It's September 12th And Tim Anderson Quietly Leads All Of Baseball In Hitting
I’d be remiss to not give Tim Anderson his proper due for his 2019 season. He’s the emotional leader of the White Sox and the player you love playing with but HATE playing against. Such a goddamn pest and fans fucking love it… that is if you’re a White Sox fan. He embraces every second of it too:
He isn’t out there to make friends on the field. Be all hunky dory with the enemy. He’s out there to be the enemy and I love it.
This is the last storyline White Sox fans will have to follow as the season winds down. With how good Giolito, Moncada, Robert, Madrigal and Vaughn have been, Anderson quietly hitting .333 this season has kinda flown under the radar.
Yes, his BABIP is sky high. But he’s also improved in ISO, slugging, exit velocities, and hard hit rates by a LOT and lowered his K rate 4% while doing so.
That is a recipe for a high BABIP season with respect to the rest of his young career, especially when you consider Anderson is in the upper 10% of baseball in sprint speed.
And though this is a time of celebration for what has been a great season for TA7, he needs to learn how to take fucking walks. In fact if he does win the batting title he’ll be the first player in MLB history to win the award while having the lowest walk rate in the league. This is going to water down his achievement in the eyes of many because all they’re going to do is point to advanced analytics and say “it was lucky”. But lucky or not, he had a great season.
Should he win the batting title, there’s about a 99% chance he won’t win it again next year. But he doesn’t need to in order for this lineup to be nasty next year. If his 2020 slash line is something like .275/.315/.500 with 25 bombs and 25 stolen bases, we will take that allllll day if he’s hitting 7th through 9th in the lineup.
It’s a simple formula – lay off pitches outside the zone, get into hitters counts, make the pitcher throw strikes and drive pitches to gaps. He still doesn’t do that and will regress next year unless he learns to.
Until then, let’s get him a Batting Title.