The St. Louis Cardinals have a rich lineage of catchers protecting home plate spanning throughout their revered history.
Names like Tim McCarver, Darrell Porter, Tom Pagnozzi, Mike Matheny & certainly Yadier Molina are proudly thrown into the mix when discussing the prolific receivers to wear the birds on the bat. One name, however, gets lost in the minds of Redbird fans since he played during a bleak era witnessing the club clinch zero postseason appearances in the course of his ten-year stint as the primary backstop in St. Louis.
In the meantime, Ted Simmons is attracting the proper recognition he deservedly needs thanks to the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s recent unveiling of noteworthy nominees for next year’s class.
The institution announced on Nov. 6 nine former players (including Simmons) and one baseball executive as finalists appearing on the “Modern Era” ballot to determine the possible first round of distinguished members for the Class of 2018. A 16-member committee comprised of current Hall of Famers, baseball executives, and exclusive members of the media can vote up to five finalists, with the finalists needing 12 votes (75 percent of the committee’s votes) to gain enshrinement into the Hall.
The “Modern Era” ballot consists of former players/executives who made vital contributions to the sport of baseball from 1970-1987; and, the players who lost their previous eligibility due to the lack of votes received via the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) balloting system. The notable names appearing on the ballot alongside Simmons include Alan Trammell, Steve Garvey, Jack Morris, Don Mattingly & the late Marvin Miller, the head of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1966-1981 who ushered in free agency into the world of sports.
A legitimate and convincing case can emerge in regards to Simmons-a member of the Cardinals Hall of Fame- as a strong contender to gain membership in the upcoming class of baseball immortals. Despite donning a catcher’s mask within the same generation that Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, & Gary Carter (Hall of Famers, by the way) undoubtedly set the standard at the position years to come, Simmons warrants worthy respect on account of his stellar hitting accolades.
First, let’s go over the conventional batting statistics, shall we?
Simmons retired in 1988 as the all-time leader in hits (2,472) & doubles (483) for a player who played fifty percent of his games as a catcher (Hall of Famer Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez has since surpassed Simmons’ records). With fifty percent of games played behind home plate in mind, “Simba” stands in second place in RBI and fifth place in runs scored amid that elite group. He reached the .300 batting average plateau or better seven times and collected 20 or more home runs on six different occasions.
An eight-time All-Star selection, Simmons cracked the Top 10 overall offensive leaderboard in hits & extra base hits four seasons, batting average & runs batted in six seasons, and doubles for eight remarkable seasons.
In 1980, Simmons earned the distinction as the inaugural winner of the Louisville Silver Slugger Award among National League backstops. The seven-time MVP vote-getter compiled a respectable .303 batting average, notching 56 extra base hits and driving in 98 runs.
A highly-disciplined switch-hitter, “Simba” homered from both sides of the plate in a game three times. Simmons previously held the National League record for career home runs hit by a switch-hitter (182) before a guy named Chipper Jones arrived onto the scene.
Now, with the advanced hitting metrics we go!!!
Simmons finished with a career tally of a 118 OPS-plus, topping catching contemporary Carter’s career total (115) by 3 points. His career Wins Above Replacement (WAR) total (50.7)-according to Baseball-References’s calculations of WAR– may be lower than Fisk’s (68.3) and Bench’s (75.0) career sums, but well-above prolific Hall of Fame hitting catchers Ernie Lombardi (45.9) and Buck Ewing (47.7), who dominated their respective periods of play at the plate as well.
The .285 career batsman with the Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, & Atlanta Braves is attaining credible support inside the analytics circle when his name surfaces as a valid candidate.
Sports Illustrated contributing writer and sabermetrician Jay Jaffe devised a metric called JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score System) in order to, per Baseball-Reference, “measure a player’s Hall of Fame worthiness by comparing him to the players at his position who are already enshrined, using advanced metrics to account for the wide variations in offensive levels that have occurred throughout the game’s history.” The metric requires the player’s career WAR averaged with his notable seven-year peak WAR total.
According to the metric, the average JAWS score for the 15 Hall of Fame catchers enshrined in Cooperstown is 43.9. Simmons’ score barely meets the cutoff level with a justifiable result-according to Jaffe-of 42.4.
“..I strongly believe that being among a position’s all-time top 10 is a sufficient reason to justify a vote”, explains the author of The Cooperstown Casebook in a recent article for SI. “While conceding that Simmons is right on the borderline, I’d put him in based upon the evidence.”
If Simmons is an all-time top 10 catcher through the eyes of Jaffe, how come he’s awaiting election into the Hall on this special ballot? In his first year of eligibility on the BBWAA ballot in 1994, “Simba” received only 17 votes (3.7 percent) from the writers and was immediately left off future BBWAA ballots, with candidates needing 5 percent of the votes to remain on the ballot for the following year.
Perhaps it was Simmons’ below-average defensive skills that unceremoniously shafted him from the writers’ ballot (182 career passed balls, 1,188 career stolen bases allowed, & nine times was a Top 10 regular for errors committed behind the plate)? Well, the contingent of baseball scribes forgot to look a little closer in 1994 when observing Simmons’ underrated two-dimensional career.
“Simba” caught 130 or more games seven times and recorded a .987 fielding percentage guarding home plate (a few points shy of tying Bench’s career mark of .990). His steady durability doesn’t quite compare to Bench’s legendary consistency, but Simmons possessed a unique style of longevity factoring in his reliable hitting productivity.
I mentioned before that Simmons played during a forgettable time in Cardinals’ history: The team’s tradition of playoff excellence almost reached the point of extinction, Bush Memorial Stadium was a spacious park that a typical home run turned into a routine double (give or take a triple, too) & the club at one point had three managers in one season (1978). Besides Lou Brock’s entertaining base-stealing exhibitions or Bob Forsch’s no-hitter against the Phillies, Simmons’ comprehensive résumé was perhaps the Redbirds’ critical beacon of light. Agree or disagree, you cannot deny the Michigan native’s rational approach concerning the offensive aspect of baseball.
“The ball jumps off the bat and you’re running to first, drifting outside the line to start you on your way to second,” Simmons explains on Baseball Almanac. “The ultimate pleasure in baseball is that abstract moment when everything comes together and flows naturally.”
So, about the previous conversation regarding the greatest Cardinals’ catcher of all time?
(Primary) Statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference & Baseball Almanac.
