Miguel Vargas is hitting the ball hard, with the results to show for it

Miguel Vargas tripled in the second inning on Friday against the Padres, one of only four hits allowed by Yu Darvish, who pitched into the seventh inning in San Diego’s win over the Dodgers.

As went most of the night for the Dodgers, Vargas was on third base with one out but did not score, as David Peralta’s hard liner was caught for an easy double play. But, the hit continued an upward trend for Vargas.

Since the beginning of the homestand last Friday, Vargas has seven extra-base hits — two home runs, four doubles, and a triple — in seven games.

He was in a 12-for-61 slump before that, hitting just .197/.275/.279 in his previous 19 games after getting hit by a pitch on his right thumb on April 3 against Rockies right-hander Connor Seabold.

Vargas did miss two games after the hit by pitch, and though he escaped unscathed injury-wise, manager Dave Roberts said Vargas may have been compensating in his swing afterward.

“We’re just trying to encourage him — because as we hear, he doesn’t have any remnants of the hit by pitch — to continue to be aggressive,” Roberts said last week.

Overall, Vargas’ average exit velocity was down, just 85.1 mph on average through the end of April. But even some of the hard-hit balls weren’t falling for hits. After the hit by pitch through the last road trip that ended in Pittsburgh, covering 19 games, Vargas hit eight balls with an exit velocity of at least 100 mph, and only three were hits.

R.J. Anderson at CBS Sports noticed Vargas’ lack of expected results on April 25.

“To be fair to Vargas, his line could easily look better. He’s recorded seven outs on batted balls that had exit velocities of 97 mph or faster. Five of those had launch angles between 10 and 30 degrees, a sixth had a 31-degree launch angle,” Anderson wrote. “Instead, he’s slugging .667 on batted balls with a 95-plus mph exit velocity — the league-average mark is .974.”

But since the start of the homestand, Vargas is tattooing the ball, hitting .296/.345/.741, with an average exit velocity of 91.8 mph.

He homered last Friday against the Cardinals, then doubled the next day. On Tuesday against the Phillies he hit three doubles — all with an exit velocity of over 100 mph — then homered on Wednesday.

In his last 12 plate appearances, dating back to Tuesday, Vargas has hit the ball with an exit velocity of 100 mph or higher seven times. And he’s getting the results to show for it.