Brian Anderson Is Back, and He’s Better Than Ever

We’re only a week into the regular season, which means it’s too early to do any serious analysis. Or, to spin things another way, it’s a perfect time to hurry up and write about something wild that’s happening before everyone regresses to the mean.

So let’s talk about Brian Anderson.

Anderson was the best hitter in baseball in the first week of the 2023 MLB regular season. Through Wednesday’s games, he led the league in wOBA and xwOBA, and was a close second to Adam Duvall in wRC+. Anderson probably won’t finish the season with a wRC+ over 300 — though if he does, I guarantee we’ll cover it — but he’s no Tuffy Rhodes. He was a very good player not too long ago, and this hot start might represent a return to form.

If you don’t remember the time when Anderson was a first-division starter, that’s understandable for three reasons. First, it’s an easy name to lose in the shuffle. He’s one of three Brian Andersons to play in the majors since 2000. There’s also Brewers play-by-play announcer Brian Anderson, who beat everyone to the obvious joke when the Brewers signed his namesake in January. There was also a Bryan Anderson who played 40 games in the majors between 2010 and 2015, and a Ryan Anderson who came to prominence because he was a 6-foot-10 left-handed pitcher whom the Mariners drafted during Randy Johnson’s prime. They called him “The Little Unit.” And that’s to say nothing of what must be 30 non-rhyming Andersons in the majors right now. It’s hard to keep track of them all.

Which brings up point no. 2. There isn’t anything particularly remarkable about Anderson’s game, either from a qualitative or quantitative perspective. Anderson was at his best over a three-season period from 2018 to 2020. Over that time, he was 53rd among position players in WAR, just a couple decimals behind Kris Bryant and well ahead of the likes of Dansby Swanson, Nick Castellanos, and even José Abreu, who made two All-Star teams and won an MVP award in that stretch.

He got there, however, just by being pretty good at everything:

This table is so boring it’s almost hard to believe. Out of 164 players, Anderson wasn’t in the top 50 or the bottom 50 in any of these categories. It’s the Toyota Corolla of stat lines. Which I say with affection and respect; when I was just out of college I bought a low-mileage used Corolla and spent the next 12 years driving it all over the country with no issues whatsoever. Half the league would be better off with a lineup of Corollas.

Including, it must be said, the 2018-2020 Miami Marlins, which is point no. 3. Anderson was a September call-up in 2017, when the Marlins had one of the best outfields in baseball and seemed to be in position to shift into contending mode. Of course, that offseason Miami traded away Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, and Marcell Ozuna (who was still good back then). By April 2018, the Marlins were like one of those classic rock bands that still goes on tour even though there’s only one guy left from the original lineup.

If the Marlins are Foreigner, J.T. Realmuto was their Mick Jones. And even then, Jones either wrote or co-wrote basically all of Foreigner’s big hits. When Anderson was establishing himself as an everyday starter, Yelich was off playing “Feels Like the First Time” to sold-out crowds in Wisconsin, while the Marlins were left playing B-sides. And then Realmuto left the following winter, so maybe the Marlins were actually more like Lynyrd Skynyrd? I’ve now put so much effort into this metaphor I can’t admit it doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped. Moving on.

The point is, you’d have to either work in baseball or be a total sicko to have appreciated what Anderson was doing during his first three full seasons in the majors.

So how did Anderson go from that to being non-tendered by the Marlins in just two years? Injuries. His 2021 season was derailed by a shoulder subluxation; it’s easy to see how pain and instability in the shoulder can make it difficult to swing a bat. And in 2022, he missed a month with Steve Levy Syndrome, a bulging disc in his lower back.

Anderson arrives in Milwaukee fully healthy and in unexpected custody of the Brewers’ third base job with Luis Urías on the shelf with a hamstring injury. And in six games, he’s 9-for-18 with four walks, three home runs, seven runs scored and 10 RBI.

Now, 9-for-18 over six games can mean anything, and Anderson’s had a couple lucky hits. Two of his five singles were Texas Leaguers that dropped into no-man’s land after he got jammed. Another was a softly-hit groundball that was scored as a single but had the effect of a fielder’s choice because it hit William Contreras. The other six all had an exit velocity of 103.8 mph or better.

If there was one remarkable thing about Anderson’s prime years with Miami, it was his propensity to hit the ball hard, but on the ground. From 2018 to 2020, he posted a hard-hit rate of 43.2%, which was 33rd among qualified hitters. His GB/FB ratio of 1.57 was 24th-highest in that span, one spot below Tim Anderson.

Looking back to that table earlier, Anderson’s two weakest categories, slugging and home runs, were both power-related. How does a big dude with a pretty swing and above-average raw power end up hitting fewer home runs over a three-year span than Freddy Galvis? By pounding the ball into the ground — a pattern that does not favor right-handed hitters who don’t have plus speed.

But if there’s one thing we learned about the Brewers from the Yelich experiment, it’s that they love an ex-Marlin who hits the bezeejus out of the ball but can’t get it in the air. Now, it’s very, very early in the season. Anderson’s only barely seen 100 pitches so far, and he’s put only 14 balls in the air. But nine of them have been either fly balls or line drives, a much more favorable ratio than what he’d produced in his career to date.

If Anderson continues to hit the ball this hard and in the air this much, he’ll probably remain at or near the top of every offensive leaderboard in the NL. But even if he just goes back to the hitter he was in the first three seasons of his career, that’d be quite a coup for the Brewers. Reliability is an underrated attribute.