Should the White Sox move Tim Anderson to second base? originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
Team USA’s rise to the World Baseball Classic finals is definitely a huge inspiration for this article. The team has three White Sox playing for it, one of which is shortstop Tim Anderson, who has become a mainstay in Team USA’s lineup. However, Anderson did not start the first couple of games for his country. Phillies shortstop Trea Turner mainly manned short and Mets 2B/OF Jeff McNeil played second. However, after McNeil’s poor start in the competition and Anderson quickly performing, USA manager Mark DeRosa realized it was beneficial to have both Turner and Anderson in the lineup at the same time. As such, Anderson moved to second to allow Turner to remain at short.
The lineup change has been largely successful, with Team USA just one win away from back-to-back WBC championships. Furthermore, Anderson is doing a darn good job calling second home during the tournament.
It’s arguable whether or not Trea Turner is a better defensive shortstop than Tim Anderson, but one of the knocks of Anderon’s game is his defense. As of May 10th last season, Anderson committed nine errors in 45 games as he seemed to be suffering from the yips. As such, there’s not really an outrage on social media about Turner and Anderson playing shortstop and second base, respectively, during the WBC.
However, it begs the question after the WBC is over. If it’s not a problem having Anderson play second for his country, should he play second for his team? The Chicago White Sox starting second baseman is Elvis Andrus, a man who played shortstop for basically his entire career. If he’s a better defensive player at the position, should the Sox make a switch?
On May 22, 2022, during a contest against the New York Yankees which aired during Sunday Night Baseball, Tim Anderson hit a three-run home run in the top of the 8th inning.
This action led to a flurry of activity regarding Anderson on social media, in part because Yankees’ third baseman Josh Donaldson was serving a suspension during the game for a racially insensitive comment he made to Anderson earlier in the season. The home run also led Twitter user @Lsreniawski to post the following a day later:
“Tim Anderson is unironically a significantly better baseball player than Jeter was.”
That’s one way to elicit reactions from the New York faithful. Yankees fans bombarded the tweet, defending the Hall of Famer shortstop without any sense of nuance despite the tweet having plenty of merit to it.
At the time of the tweet, Tim Anderson was in the midst of a career MVP-level offensive performance. Obviously, Anderson did not finish the season with the vim and vigor he started it, but the Derek Jeter comparisons are apt.
Both players are/were shortstops that hit well, and hit at the top of the lineup, but played substandard defense (to put it mildly). Tim Anderson most certainly will never reach the popularity and unilateral national goodwill that Jeter earned over the course of his career; however, I think Derek Jeter is an interesting test case for how the White Sox as an organization should view Tim Anderson.
Finish this article on soxon35th.com to see the defensive breakdown between Andrus and Anderson, and find out why a Tim Anderson/Derek Jeter comparison makes so much sense.
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