Chase Anderson’s brief time in Texas makes you contemplate the ephemeral nature of existence
With the 2024 regular season over, it is time for us to go back and take a look at the players who appeared for the Texas Rangers this season.
Today, we look at pitcher Chase Anderson.
Chase Anderson, one of the marvelous pitching Andersons who took the mound for the Texas Rangers in 2024. He did not have as many innings as Grant, but had more than Shaun. He also had a higher ERA — 9.95 — than either of the other two.
The three Andersons combined for an 8.17 ERA in 36.1 innings for the Rangers in 2024, with a combined -1.3 bWAR. I’m wondering how many other surnamic triumvirates in MLB history have combined to be so bad for one team in one season.
Grant Anderson, at least, we can remember. He was a sidearmer, was part of the 2023 Rangers team, was up and down throughout the season. He left an imprint, faint though it may be, on our brains.
The other two Andersons, though? Do we, just a few months after the 2024 season ended, have any memories of them? Do you recall seeing Chase Anderson in a Ranger uniform? Can you case your mind back and pull out any specifics of his time in Texas?
How about the general time frame when Chase Anderson was a Ranger — can you remember what month he was with Texas? Even whether it was early in the season, or late in the season?
You are forgiven for not recalling. Chase Anderson was signed in August, after he had been released by the Boston Red Sox. He toiled in Round Rock briefly, then had his contract purchased in early September when the Rangers sent Dane Dunning down. He made two appearances, allowed three runs in four innings in one of them, allowed four runs in 2.1 innings in the other one, and was designated for assignment so Kumar Rocker could make his major league debut.
Anderson then cleared waivers, elected free agency, and is still out there as I type this, awaiting a minor league contract offer with an invite to major league spring training with some team.
Chase Anderson has had a successful major league career. He was drafted three times — by the Twins in 2006, out of Rider High School in Wichita Falls, then again in 2007 out of North Central Texas College, and then finally by the Diamondbacks in 2009 out of the University of Oklahoma. He made it into the Diamondbacks rotation in 2014, and spent two seasons as a slightly below league average innings eater, even appearing on the National League Rookie of the Year voting in 2014. I mean, yes, it was one vote, and he finished 10th, but still, he appears on the list of players who appeared somewhere on someone’s ballot for the Rookie of the Year voting that year, and that counts for something.
The winner of the NLROY voting that year, incidentally? Jacob deGrom, who beat out Billy Hamilton. Former Rangers minor leaguer Kyle Hendricks finished tied for 7th. Former Rangers great Danny Santana finished 7th in the A.L. voting that year, right behind the late Yordano Ventura. Among those tied for 8th are former Rangers Brock Holt and Jake Odorizzi.
Anyway, Anderson was traded after the 2015 season to Milwaukee, along with Aaron Hill, Isan Diaz and cash, for Jean Segura and Tyler Wagner. Its weird to think of Chase Anderson being in the same deal as Aaron Hill, early 21st century Jays infielder, who was one of those names you heard a lot if you were an online baseball fan back then. And Hill was at the end of his career by then, was coming off a 0.0 bWAR season for Arizona (which was an improvement over his -0.9 bWAR the year before), which is why Arizona had ship cash to Milwaukee in that deal, as Hill was due $12 million that year.
There are Rangers connections, at least in my head, with Segura and Diaz, as well. Segura was who the Brewers got from the Angels when they traded Zack Greinke to LAAAAAA at the trade deadline in 2012. The Rangers really wanted Greinke to replace Colby Lewis, who was lost midway through 2012 due to a torn flexor tendon in his elbow, but were not willing to part with either Mike Olt or Jurickson Profar, and so didn’t get Greinke.
Instead, they settled for Ryan Dempster, who didn’t pitch well for Texas after being acquired by the Rangers, though the Rangers were 8-2 in his first ten starts for them. Texas then lost his final two starts, the last of which was Game 162 in 2012. You know, the Josh Hamilton dropped fly ball game in Oakland. Dempster allowed five runs in three innings in that game.
Oh, and as part of the Dempster trade, the Rangers traded Kyle Hendricks — the guy who I mentioned finished tied for 7th in the 2014 NLROY voting above — to Chicago, along with Christian Villanueva. Villanueva was the guy who was seen as the lead piece in that deal. Hendricks is the guy who ended up having a lengthy career as a quality starting pitcher.
I’ve talked about this before, but the 2012 Colby Lewis injury was, I think, the tipping point for the early 2010s Rangers run. On the heels of two straight World Series appearances, the 2012 Texas Rangers got off to a tremendous start to the year, much like the 2023 Rangers did. At the end of June, the Rangers were 50-29, with the best record in baseball and the best run differential, by far, in baseball. They ended up with 8 — EIGHT!!! — All Stars. They were seen as the team to beat that year.
And like the 2023 Texas Rangers, they didn’t maintain that in the second half. They struggled in July, seemingly got back on track, and were up five games with nine to go after a walk off win at home against Oakland. They promptly lost 7 of their final 9 games, including a sweep in Oakland in the final series of the year, the last game of which was the Dempster three inning start where Josh Hamilton dropped an easy fly ball for what should have been the final out of the fourth inning, which gave Oakland the lead, a lead they kept the rest of the way, in a game where the winner won the West and the loser played in the Wild Card.
Texas lost to Baltimore in the Wild Card Game, came back in 2013 with Lance Berkman and A.J. Pierzynski, made a desperate trade for Matt Garza at the deadline, seemingly were dead in the water in September, then won seven in a row to end the season and force a Game 163 against Tampa Bay for the second Wild Card spot, a game that, of course, the Rangers lost. The Rangers decided to make big changes after that, traded Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder, signed Shin-Soo Choo as a free agent. And then 2014 happened.
Colby Lewis’s injury is, in my mind, the inflection point for that team. The sliding doors somewhere have Lewis’s elbow remaining intact, Lewis continuing to be Colby Lewis in the second half of the 2012 season. Maybe Lewis’s presence wouldn’t have kept Ron Washington from running the regulars into the ground — five Rangers played at least 156 games that year, two more played at least 147, and only nine non-catchers had more than 70 plate appearances for Texas that year — but I feel, in my heart of hearts, that if Colby Lewis had been on the mound in that Game 162, the Rangers would have won, would have made the playoffs, would have gotten a few days off and home field advantage in the ALDS.
That said, the Rangers organization couldn’t control whether or not Lewis’s elbow stayed intact. There was a second inflection point, however, they did control. They could have traded for Zack Greinke, future Hall of Famer, who put up a 3.53 ERA in 13 starts for the Angels after the trade — one of which was against Texas, in Game 158 of the season, a game that the Rangers, who finished one game back in the division, lost.
The rumor was that the Brewers wanted Profar in the Greinke deal, maybe would have taken Olt, but the Rangers didn’t want to part with either player. They opted to go get Ryan Dempster instead. So let’s walk through those sliding doors.
The Rangers trade Jurickson Profar to the Brewers for Zack Greinke, instead of making the Dempster trade. The Rangers win the division with Greinke, and go into the playoffs with a top three of Greinke, Yu Darvish and Matt Harrison (who was great that year), likely as the favorites to win it all. They keep Kyle Hendricks, who becomes a solid mid-rotation starter for the Rangers in the next couple of years instead of for the Cubs. They don’t go the Pierzynski/Berkman route in 2013, don’t make the panic trade for Matt Garza. Without Profar waiting in the wings they get a real DH for the 2013 season, and don’t trade Ian Kinsler to Detroit for Prince Fielder after the 2013 season.
Instead, the Brewers traded Zack Greinke for Jean Segura. Which is why seeing Jean Segura’s name causes a cascade of conflicting emotions, about emotions that are somewhat less distressing after 2023.
Anyway…to quote Norm MacDonald, enough of this grimness.
As for Isan Diaz…remember I mentioned he was connected to the Rangers in my head, way before I went on the 2012 Rangers rant? Isan Diaz was traded by the Brewers to the Miami Marlins prior to the 2018 season in the Christian Yelich deal, which was headlined by former Rangers first rounder Lewis Brinson. The full deal was Brinson, Diaz, Monte Harrison and Jordan Yamamoto for Yelich, and it is hard to think of a trade that has worked out worse for the selling team than that one.
And Brinson, you may recall, was traded by Texas to Milwaukee, along with Luis Ortiz and a player to be named later who ended up being Ryan Cordell, for Jonathan Lucroy and Jeremy Jeffress. Two names that we would just as soon not think about as Rangers fans, I think.
Which brings us back to Chase Anderson, who ended up being a very nice acquisition for the Brewers, highlighted by a 2.74 ERA, 4.2 bWAR season in 2017, when he made 25 starts for the Brew Crew. He seemed to have carved himself a niche as a useful major league pitcher, someone who would hang around and be a meaningful contributor for a period of time.
But alas. No. It was not to be. The Brewers had signed Anderson to two year deal after the 2017 season that included options for the 2020 and 2021 seasons. The $8.5 million option for 2020 was apparently more onerous that Milwaukee was comfortable with, so they sent him to Toronto in exchange for someone named Chad Spanberger.
Maybe it was the bratwurst in Milwaukee, maybe it was the positive vibes he got from Brewers broadcaster Bob Uecker, maybe it was being in the home of Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley, but Chase Anderson was never the same after leaving Milwaukee. He was terrible for Toronto, had his option declined, and became a free agent. Joined the Phillies for 2021, was terrible, was released, got signed to finish out the season by…
…wait for it…
…YOUR TEXAS RANGERS!!! That’s right, Chase Anderson was a warm body for the Round Rock rotation in 2021, a year that we all want to forget ever happened for the Rangers, so you are forgiven for not remembering he briefly spent a stint with the Express that year.
Since becoming a free agent after the 2020 season, Chase Anderson has been signed 10 times as a free agent, and been claimed on waivers once. He’s been a nomad, a pitching vagabound, showing up somewhere for a brief time, pitching for an organization — maybe in the majors, maybe in AAA — for a short period of time before being cut loose, at which point he gathers his belongings in his bindle, throws it over his shoulder on a stick, and hops the rails to travel to wherever the next passing train takes him.
From 2014-19 Chase Anderson put up a 3.94 ERA in 160 starts and six relief appearances, good for a 106 ERA+, and with no ERA+ lower than 93 in any season. He was an archetype, your useful back end starting pitcher with some upside.
And since then? Since then, from 2020-24, he has an ERA of exactly 6.00 in 41 starts and 40 relief appearances. A 6-18 record, though with four saves, interestingly enough. Or not interestingly enough. A 75 ERA+. He has had a negative bWAR in every season since then except for 2023, when his 5.42 ERA was put up largely with the Rockies, and when he registered a 0.7 bWAR in 86.1 IP.
Chase Anderson has had, by any reasonable measure, a successful career. He has spent parts of 11 years in the major leagues — long enough to be eligible to appear on the Hall of Fame ballot, though of course he won’t be on there once he retires. He has made, per B-R, $29,632,382 in his career, with the real figure likely a little bit higher.
The last five years have not, however, been what anyone would have expected, and yes, we can wave our hands and say that’s true for the world writ large, but in particular, Chase Anderson’s career arc the past five years have not been what one would have predicted, nor what Anderson would have expected. Yes, he made it to the majors later than usual — he was 26 when he debuted — and so he was a little farther along on the age curve. But he was just 32 in 2020…
You: “I’m only 35, I have my whole life ahead of me.”
Sports Broadcaster: “Here comes the oldest player in the league. He’s 32. A miracle.”
— Troy Johnson (@_troyjohnson) May 19, 2024
…and one would expect he would maybe plateau, have a gradual decline phase, at that point. Not fall off the face of the earth. Looking back at the ZiPS projections heading into the 2020 season, Anderson was projected to be what he had been for most of his career, a useful backend starter with around a league average ERA (a 106 ERA+ per ZiPS, to be exact).
He wasn’t close to that, and hasn’t been particularly close to that since, save for a half season in Colorado in 2023. Interestingly — or maybe not interestingly, again, what I think is interesting and what the rest of the world thinks is interesting doesn’t necessarily overlap — he has been closer to functional the past two seasons, putting up a 91 ERA+ in 2023 and an 89 ERA+ for Boston before he was released in August in 2024. Much better than the 63 ERA+ he had from 2020-22.
Of course, closer to functional didn’t keep him from being designated for assignment, along with catcher Reese McGuire, after the trade deadline when the Red Sox needed to make room for the just-acquired James Paxton and Danny Jansen on the roster. And while, on the plus side, he’s not the guy DFA’d in that sequence who is best remembered for jacking it in a parking lot at spring training, the negative side is that he isn’t necessarily remembered at all.
For a few years, Chase Anderson was a member of the starting rotation of a playoff contender, a playoff team, and while he was left off the NLDS roster in 2018 and didn’t appear Wild Card Game loss for Milwaukee in 2019, he was there to the end, a meaningful contributor to the team.
And a few years later, after several bad seasons, in the midst of a renaissance of sorts for Anderson, a bounceback from when he was at his worst, he’s a guy just good enough to hang onto a roster spot for a playoff contender until better players are acquired at the trade deadline. Someone who hopes his former teammates remember him fondly enough to vote him a significant fraction of a playoff share at season’s end, who is perhaps rooting for his former team to go all the way, in the hopes of getting a ring for a championship that he wasn’t there to celebrate. Someone who clears waivers and ends up accepting a deal to toil in AAA for his hometown team for a few starts in August, who accrues a few more days of service time and pension benefits in September when the team needs a random arm that they can use or disuse as needed, and discard without worry soon thereafter.
2024 Texas Ranger Chase Anderson is, like so many players before and since, ephemeral, here for a moment and then gone. A missed entry on a Sporcle Quiz, a name on a game-worn jersey on display at the gift shop on the concourse, an entry on a B-R page that the eyes gloss over, that the brain barely registers. Not for everyone, necessarily — a child remembers getting Chase Anderson’s autograph on a baseball prior to an early September 2024 game at Globe Life Field, a classmate from Wichita Falls will recall seeing him pitching for Texas and pointing him out to his friends, saying, he sat next to me in third period Government — but the imprint he left in his time with Texas is scattered, sparse, faint.
I’ve been thinking of the uncertain, the temporary nature of things lately. Maybe it is the snow, which we have been anticipated for several days, which is falling where I am and probably where you are, rarely seen in my part of the world, and which will be gone without a trace in a couple of days. Maybe it is because I have gotten myself hung up on a particular song recently — as is my wont. This song…
…”Mighty K.C.”, by For Squirrels. And lyrics replay in my head:
Ship me off to the morgue
I’m ready to be buried
Away down in my bed, bed
And I’m alone without the sun
Kind of bleak, no? The song is about the suicide of Kurt Cobain — the “K.C.” in “Mighty K.C.” — and was recorded only about a year after his death. So yeah, one would expect bleakness. But its not all total bleakness:
And by the grace of God go I
Into the grave unknown
Things are gonna change in our favor
And if we gather, if we fall
Over the grave unknown
Things are gonna change in our favor
There’s a vibe there I can get with, that clicks with me. Though it is a vibe that is all the more bittersweet when you know or learn that the singer, Jack Vigliatura, along with bandmate Bill White, were killed in a car accident less than a month before the release of their album “Example,” which Mighty K.C. was one. A song that was a tribute to a legend who took his own life, a song both eerie and beautiful, both mourning death and celebrating life, posthumously released after the premature deaths of half of the members of the band.
I don’t know if the universe has a sense of humor, but it definitely has a sense of irony.
And so ephemeral has been a word I keep coming back to, and a word that, today, in this moment, came to mind. And there are so many things that we know will not last, know will melt away like the snow I can see out of my office window right now.
But at the same time, so much that we think we can rely on for a period of time, that we think will have some degree of permanence, ends up being so much ephemera. Chase Anderson, seemingly with at least a few more successful seasons ahead of him as a starting pitcher, turning into a Have Arm, Will Travel fringe guy overnight. The 2012 Texas Rangers, seemingly on top of the mountain, seeing their greatness slip away, grasping at it only to see it disappear like water through their fingers.
How it is is how it always was and how it always will be, and that will be how it is a day or a week or a month or a year from now, when things are completely different.
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