Anderson's career night keys Dash victory

Tim Anderson knows that a steady, grounded approach is the best way to navigate the many peaks and valleys of a long baseball season. That's helped the shortstop, who bounced back from a poor performance with one of his best.

The White Sox' second-ranked prospect recorded a career-high four hits from the top of the lineup Saturday night as Class A Advanced Winston-Salem beat visiting Lynchburg, 4-1. He went 4-for-5 with a triple, two runs scored and an RBI, one game after going 0-for-5 with three strikeouts.

"It was good today," Anderson said afterward. "I was seeing the ball very well tonight."

Anderson's game to forget didn't actually conclude until early Saturday, when the Hillcats and Dash resumed a contest that was suspended in the 10th inning a night earlier. Lynchburg took that one, 6-4, in 11 innings.

In Saturday's regularly scheduled game, Anderson led off the bottom of the first with a single to left and scored on a groundout by Keon Barnum, Chicago's No. 12 prospect. An inning later, he sent a two-out single to right field.

The 2013 first-round pick (17th overall) notched his biggest hit of the game with one on and two out in the fourth. That's when he reached third after sending a ball off the top of the left-field fence, driving a run in with his seventh triple -- which ranks second in the Carolina League.

The 20-year-old scored an at-bat later when Joey DeMichele singled to center.

Anderson singled to left again in the sixth. Two innings later, he grounded out to short in his fifth and final at-bat -- not that he minded missing out on perfection.

"It's really not a big deal," he said. "I mean, you're going to get a hit, you're not going to get a hit. It really wasn't a big deal to me."

Prior to Saturday, the Alabama native had notched three hits in a game on eight occasions, but never four. He has collected multiple hits in 17 games this year, including six of his past eight.

"I would say things are going real well for me right now," he said. "I've just been seeing the ball good and getting my pitch to hit and not missing it. It's going good.

"My goal is to just play as many games as I can, get in my reps and just work on a lot of things, on defense and offense."

The Mississippi junior college product -- who did not play between April 28 and May 10 due to a shoulder injury -- is batting .286/.313/.440 with two homers, 14 RBIs and eight steals in 11 attempts through 44 games. He does, however, lead Class A Advanced fielders with 22 errors.

This is Anderson's first full professional season -- he appeared in 68 games for Class A Kannapolis a year ago -- and he seems fully prepared for the roller-coaster ride's inevitable rises and falls.

"It's really a mind thing where you can't get too down because the game is up and down," he said. "One night you're going to be successful and the next night you're going to have a bad night."

While the measured ballplayer didn't savor his Saturday too much, no one could blame him if he did.