The White Sox were rained out on Tuesday, setting up a straight doubleheader with the Orioles this afternoon, and giving us time to focus on Tim Anderson when he's at the height of his powers.
First, James Fegan wrote about Anderson's origin story at East Central Community College in Mississippi. Anderson came to baseball late and remained off the radar for most teams, but once Anderson started gaining experience, he showed a feel for the game that caused his draft stock to explode, even if he had a lot of refining in front of him.
After reading what Fegan heard from Anderson's junior college coach and Sox scouts, the biggest challenge he's faced in the pros is ratcheting his game down. He had the physical skills to make plays on the edge of his range and catch up to fastballs, but when the ball slowed down, he didn't necessarily have the ability to keep his mechanisms in check at decreased tempos, like an Yngwie Malmsteen acolyte trying to cover Wes Montgomery.
We saw the defense improve last year, and now here comes the offense. Check out this post by karkovice squad showing Anderson's monthlong ability to stay back on breaking stuff, and sometimes off it. We'll see if pitchers try to make Anderson cave on soft stuff, but with his April numbers locked in, nobody can take his first month away from him:
And at Sports Illustrated, Stephanie Apstein wrote about where Anderson came from in other terms. Just like his bat flips, he doesn't hold back when stating what he perceives to be his role in the game:
He sees another barrier, one he’s intent on toppling: the 'have-fun barrier.'
'I kind of feel like today’s Jackie Robinson,' he says. 'That’s huge to say. But it’s cool, man, because he changed the game, and I feel like I’m getting to a point to where I need to change the game.'
But he also doesn't hold back on fleshing out what drives him to this conclusion. We know that he's the only black player on the White Sox, which is why he might not think about the consideration black players receive from Major League Baseball's discipline arm. We know about the murder of his best friend that wrecked him in 2017, but we don't know what his childhood was like, or how that experience shapes what he gets from his own kids and students on the South Side:
So when he takes three-year-old daughter Peyton to Disney on Ice, it’s hard to tell who is more excited. (These trips will soon include newborn daughter Paxton.) When he works with children through the Chicago-based violence-prevention program Becoming a Man, he says he gets as much out of the visits as his mentees do. They compare playlists and dance moves. They talk trash. The kids don’t bother to ask for photos. They just want to be his friend.
'When I was a kid, I didn’t have nobody to come in and talk to me,' he says. 'I get my childhood back. That’s why I want to take my kids and do things that I didn’t do, because it’s an experience for me, too.'
It could lead to more trouble with pitchers, although he did offer Detroit's catcher more courtesy by conducting his celebratory bat toss farther away from home plate. The closeness to Martin Maldonado was the only thing I thought invited trouble. The rest was typical country justice, and unnecessary since Anderson already blew the lead with an error.
Anderson's putting himself out there. Some will see it as a role model, and some will see him as an object of scorn, but doing it when he has a four-digit OPS forces people to take him seriously. And as long as people have to consider him, they have to consider the White Sox by proxy, resulting in the most positive national coverage the Sox have seen in years.
