Ildemaro Vargas Is One of MLB’s Top Feel-Good Stories in 2026

Prior to the 2026 season, Ildemaro Vargas had played nine years in the big leagues and compiled just 1.8 bWAR. He had never posted an above-average OPS+, either, sticking around as a utilityman who played every position except catcher and center field across five different ball clubs.

But if you thought that Vargas was inching toward retirement at 34, think again.

In one of the best feel-good stories of the season, Vargas is having the best start of his career and could be well on his way to his first All-Star nod. If he manages to make it there, he’d be the first position player to earn his first All-Star nod at 34 since Nick Markakis in 2018.

Vargas is currently third on the OPS leaderboard in all of MLB this season. He slots right into the heart of the Arizona Diamondbacks‘ order, next to the likes of Ketel Marte and Corbin Carroll, who he triumphs over on the stat sheets in a small sample this season.

Stats were taken prior to play on May 4.

Ildemaro Vargas’ Career Journey

You’ll have to look all the way back to 2017 to find Vargas’s first season in the big leagues. However, with just a short cup of coffee in 2017 and 2018, Vargas did not actually exceed rookie limits until 2019, when he played 92 games for the Diamondbacks.

From there, Vargas bounced around at every turn. The 2020 season only had 60 games, but Vargas still managed to split his time between three different clubs, beginning in Arizona and then stopping in Minnesota before ending with the Cubs.

However, Vargas struggled to ever settle down in one city. Just nine games into his Cubs tenure in 2021, Vargas was on the move again. He went 1-for-13 in seven games in Pittsburgh before returning to Phoenix for another 18 games.

Come 2022, Vargas went back to the Cubs for 10 games before a midseason pickup by the Nationals finally gave Vargas the chance to know what uniform he would wear for weeks to come.

It’s not that Vargas transformed into an All-Star in his time with the Nationals, but he became a helpful addition to the team, hitting to a 102 OPS+ in his final 53 games of the season. In 2023-24, Vargas toggled around replacement level as a slightly-below-average hitter with the type of defensive versatility that made him a helpful bench piece.

Now a new player with a stable opportunity to show his prowess, Vargas made another return to the deserts of Arizona in 2025, with much of the same versatile but replacement-level production. Until 2026, when Vargas is almost unrecognizable on the diamond.

He has boosted his bat speed, but it remains in just the 28th percentile. Perhaps the craziest part of this breakout is that Vargas simply hasn’t made any major changes to his batting stance.

“I haven’t changed anything,” Vargas said when translated from an interview with MLB Network. “I feel I haven’t done anything. I have the goodwill and respect and support from my teammates.”

Analyze all you want, but Vargas claims that nothing has changed when it comes to his switch-hitting stance.

Is This Production Sustainable?

This question is a tough one to answer, simply because it’s so rare to see this sort of production at the major-league level. Most hitters are either contact hitters or power hitters, but Vargas has someone picked from both cookie jars in a way that’s hard to comprehend.

Vargas loves to swing the bat, so much so that his walk rate is in the sixth percentile while his strikeout rate is in the 97th percentile. This means that, in a three-true outcome sport, Vargas puts the ball in play as much as anyone. Crazily enough, these stats project him as most similar to a player like Jacob Wilson.

But then, if you take a look at Vargas’s power numbers, he lands in the 88th percentile of xSLG and the 90th percentile of xwOBA. On the xSLG leaderboard, this puts Vargas just in front of Elly De La Cruz and Kyle Schwarber.

These stats likely exist as a result of the 26-game sample, which is incredibly small. But if Vargas stretches this production through an entire season, it feels almost impossible to find an accurate comparison.

So, to try and answer the seemingly impossible question that I have tasked myself with, more likely than not, these specific stats are not sustainable, but one approach might be.

To clarify, Vargas can continue to be a contact-focused hitter, lose some power in the long run, and end up having a season comparable to someone like Ernie Clement or Jacob Wilson. He could also become more patient at the plate and try to continue to tap into this extra-base-hit power, allowing him to project more comparably to someone like Brice Turang.

Could Vargas manage to have the best of both worlds? Potentially, it just really hasn’t been seen at this rate over a large sample size, at least at the MLB level.

The other worrying factor is his batting metrics, specifically the ones that are less focused on the result of a plate appearance. He may be in the 89th percentile in xSLG, but his average exit velo is in the 25th with his hard-hit percentage in the 36th.

But at the end of the day, a 27-game hitting streak, which unfortunately came to an end on Saturday, dating back to last season is nothing to scoff at. And if you queue up the individual National League leaderboards, it’s Vargas’ name that will be at the very top of most categories, including batting average, slugging percentage, OPS, wOBA, and wRC+.

Nobody could have expected those results from Vargas through the first month of the season. Small sample size or not, what he’s done thus far will be a sticking point when looking at 2026 in review come season’s end. And if he were to continue with his success throughout the season, well, then it would be one of the most impressive comeback stories MLB has seen in quite some time.

It’s hard as a fan not to root for this sort of journeyman comeback season, especially from a well-respected 34-year-old veteran like Ildemaro Vargas. The question just remains: can his improbable season continue? Only time will tell.