Miguel Vargas hit the loudest ball of the All-Star Game, a 433-foot solo home run in the eighth inning of the American League’s 4-0 win over the National League on Tuesday night at Citizens Bank Park. Toronto’s Dylan Cease started and won the game, and the White Sox third baseman supplied its only extra-base hit.
The American League did most of its scoring immediately, hanging three runs on NL starter Cristopher Sanchez in the first. Yordan Alvarez singled, Shea Langeliers and Bobby Witt Jr. walked, and Cody Bellinger cashed two of them in with a single before Ben Rice added another run-scoring hit. Bellinger’s two RBIs held up as half the final score and earned him MVP honors. The rest of the game was pitching: the two sides combined for ten hits, nine of them singles, and the only ball that left the park was the one Vargas turned on in the eighth against Dodgers left-hander Justin Wrobleski — 107.3 mph off the bat, out to left.
It was the swing of the night in a game that otherwise belonged to pitching, and it came from a first-time All-Star who has become the steadiest bat in Chicago’s young lineup. Vargas reached the break hitting .270 with 17 home runs, 66 RBIs and an .807 OPS across 96 games. He told Sox Machine afterward he had “no words” for the moment. Teammates Tristan Peters and Munetaka Murakami each went 0-for-1 in the win.
The homer sends the White Sox into the second half with something they have not had in years: a division lead in mid-July, even one measured in percentage points. Chicago sits at 50-45, a fraction ahead of Cleveland at 51-46, with the two clubs dead even at .526 and eleven weeks to settle it.
For fantasy managers, Vargas has consolidated an every-day role at third base with a 25-homer, 100-RBI full-season pace, and he remains cheaper in trade markets than corner infielders producing comparable counting stats. The break is a reasonable last window to acquire him before a contending-team September inflates the price.
