It took them nearly four months, but the Miami Marlins have finally hopped into the free-agent pool. Per ESPN’s Jesse Rogers, the Fish have signed long-time White Sox infielder Tim Anderson to a one-year, $5 million deal to be their primary shortstop this season.
This is a far cry from the market Anderson was surely envisioning for himself even 18 months ago. From 2019-2022, he was among the better shortstops in the game, slashing .318/.347/.474 (122 OPS+) over that span with some solid defense to boot. He led the Majors with a .335 batting average in 2019, then hit .322 while leading the AL in runs scored in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign, finishing seventh in MVP voting. He followed that up with another All-Star season in 2021, hitting 17 homers and stealing 18 bases over 123 games, and while his 2022 was hampered by injury, Anderson still profiled as a solid everyday player as he entered his 30s.
Instead, he totally bottomed out last year, hitting an abysmal .245/.286/.296 (60 OPS+) with 18 doubles, two triples, one home run, 25 RBI, 52 runs, 13 steals and -2.0 WAR. (Yes, that’s negative two WAR, per Baseball Reference.) To make matters worse, his defense slipped as well, to the point that Chicago felt compelled to shift him over to second base for the first time in his career.
It was an alarming dip in production, and Anderson faces real questions about his athleticism and durability (he hasn’t topped 123 games played since 2018) as he enters his age-31 season. Anderson has always been an extremely aggressive hitter, relying on speed and contact skills to run a high batting average and keep his on-base percentage above water. But his power has all but vanished — Anderson once hit 20 homers in a season and cleared a .500 slugging percentage twice, numbers that feel scarcely imaginable now — putting an awful lot of pressure on that batting average to carry his profile.
Of course, he’s still just 31, not too old to turn things around. And amid a very thin infield market, you can understand why Miami would take this deal at a very reasonable cost. Shortstop was arguably the biggest need for the Marlins’ 2024 roster — Jon Berti was the team’s most common starter at the six last year, but at age 34 he profiles best as a super-utility guy — and Anderson fits the bill for a team that’s been extremely contact-oriented in recent years. At this price, there isn’t a ton of risk here, even if Anderson doesn’t manage to turn around his troubling trend lines.