 7-13 September. The full picture is in Cubans in MLB: the 2026 record year.
What separates Vargas from most of that list is that his season is happening inside a pennant race rather than beside one. The White Sox were not expected to be leading anything in the middle of September. A third baseman with 31 home runs and 98 runs scored is a large part of why they are.
What we left out
The home run’s distance has been reported at 391 feet. That figure is not in the game’s play-by-play record, so we have not printed it as fact. The play-by-play confirms what matters: a two-run home run to left field in the top of the sixth, Kyle Teel scoring, in a 7-3 win.
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