Ildemaro Vargas Is Suddenly a Hitting Machine

You’re forgiven if you’re not exactly familiar with Diamondbacks utilityman Ildemaro Vargas. Though he’s spent parts of 10 seasons in the majors, the switch-hitting 34-year-old has been designated for assignment seven times, suited up for five different teams, and has never played more than 97 major league games in a season. From 2017–25, he netted a grand total of 1.5 WAR in 460 games, reaching 1.0 WAR in a season just once, in 2022. Yet Vargas just finished the hot streak of his life, one that made a bit of history. His 4-for-4 performance against the Cubs on Friday afternoon pushed his batting average to .404 and marked his 27th consecutive game with a hit dating back to last season, the longest in the majors in seven years and the longest ever by a Venezuela-born player; meanwhile, his 24-game streak to start the season is the second longest of the integration era. Vargas was finally held hitless on Saturday, but maintained a lofty perch on the batting leaderboards after a 1-for-4 performance on Sunday.

Vargas ended the weekend hitting .382/.406/.657, good enough to lead the majors in batting average and the National League in slugging percentage, thanks in part to his six home runs — a total that’s already matched his career high, set with the Diamondbacks in 2019. His 195 wRC+ leads the NL as well, while his on-base percentage ranks fourth in the league and his 1.5 WAR is virtually tied for seventh. Small sample though it may be, that’s a remarkable performance coming from a player who did not figure to be central to the plans of the Diamondbacks after hitting a meager .270/.292/.383 (85 wRC+) in 38 games and 121 plate appearances for the team last year.

Vargas was originally signed by the Cardinals out of Venezuela in 2008, so this is his 19th season of professional baseball. He’s now on his fourth stint with Arizona, which first signed him out of the independent Atlantic League in 2015, after he had been released by St. Louis. He reached the majors for a couple sips of coffee in 2017, and continued to shuffle between the minors and the majors until being DFA’d and traded to the Twins in August 2020. From there, in rapid succession, he bounced to the Cubs (2020), and then to the Pirates and back to the Diamondbacks (both 2021). He split 2022 between the Cubs and Nationals, the latter of whom kept him around through the ’24 season and gave him more regular play than any other team. The Diamondbacks signed him to a minor league deal in late January 2025; he exercised an opt-out in late May but quickly re-signed with the team. Four weeks later — after just 10 games in the majors — he was hit on the right foot by a curveball, fracturing his fifth metatarsal and sidelining him for about eight weeks.

Vargas signed another minor league deal with Arizona in late January of this year, and made the roster out of spring training.

“Somehow we have a lifetime contract agreement with Ildemaro, even though I take him off the roster all the time and then re-sign him to minor league deals,” general manager Mike Hazen told Arizona Sports’ Wolf & Luke last week. “We’ve been going back since 2017 when we got here with him. He works so hard. He’s got great energy. He’s so positive. All the guys love him. He’s just one of those guys in the clubhouse.”

The hitting streak began during the final series of last season against the Padres, with singles off the Padres’ Yu Darvish and Wandy Peralta on September 26. He collected hits in each of the next two games, then picked up where he left off when he made his 2026 debut on March 30, with a single off the Tigers’ Justin Verlander and then a homer off Brant Hurter. He played in just three of the Diamondbacks’ first nine games, spotting at designated hitter, second base and third base, but collecting at least one hit each time. But since Carlos Santana went down with a groin strain on April 5, Vargas has gotten the bulk of the first base work, with a brief stint at second when Ketel Marte was slowed by lower back tightness, as well as late-inning appearances at shortstop and in left field.

The regular playing time has helped him maintain his current groove. On Friday, he surpassed a 2019 streak by Wilson Ramos as the longest by a Venezuelan player, but on Saturday, Cubs starter Shota Imanaga and reliever Ben Brown retired him four times without a hit.

Vargas’ streak put him in the company of a couple of other wraparound streaks that rated as the longest since the start of the 2017 season:

Additionally, Vargas’ streak was the second longest by a Diamondback, ahead of only a 30-game one by Luis Gonzalez in April 1999. As season-opening hitting streaks go, his 24-game stretch is the sixth longest since 1901, and second longest since integration:

Looking at those tables above, what stands out — along with the presence of batting title winners such as Abreu, Cabrera, Heilmann, Sisler, Torre, and Turner — is Vargas’ burst of power, particularly while knowing that, again, he’s never hit more than six homers in a season, and has averaged just nine per 162 games in his major league career. If he’s known for anything at the plate, it’s for his aggressive, contact-oriented approach. His 3.28 pitches per plate appearances is the lowest mark among NL hitters (Ernie Clement and four other AL hitters see fewer). He’s chasing 37.4% of pitches outside the zone, including 22.9% of waste pitches. He is walking just 3.7% of the time, but he has just a 6.5% swinging strike rate and a 10.2% strikeout rate (seventh lowest among qualifiers in the majors). For the moment at least, his combination of his low strikeout rate and high slugging percentage puts him in a neighborhood with Astros thumper Yordan Alvarez, one of the best hitters on the planet:

Vargas tends to hit the ball on the ground; he had a 58% groundball rate last year, and a 53.4% mark from 2017–25. He’s down to 43.8% this year, though his groundball-to-fly-ball ratio has only dropped from 1.87 to 1.50. He’s still killing a fair number of worms, and his average launch angle is pretty low:

Vargas doesn’t swing the bat very hard from either side of the plate, and particularly not from the left side:

His overall average swing rate places him in just the 28th percentile. While batting from the left side, he stands closer to the pitcher than any other hitter does from either side, just 9.5 inches from the front of the box, and his feet are about six inches farther apart. From either side, he meets the ball way out front, and is very good at squaring it up, placing in the 98th percentile overall.

Vargas is hitting a ridiculous .473 and slugging .818 against fastballs (four-seamers, sinkers, and cutters) with just an 8.8% whiff rate against such pitches, but that’s not entirely new, as last year he hit .344 and slugged .508 against fastballs, with an 8.0% whiff rate. He’s improved from .152 AVG/.152 SLG to .238 AVG/.381 SLG against breaking pitches, and from .238 AVG/.381 SLG to .308 AVG/.538 SLG against offspeed pitches, while trimming his whiff rates from about 29% to about 22% against each group.

What Vargas is doing differently this year — and what’s fueling those impressive Statcast expected numbers highlighted above — is he’s pulling the ball in the air. While he did so 19.9% of the time in 2024, his career mark is just 15.5%, and he was as low as 11.8% (13th percentile) just last season. This year, he’s more than doubled that rate, to 23.9% (79th percentile). While he’s not likely to maintain his spot among the big boys in the slash stats, if he can continue to elevate and pull, he’s in for a breakout season.

The Diamondbacks can use all the help they can get. They were swept by the Cubs this weekend, and after losing four straight and nine out of 12, they’re just 16-17. Their offense has been very middle of the pack, with Corbin Carroll, Geraldo Perdomo, and newcomers Nolan Arenado and Jose Fernandez providing support, but Marte (74 wRC+), the catching tandem of Gabriel Moreno and James McCann (56 wRC+), as well as their left fielders (66 wRC+) and center fielders (58 wRC+) pulling in the wrong direction. What’s more, their pitching staff has allowed 5.48 runs per game, the third-worst mark in the majors. That’s not on Vargas, though. Nineteen years in, he’s living his best baseball life.