The Minnesota Twins might not be looking for bulletin-board material. They've won back-to-back AL Central titles, after all.
But if they've got a corkboard in the home clubhouse at Target Field, Tim Anderson could fill it up all by himself.
The White Sox star shortstop has spent the month of February touting the White Sox superiority over their division rivals. He told Our Chuck Garfien "we're the best team in the division, hands down" on the White Sox Talk Podcast. Not two weeks later, he had this to say in his first media session of spring training:
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"You look at the paper, we are way more athletic than them, and that’s just true facts."
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It might sound like bravado, and some might even argue it's unearned. After all, the White Sox haven't won the Central since 2008, when Anderson was still in high school in Alabama.
But Anderson and the White Sox have earned the right to make that kind of observation. Certainly they've paid the same amount of attention as others evaluating which teams have the edge heading into the 2021 season. Certainly they know as much as any power-ranker out there, right?
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Because the White So do have the best roster in the Central, a better one than the Twins, who edged them by a single game in last year's division standings.
Before anyone gets concerned that Anderson is talking the talk without walking the walk, he's perfectly cognizant of what needs to happen in order for the White Sox to truly dethrone the Twins.
"At the end of the day, we have to go out and prove it. We have to go out and be dominant," he said. "But we are going to face them just like any other day. They have the same guys over there. We are motivated and I’m sure they are motivated, and we are going to go head-to-head and see what happens."
Sure, the White Sox haven't won anything yet. That's what the actual games are for, and they'll have 19 of them to try to topple the Twins.
But don't discount just how impressive this White Sox roster is. Anderson showed last year that his batting title from 2019 was no fluke. José Abreu is the reigning AL MVP. Dallas Keuchel, Lance Lynn and Lucas Giolito finished fifth, sixth and seventh in last year's AL Cy Young vote. Luis Robert is a Gold Glover and was the AL Rookie of the Year runner-up. Eloy Jiménez won a Silver Slugger for his work last season. Liam Hendriks has been baseball's best closer the last two years.
I could go on.
The truth is, this is an extremely talented group that looks capable of not only zooming past the Twins and shifting the power balance in the Central but also making a run at accomplishing its only stated goal for 2021: winning the World Series.
One has to come before the other, though. But the White Sox finally showed near the end of last season that they could beat their division rivals, taking three of four in a series that ended with the South Siders the first AL team to clinch a playoff spot. Things went poorly from there, of course, but for a team walking the winning road for the first time in a long time, it seemed an important step.
Now, it's time to, as Anderson put it, be dominant.
"We have a pretty good shot of whooping on them," he said. "That’s what we are going to try to do with every team that comes in and every team we go to: try to win.
"They are no worries either. They put on their pants just like we do."
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