Meet The New Guy: Chase Anderson

Who is he and where did he come from?

He’s Chase Anderson, who turned 36 in November, and I was really tempted to use “Meet the Old Guy” in this heading, but I’ll save it for when Rich Hill eventually makes his way back here. All jokes aside, Anderson was signed to a Major League deal on Saturday. He most recently was with the Pirates and opted out of his deal following the Pirates attempt to demote him. In 2023, he pitched primarily for Colorado despite starting the season in Tampa.

What position does he play?

As if the Red Sox’s pitching rotation needed any further confusion, Anderson, who has 8+ years of service time, has been used as a starter in 200 of his 218 games. Following announcements that Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock will start 2024 in the rotation, Anderson’s signing seems to solidify that either Cooper Criswell or Josh Winckowski, or both, will be stretching their arms out down in Worcester. The latter is a sturdy reliever, though, which muddles things up a bit.

Is he any good?

To put it simply: he hasn’t been in some time.

Since everything in baseball requires a bit more explanation, allow me: Anderson has had an ERA over 5 since 2020 playing for five different teams; 7.22, 6.75, 6.38 and 5.42, respectively. At least it’s gone down?

He has six pitches, and has been going to his cutter progressively more often lately with mixed (improving) results on that pitch, but his four-seamer averages just 93 miles per hour, good for 36th percentile according to Baseball Savant. Worse, he had just 122 strikeouts since 2021, in which time he’s pitched 158 ¹⁄₃ innings.

Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

2023’s performance (6.67 K/9) placed him in just the 12th percentile among qualifying pitchers. And why so few innings? In case you’re filling out your Red Sox free agency acquisition bingo card, he had a nagging shoulder injury last season, though he wasn’t too limited by it, logging 86 ¹⁄₃ innings, his highest total since 2019. He’s simply just had to spend a lot of time re-finding his rhythm down in Triple-A; he’s also been an arm at that level for seven teams since 2019. I remember howling in laughter at a Facebook comment a few months back saying that Teddy Bridgewater had been passed around the NFL like a blunt; Chase Anderson seems to fit that same category, except with less productivity.

Anderson has had some good seasons, such as 2017, where he had just a 2.74 ERA and 3.58 FIP and pitched himself to a 12-4 record across 141 ¹⁄₃ innings as a member of the Brewers. But that was almost a decade ago now, and the data just isn’t there to give Anderson a Major League contract, however small, if Boston’s passive offseason behavior was, as stated, a measure of taking a pulse on the assets they have. It’s possible that Craig Breslow sees a guy that doesn’t get hit hard often, and a guy who can eat innings, but that could probably describe half a dozen guys in the organization.

Show me a cool highlight.

In the interest of not having to blow dust off of whatever tape I find, here’s seven strikeouts in seven innings in which he allowed zero hits, but one run because he tried turning a double play when one was not there. Sadly, due to a lack of offensive production until the ninth inning, Anderson was not given a decision in this game. Gee, I can think of a few times that happened last season... or the last five.

The strikeouts themselves show some corners being painted and some brazen dares like the offering to LaMonte Wade Jr., which is perhaps the most impressive to me given the lack of velocity.

What’s he doing in his picture up there?

Anderson, at 6’1”, also ranks among the lowest extension rate among qualified pitchers last year, at just 5.9 feet. Looking at the picture, and watching that video, that checks out, and is probably cause for concern, but I’ll have our resident pitching expert Jacob Roy validate me on that one at some point in the future.

What’s his role on the 2024 Red Sox?

Well, given that he did not want to be demoted as a member of the Pirates, one of two, or two and a half, things are going to happen. Two and a half? Yes, let me explain.

1) With Andrew Bailey’s pitching leadership, Anderson reinvents himself as a guy who can go a few innings without anything catastrophic happening. He actually reached the hallowed 5 innings mark 10 times in 2023, so if you leave out the fact that he made 20 appearances, was part of some garish box scores such as a 14-6 loss, a 25-1 loss and a 14-3 loss all in a row, that may place him among the most durable of arms we have.

2) A bit more likely, Anderson is a mop-up guy.

2.5) Anderson does NOT find himself. He sticks around Boston, matching around his ZiPS projection of a 5.04 ERA, 5.06 FIP, strikes out significantly less than a batter an inning, and the team is left to survive a WHIP of 1.56.

3) Even more likely, Anderson either has to test the waters elsewhere after being waived, or spends some time playing at Polar Park, or spends most of the summer riding the Mass Turnpike bouncing back and forth.

Here’s that point in the article you all have came to love, as the dead horse’s blood runs colder: No matter which scenario ends up being true, I can’t help but wonder, was this the guy to grab mere days before the season starts with the pitching situation being as dire as as it is now? How can a front office claim they’re being serious about developing pitchers and preventing runs, and then trade some of this development to sign a 36-year-old who, just six months ago in that aforementioned horrid stretch, pitched about as bad as a guy can (9 ¹⁄₃ IP, 22 ER, 5 HR allowed, 8 BB, 9 K, 236 pitches to get 28 outs)? How is having someone who has evidence of several less-than-favorable seasons recently join a team evaluating talent or trying to win games?

I feel bad for being so skeptical of this team all the time, but I’ve had no reason to be any more optimistic by looking at the transaction log in several years. This problem isn’t Chase Anderson, of course, but it’s indicative of a bigger problem that has plagued the team for several years, and unless the front office has a change of heart, we’re sure to see several more years of these types of half-measure signings that accomplish nothing.