Marlins’ Tim Anderson on rise and fall with White Sox and trying to ‘get back to the player I used to be’

For a while there, nobody talked a bigger game than the White Sox’ Tim Anderson.

For a while there, the magnetic shortstop damn sure backed it up, too.

Heading into the 2019 season, with the Sox supposedly in play for free agent Manny Machado, Anderson insisted to the Sun-Times he wasn’t giving up his starting position and guaranteed he’d have a career year. Then he went out and improved his average by 95 points and won the American League batting title.

In 2020, when he won a Silver Slugger award, he said, “There’s nobody who can stop me.” In 2021, his first of two straight All-Star seasons, he said, “I want to be the best player to ever play this game.”

Anderson talked smack, flipped bats, popped an iconic home run into the beautiful oblivion of an Iowa cornfield and became the coolest thing about a Sox team seemingly headed for great things.

Then — wouldn’t you know it? — it all went “poof.”

Along the way, Anderson said Thursday, he repeatedly sought extensions from the Sox on a six-year, $25 million contract that ran through 2023, but the club never bit. That was one small part of a conversation with reporters in the visitors’ clubhouse at Wrigley Field, where Anderson’s new team, the Marlins, had a series opener against the Cubs postponed due to expected nasty weather.

In regard to the Sox declining a $14 million option on him in November, the former first-round draft pick, who spent eight big-league seasons on the South Side, expressed no ill will.

“It was good conversation,” he said. “I talked to Jerry [Reinsdorf]. We had a couple phone calls in the offseason. I talked to [new general manager Chris] Getz. We understood that it was time for them to go their way and me to go my way.”

There’s no big talk from Anderson anymore, certainly not these days. Now 30 and on a one-year, $5 million deal, he’s just trying to revive his endangered career.

“[I’m] working on myself to continue to keep getting better and get back to the player I used to be,” he said.

Anderson’s game fell off a cliff in 2023, when he batted .245 — with one measly home run — and knocked in 25 runs in 123 games as one of the most underachieving Sox teams in memory completely imploded. Anderson caught the business end of a Jose Ramirez punch in an infamous on-field fight with the Guardians star. He also dealt with injuries including a sprained knee and a sore throwing shoulder.

And — no small thing — he was at times miserable, struggling in his personal life. Anderson fathered a child outside of his marriage late in 2022, a drama that spilled onto social media and would affect his mood and demeanor at the ballpark. On a podcast hosted by former professional athletes, Anderson shared last June how uncomfortable he’d been to be in public on a daily basis.

“I didn’t want to be seen,” he said. “I didn’t want to be talked to, but I still had to go out and play.”

Anderson accepts his share of blame for what went wrong with the Sox after their 93-win season in 2021.

“We weren’t winning,” he said. “I don’t know, man. A lot of my decisions as well, you know, off the field, kind of interrupted a lot of things as well. We understood that. And it’s hard to win when you don’t have the right guys to go out and compete, you know what I mean? [Guys] that want to win it.

“But that doesn’t have anything to do with where we are now. I’m only looking forward, not looking back. I wish them well.”

Asked to elaborate on the “right guys” part of that comment — and on what the Sox clubhouse was really like — Anderson declined.

On the field, life with the 4-15 Marlins clearly is testing Anderson. In the National League’s worst-hitting lineup thus far, Anderson has contributed only one extra-base hit — a double — and two RBI to go with his 20 strikeouts in 60 at-bats. He remains stuck on one homer since July 15, 2022.

If he was at a crossroads heading into 2019, he’s at an even bigger one now.

“I’m still the same person,” he said. “I’m learning a lot more now. I’m sharpening those tools a lot more. I’m never going to close that window and think that I’m going to go the other way. I’m always going to try to get better and better myself as a person and as a player.”

Anderson, who is still married, had a more difficult time articulating the feelings he was experiencing from being back in Chicago.

“It’s just so emotional,” he said, “but I don’t really know. The last year kind of took a lot out of me. Considering what my years were before that, just one decision kind of messed that up. And I’m OK with that, but they’re kind of up and down.”

And how does he hope Sox fans will remember him?

“However they want to,” he said. “That’s not really up to me. I just know the last year that I spent there was tough. To finally make it through and be on the other side, you know, I’m happy. I’m in a great place. My smile’s back, and I’m back on my journey.”