DENVER — There was a time when shortstop Tim Anderson said he wanted to spend the rest of his career with the White Sox. But Jose Abreu said it, too, with even more conviction, and he’s an Astro now.
Anderson, under contract for $12.5 million this season, has a $14 million club option with a $1 million buyout for 2024. At one time thought to be a team-friendly contract for a former batting champion and two-time All-Star at a premium position, it seemed that picking up next season would be a no-brainer. But his surprisingly poor performance this season raises questions.
Those same questions would be asked by any team making a trade offer for Anderson in the offseason, too.
In all likelihood, the Sox believe Anderson’s season, wrought with off-field issues, a knee injury and a fight in Cleveland for which he served the second game of a five-game suspension Saturday, has been an outlier.
“He’s battled through some stuff,” manager Pedro Grifol said. “He had the knee injury that kind of affected him. He had the brace for a while that caused some mechanical issues. There was stuff with his mechanics that has taken awhile.”
Grifol said Anderson, a career .282/.313/.426 hitter whose batting average topped .300 the last four seasons but is batting .238/.285/.284 with only one home run in 92 games, “will run with it again” when he fixes those mechanics. It’s also worth noting that Anderson’s defense, unsteady throughout his career, has been good of late with one error in his last 40 games. He ranks 17th in fielding among shortstops, according to FanGraphs.
It would be easier to consider trading the struggling star once known as the face of the “Change the Game” Sox if shortstop prospect Colson Montgomery, slowed by a back injury in the spring, had more than 36 at-bats at Double-A Birmingham. But projecting the 21-year-old 2021 first-round pick for the majors during the second half of next season might not be a stretch. Montgomery, a 6-3, left-handed hitter who gets compared to Corey Seager because of his size, strength, feel and plate discipline, recently bolted all the way to No. 2 status among prospects by ESPN. MLB Pipeline ranks Montgomery 17th, and Baseball America has him 14th.
Montgomery batted .345/.537/.552 with three homers in 17 games at High-A Winston Salem before moving up to Birmingham, where he’s batting only .194. But he has a .448 on-base percentage thanks to 11 walks in 11 games. He had a 50-game on-base streak in A-ball last season.
The Sox’ decisions are “out of my control,” Anderson said Friday. ‘‘It’s very rare that a player is going to tell you, ‘Yeah, I’m going to play in another uniform.’ I like where I’m at right now. I can’t really say what’s going to happen a year from now or two years from now. I don’t know. But I can say I’m thankful and super-happy that I continue to be [with the] White Sox.”
Anderson’s name came up in the rumor mill before the Aug. 1 trade deadline.
He heard the rumors.
“You can just throw that right on top of everything else,” he said of his rocky, trying season. “It was kind of out of my control. You understand what’s going to happen when you play this game. I couldn’t do anything but just see what happened. I’m just happy to still be where I’m at and continue to keep going.”
Perhaps the last 36 games left on the schedule when Anderson returns will give a clearer idea of where he’s headed.
He talked Friday about being better as a person and player.
“Get back to the type of player that I am, the type of player that I have been,” he said.
“Hopefully it’s somewhere near greatness.”
It will be worth watching.
