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. Further, 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, I think this 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 whole career. If he’s a better defensive player at the position, should the Sox make a switch?
On May 22, 2022, during a contest versus 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 stated to Anderson earlier in the season. The home run also led Twitter user @Lsreniawski to post a day later:
Tim Anderson is un-ironically 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. Our own Nik Gaur wrote a great piece for Sox On 35th about it. 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 sub-standard 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.
Advanced defensive statistics have come a long way but still aren’t quite at the level of the offensive part of the game. That’s part of the reason why different websites and organizations have different WAR numbers for the same player. I wanted to take a look at Tim Anderson’s and Elvis Andrus’s defense over the past few years using three of the major websites for advanced defensive statistics: Fangraphs, Fielding Bible, and Statcast, as well as the traditional Fielding Percentage (FPCT) statistic. I’ll be using Fangraph’s defensive metric (DEF), Fielding Bible’s Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), and Statcast’s Outs Above Average (OAA).
As such, here is how Tim Anderson and Elvis Andrus stack up defensively against each other, from 2019-2022:
| DEF | DRS | OAA | FPCT | |
| Tim Anderson | 20.6 | -8 | 5 | .963 |
| Elvis Andrus | 28.1 | -26 | 18 | .977 |
Per Fangraph’s defensive metric, OAA, and fielding percentage, Elvis Andrus is clearly the better defensive shortstop over Tim Anderson. Fielding Bible is the one website that gives Anderson the defensive advantage. In fact, Andrus is the second worst shortstop defender according to Fielding Bible since 2019.
I asked our Editor-In-Chief Jordan Lazaowski how a site like Fielding Bible can rate a player so poorly whereas a site like Statcast can rate a player so highly (Andrus’ 18 OAA makes him the 12th-best defensive shortstop). This is his response:
[Defensive Runs Saved] is based on runs while [Outs Above Average] is based on outs. That’s an easy conversion to make, but still is part of the difference. From there, OAA is based on a player’s precise position, but DRS will always have an “eye-based” element to it because it uses a zone system. So things like shifts would historically screw with their numbers.
Basically, DRS doesn’t have the advantage that OAA has in terms of player tracking. For the most part, [DRS and OAA] should agree directionally. When they don’t, I default to OAA, because even though it likely has some things to work out in order to be perfected, the fact that it has access to precise player tracking data on the field makes it that much better in my opinion.
As such, despite an outlier, objectively, I think it’s fair to say Elvis Andrus is a better defensive shortstop than Tim Anderson.
In 2004, former Seattle and Texas shortstop Alex Rodriguez joined the New York Yankees. At the time, A-Rod was the reigning AL MVP and had two Gold Gloves under his belt. Arguably, Alex Rodriguez was the best baseball player in the world at the time he donned the pinstripes. He was also easily a better defensive shortstop than Derek Jeter, mainly by not being below average at the position (though he was in fact quite good at it). Still, Rodriguez had to move to third base while Jeter remained at short. Because no matter what, you can’t move Derek Jeter.
Analogously, you can’t move Tim Anderson. Objectively, the team is most certainly better with Anderson at second and Andrus at short. However, Elvis Andrus is most likely not on the White Sox next year. Tim Anderson is not only a fan favorite (and he’s quickly becoming America’s favorite) but he’s part of the lifeblood of the White Sox organization. Additionally, Anderson also has the financial incentive to remain at short. The Sox have an organization option for Anderson for 2024, but after that, he’s technically a free agent. Anderson can most likely command a better contract as a shortstop than as a second baseman.
Unless Tim Anderson voluntarily decides to move over to short and/or the team gives him a financial incentive for him to move to second, it’s not worth upsetting your franchise player in order to become marginally better defensively.
I think Tim Anderson has earned the “Derek Jeter level” of respect from the White Sox organization and deserves to be the team’s shortstop for however long he’d like to.
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