Tim Anderson rushed a throw, Joe Kelly blew a save, but the offense is a bigger issue

CHICAGO — This is what happens when you don’t score any runs.

That the White Sox were in a position Saturday afternoon to open June with a 7-1 mark despite scoring just 23 runs in the month, or that they entered the ninth inning of Saturday afternoon’s 5-1 loss to the Marlins prepared to win their second game in a three-game stretch where they had scored three runs total, is a testament to the high-wire act their pitching and defense had been pulling off to that point.

“Yeah, lots of them,” reliever Joe Kelly said when the subject of the Sox bullpen sealing up a lot of one-run games of recent was broached. “Everyone has been throwing pretty well. Lot of usage, maybe. A lot of guys were stepping up throwing more than they were kind of used to.”

Joe Kelly entering to save a 1-0 game, and three batters later with Tim Anderson trying to field a chopper with the bases loaded and no one out, is where things buckled. One night after pulling off a game-saving throw on a similar opportunity in Friday’s 2-1 victory (on a harder play), Anderson mishandled a chopper with the chance to cut down a run at home for the third time this season. Fleet-footed Marlins pinch runner Jonathan Davis scored the tying run without a throw and a brewing jam against Kelly worsened and became a five-run inning. Sensing the weight of the moment, Anderson put his hands on his knees and stared into the infield dirt.

“I just tried to rush the throw,” Anderson said. “I knew they had a fast runner at third. I just really tried to rush it. I just f—ed it up. That’s really what it was.”

Anderson holds something close to “face of the team” status in the public view, which is less relevant than the fact that when he’s played like a down-ballot MVP candidate (2020-21) is when the White Sox have looked the most like a team that was actually going to take advantage of the competitive window they undertook a three-year rebuild to form. When he makes a crucial error and is not performing up to the high standard he’s set for himself, even in the middle of a ninth inning that seemed on the express train to hell without his assistance, it matters a lot. And that is something he implicitly acknowledged when anyone tried to lend the perspective that he pulled off the same play in a critical spot the night before.

“Last night don’t matter,” Anderson said. “Nobody cares about last night. I think it’s about, ‘What have you done lately?’ And we seen what I just did. But just continue to keep working, keep trying to get better.”

“He made a great play last night that saved the game, and that was a tag play last night,” White Sox manager Pedro Grifol said when asked if mistakes on throws home on contact plays have gotten into Anderson’s head. “So, I don’t think so. Timmy has been doing this a long time. He is good at what he does. He works. It’s the way the game is. Get back after it tomorrow.”

Assume for the sake of exercise that this play has become Anderson’s Achilles heel defensively, since it now accounts for three of his five errors this year. That has Anderson sitting at a .971 fielding percentage for 2023, which is above his career average (.962) and still hovering around the MLB average for shortstops (.974). A more debilitating long-term problem might be that the Sox are playing so many tight games, with so little margin for error, that Anderson going 1-for-4 in pulling off throws home while drawn into the grass in game-altering situations since the start of May is something to which we’re all clearly aware.

Knowing that Anderson is a bat-first shortstop with good range and athleticism but more prone to errors than most, the vastly more important missing part of the package is electrifying offense at the top of a lineup that often struggled to reach base behind him and has been ill-equipped to pick up the slack while a knee injury has slowed Anderson to .263/.300/.311 batting line in mid-June. With Andrew Benintendi struggling to find rhythm in the No. 2 slot, Eloy Jiménez sidelined again, Gavin Sheets going through a recent downturn, and (insert any other struggling White Sox hitter here), the White Sox edging back into the American League Central race over the past two weeks has been about a lot of other units overperforming in a way that couldn’t last forever.

Anderson’s error kept the oft-pilloried Sox defense from completing a streak of 10 straight games without an error, in a game that saw Sheets, a converted first baseman, making a diving catch in right field to suppress a Marlins rally in the seventh. Kelly was ineffective in the ninth, walking two, striking out none and being charged for two earned runs in addition to the three unearned that were chalked up to Anderson’s miscue. But those runs also accounted for the first runs White Sox relievers had allowed over the past four games, spanning 12 1/3 innings. Of the six Sox victories this month, four were one-run games, the other was Jake Burger’s walk-off grand slam, and the least stressful game was a 3-0 win where three high-leverage relievers were used in a save situation.

Normally at his locker immediately after any blown save, Kelly apologized to reporters for a short wait after Saturday’s game. He was in the training room getting treatment for some soreness. He felt his stuff was fine, but the singular reliance on him for the ninth inning reflected how hard the bullpen has labored to get the White Sox even to this point (a 29-37 record). Having pitched the previous two days, Kendall Graveman — who acknowledged pitching through soreness for much of April — was unavailable, Grifol said. So was Liam Hendriks. Gregory Santos and Reynaldo López combined for three innings of relief to achieve the twin goals of preserving bullpen arms and a shutout until the ninth.

“We needed arms,” said Kelly. “We have a great staff in there with the trainers who have kept a lot of arms on the field so far. Kind of grinding there and hopefully one of these games we’ll explode and go from there.”

The White Sox offense needs to explode. The concept of this team is built around the assumption that it can and will at some point, but after two months of insufficient plate-discipline progress, they are now hitting .202/.275/.333 in June. Their pitching staff deserves much of the blame for a season-threatening April as well, and beyond Luis Robert Jr., this group’s defense might never be a true strength. But the Sox entered Saturday with the best ERA in the sport since May 13, and their defense might have put together their best week and a half of the season up until the ninth inning Saturday.

And as that ninth inning rolled around, we got a feel for exactly how long the bullpen can be close to perfect while papering over offensive woes before the cracks start to show.

“We gotta learn from it,” said Andrew Vaughn, whose fourth-inning solo shot represented all that could be managed off reigning Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara. “It happened. Tomorrow’s a new game.”

(Top photo of Pedro Grifol removing Joe Kelly in the ninth inning: Nuccio DiNuzzo / Getty Images)