Right-hander Drew Anderson has re-signed with the SSG Landers of the Korea Baseball Organization, per a club announcement (h/t to Dan Kurtz of MyKBO). Anderson will earn $1.2MM in 2025, with $50K available in incentives.
Anderson, 30, last played in the majors back in 2021. A 21st-round pick by Philadelphia in the 2012 draft, the righty made his big league debut in 2017 and spent the next half-decade bouncing between the major and minor leagues with the Phillies, White Sox, and Rangers organizations. In that time, he struggled to a 6.50 ERA in 44 1/3 innings of work at the big league level despite decent peripherals, including a 4.35 FIP. During the 2021-22 offseason, Anderson was released by the Rangers and opted against searching for a new stateside deal. Instead, he headed to Japan to pitch for Nippon Professional Baseball’s Hiroshima Carp on a $1MM deal.
The right-hander ultimately spent two seasons in NPB, and pitched quite well during that time. Anderson posted a 3.05 ERA in 115 innings across 34 appearances for the Carp in total, striking out 20.7% of opponents while walking just 8.4%. That was enough to earn him some stateside attention during the 2023-24 offseason, and Anderson landed with the Tigers on a minor league deal back in January. The right-hander failed to make Detroit’s Opening Day roster, however, and after just nine appearances with Triple-A Toledo the Tigers agreed to release him so he could head to South Korea and play for the Landers.
Anderson slotted into the Landers’ rotation alongside former big leaguers Kwang-Hyun Kim and Roenis Elias and pitched fairly solidly in his first year of KBO play. While the right-hander’s 3.89 ERA was hardly exceptional, his 115 2/3 innings of work was his most in a season since 2018 and and he struck out an excellent 31.9% of opponents faced. That massive uptick in strikeout rate came with an elevated 10.7% walk rate, but that firepower makes it easy to imagine Anderson finding greater success with the Landers in 2025 and potentially getting the attention of MLB clubs once again next winter.
Should Anderson wish to make it back to the big leagues, there’s certainly reason for optimism that he’ll be able to do that. The KBO has served as a proving ground for other hurlers who struggled in their first taste of big league action in the past. Merrill Kelly is one standout example of a player who pitched in the KBO before returning to stateside ball to make a name for himself, and right-hander Erick Fedde landed a $15MM guarantee from the White Sox just last offseason after a dominant 2023 campaign in South Korea.
Your link goes to the wrong Drew Anderson, the former outfielder.
It should be baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=and…
He pitched well for the Tigers in Spring training last year. Could be an interesting pickup if he ever decides to cone back to MLB.
Yup that’s the 43 year old retired outfielder. This happens too often . Just a check on your link before the story goes up will fix these rookie mistakes.
It’s always interesting what some people expect from a free website and how little understanding they are willing to show if something isn’t completely apt. It makes MLBTR an even better experience for me.
Gruß,
BSHH
Why wouldn’t it be free when most of their content is just copy and paste?
Only paid content should be proofread?
For some odd reason Roenis Elias is a throwback name for me. I guess it might be that it’s a name that doesn’t pop up very often.