Ted Simmons: Finally a Hall of Famer

Only one catcher in the history of baseball (Hall of Famer Yogi Berra) has more RBI. Only one catcher in MLB history (Hall of Famer Ivan Rodriguez) has more hits. These are facts. It’s also now a fact that the man in 2nd place on the all-time list of hits and RBI for catchers, Ted Simmons, will finally be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum tomorrow, 27 years after he was first eligible. In December 2019, Simmons was elected by the Modern Baseball Committee along with former MLB Players Association chief Marvin Miller. Simmons was supposed to give his speech and get his plaque in Cooperstown a year ago but, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, he has had to wait until tomorrow.

In July, two additional honors were announced regarding Simmons, who spent 13 years with the St. Louis Cardinals. The team announced that his uniform #23 would be retired and a statue was revealed in his honor near the intersection of Clark and 8th Street in St. Louis.

For Cardinals fans, the Hall of Fame induction ceremony tomorrow will be a great day, with two former Redbirds making the Hall (Larry Walker finished his career in St. Louis). The day will be made even more poignant by the sad losses in the past 12 months of two of the greatest players to ever play for the organization. On September 6, 2020, outfielder Lou Brock (“The Franchise”) passed away at the age of 81. Less than a month later (on October 2nd), we also lost pitcher Bob Gibson, at the age of 84. Brock and Gibson were longtime teammates with Simmons in St. Louis.

Most of this piece was written in November 2017. It has been updated multiple times since then.

Cooperstown Cred: Ted Simmons (C)

• St. Louis Cardinals (1968-80), Milwaukee Brewers (1981-85), Atlanta Braves (1986-88)
• Career: .285 BA, 248 HR, 1,389 RBI, 2,472 hits
• 1,389 RBI & 2,472 hits are each 2nd most all-time for MLB catchers
• Career: 118 OPS+, 50.3 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 8 different seasons with 90 or more RBI
• Hit over .300 7 times in his career
• 8-time All-Star

(cover photo: Underdog Sports)

Ted Simmons: Early Career Highlights

Ted Simmons, a baseball and football star in suburban Detroit for Southfield High School, was selected by the St. Louis Cardinals with the 10th overall pick in the 1967 amateur player draft. Despite signing for a $50,000 bonus, Simmons still enrolled at the University of Michigan in the fall of ’67, mostly attending classes during baseball’s off-season.

On the diamond, Simmons made a major impact at the age of 18, his first full season in the minor leagues. Playing in Modesto (California League), the switch-hitting backstop had a robust slash line (.331 BA/.415 OBP/.570 SLG) while slugging 28 home runs and driving in 117. Simmons’ performance was good enough that, shortly after his 19th birthday, in September 1968, he made his debut with the Redbirds. Simmons only got into two games in 1968; he was on the roster only on weekends so that he could attend classes at Michigan during the weekdays.

Simmons spent most of 1969 playing for Tulsa in AA ball and got another cup of coffee in St. Louis in September, appearing in 5 games on both weekdays and weekends. He was back in Tulsa to start the 1970 and tattooed the ball, hitting .373 with a 1.025 OPS. That performance earned the 20-year old catcher a full-time promotion to the majors. On Memorial Day weekend of 1970, he supplanted Joe Torre as the Cardinals starting catcher, moving the future Hall of Fame manager to third base and third sacker Dick Allen to first.

As so often happens with minor league hitting phenoms, Simmons got off to a fast start but then struggled as the Redbirds starting backstop. In his first 10 games, Simmons hit .400 with a 1.071 OPS. In his next 25, the young switch-hitter just .153 with a .408 OPS in 95 plate appearances. Along the way, manager Red Schoendienst started platooning Simmons, catching Torre against left-handed pitchers. In mid-August, with the Cardinals out of contention, Schoendienst decided to allow Simmons to play full-time behind the dish, even though he continued to struggle when batting right-handed (he hit .167 against lefties for the season compared to a .269 BA against righties).

Overall, Simmons finished the 1970 season with a .243 BA, 3 HR, 24 RBI, and a woeful 74 OPS+ in 324 PA.

1971-72: Breakout Seasons

For the 1971 season, the Cardinals committed to Ted Simmons as their full-time catcher, with Torre shedding the tools of ignorance to play full-time at the hot corner. It was a move that worked out for both players and the team. Torre had a MVP campaign (hitting .363 with 137 RBI) while Simmons blossomed offensively. With Lou Brock also having a big season (.313 BA, 64 SB, 123 Runs) and with Steve Carlton and Bob Gibson anchoring the rotation, the Redbirds won 90 games, finishing 7 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates in the N.L. East.

As for the 21-year old Simmons, all he did was hit .304 with 7 HR, 77 RBI, and a 114 OPS+, resulting in a 16th place finish in the MVP voting. The switch-hitter’s performance against left-handed pitchers still held him back offensively; he hit .333 (.833 OPS) while batting left-handed and only .235 (.627 OPS) while batting from the right side.

The Cardinals fell back to a 75-81 record in 1972, a season slightly shortened by a 13-day players strike at the start of April. The team’s regression was due in part to Torre falling back to earth after his other-worldly ’71 season and an ill-fated trade of Carlton to the Philadelphia Phillies for Rick Wise. The right-handed Wise was fine (16-16, 3.11 ERA) but Carlton won a Cy Young Award, going 27-10 with a 1.97 ERA for the 59-win Phils.

Simmons improved offensively, upping his power numbers to 16 home runs; he hit .303 with a 127 OPS+ while driving in 96 runs. Simmons made his first All-Star team in ’72 and improved his numbers against lefties, hitting .281. For this, he was 10th in the MVP vote.

Off the field, Simmons was an unusual fit in conservative St. Louis. In 1972 he rebelled against baseball’s reserve clause by refusing to sign his $25,000 contract, feeling he deserved a bigger raise. He was an anti-war activist, criticized the Nixon administration, and wore his hair so long that he was given the nickname “Simba.” He also was anything but a typical baseball player. Influenced by his wife Maryanne, a fine arts major at Michigan, Simmons wound up becoming an antique collector and a trustee at the St. Louis Art Museum.

1973-80: St. Louis Star

Ted Simmons earned MVP votes in his five first full-time seasons as the Cardinals backstop, based on his prodigious bat. From 1971 to 1980 (his last year in St. Louis), Simba hit over .300 six times, hit over 20 home runs five times, and drove in over 90 runs six times. He made six All-Star teams between 1972 and ’80, including a start in 1978 when he supplanted long-time N.L. starting catcher Johnny Bench.

Take a look at Simmons’ offensive numbers on a year-by-year basis. What you’ll see is that, even in his off-years, the Redbirds’ receiver was enormously productive with the bat.

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From 1973 to 1980 in St. Louis, Simmons was a completely productive hitter from both sides of the plate, hitting .301 (.849 OPS) against righties and .299 against lefties (.840 OPS). In 1980, Simmons won the inaugural Silver Slugger Award as the best hitter at his position.

With Simmons leading the Cardinals in RBI every year from 1972-78, the overall team was never quite good enough to make the playoffs.

Ted Simmons and Johnny Bench

For ten years, among full-time backstops (which I’ve generously defined as players who logged over 60% of their starts at the position), only Bench (widely considered the best catcher in the history of the game) was better than Ted Simmons. If you look solely at their offensive numbers, Simmons, for ten years, was arguably Bench’s equal.

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I deliberately chose oWAR (offensive WAR) in order to demonstrate how excellent Ted Simmons was with the bat. If you take the full measure of WAR (which includes defensive metrics), Bench’s 54.8 mark from 1971-80 dwarfs Simmons’ 44.7 but the Cardinals catcher still has the second best number for that metric over this ten-year period.

In fairness, by choosing these particular ten years, we’re excluding Bench’s 1970 MVP season in which he let the majors with 45 home runs and 148 RBI. The point here is not to say that Simmons was the great Bench’s equal; the point is simply that he was equally as great a batsman over a significant period of time.

Ted Simmons Behind the Dish

Defensively Simmons was not in the same league as Bench, the 10-time Gold Glove winner, but the reputation that he never shook, that he was a disaster defensively, was exaggerated. It’s true that he averaged 19 passed balls per season between 1970 and 1975 (he was first or second in the N.L. in that dubious category every season) but he improved in the years that followed.

Due to his reputation, opposing teams ran a lot against Simmons but, in his career, he gunned down 34% of all base stealers, not in the league of Bench’s 43% rate but still good enough to be league average.

A couple of quotes from the fascinating Rom Fimrite profile in Sports Illustrated, “He’s Some Piece of Work,” published in June 1978:

“Teddy has really worked on his catching the last few years… A couple of seasons ago there might have been some question about his catching, but he has completely erased that now. Trouble is, he hits the ball so well that you overlook his defense; you forget he’s an all-round player. He has taken the time to study his pitchers. He understands what we can and can’t do, and he uses what we have. He wants to win so badly that his intensity out there picks you up.”

— John Denny (Cardinals starting pitcher 1974-79)

“He’s the toughest guy behind the plate since John Roseboro, and he has terrific stamina. Sometimes I think the Cardinals are trying to kill him, catching him in all those games in that St. Louis heat. If they caught him 130 games instead of 150, he’d hit .360. What can you say about a man who switch-hits and has no weaknesses at the plate? If he played in Cincinnati, where the ball really carries, he’d hit from 30 to 35 home runs, the way Bench does. He plays in Death Valley and still hits more than 20.”

— Tim McCarver (Cardinals backup catcher in 1974 & ’75)

“I suppose there was a time when I didn’t feel properly recognized. All I heard was Bench, Fisk and (Thurman) Munson. But I have rationalized that rather conveniently, I think. If you find yourself playing in front of millions of people on television for a couple of weeks in the playoffs and the World Series, then you are going to be noticed a lot more. People in Montana who never see a major league game in person are going to know who you are. That’s easy for me to understand, and I’m not bitter in the least. If I were to play under those circumstances, I think I’d be pretty well known, too… I know full well that you can hit .330 and still feel very empty.”

— Ted Simmons

In 1980, the Cardinals went through four different managers, the third of whom (Whitey Herzog) became the team’s General Manager in August. Herzog, who had skippered the Kansas City Royals to three A.L. East Division crowns from 1976-78, was a man who believed in the running game and he saw Simmons as a liability.

Opposing teams ran like crazy against Simmons in 1980, swiping 116 bases. Although Simmons threw out 46 runners (for a 28% rate), the White Rat wanted a more defensive-oriented backstop. Considering that backup Terry Kennedy only threw out 11 out of 61 runners, perhaps it’s fair to lay some of the blame on the ability of the Cards’ pitchers to hold runners on.

Moving on to Milwaukee

Anyway, in the off-season following the 1980 campaign, Herzog signed his former Royals’ catcher (Darrell Porter) as a free agent. Ted Simmons was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers.

In the strike-shortened 1981 season, Simmons had by far the worst year of his career, hitting just .216 with a 87 OPS+. In his previous ten years in St. Louis, Simmons never hit below .283 and never had an OPS+ below 114 (remember that league average is 100).

Ironically, Simmons’ real or perceived deficiencies behind the dish didn’t manifest in Milwaukee. In the home run oriented American League, teams only attempted 74 stolen bases against Simba; he gunned down 25 of those would-be thieves.

The Brewers made the ’81 post-season in the expanded playoffs but lost to the New York Yankees in the 1981 A.L. Division Series.

1982 World Series

Ted Simmons returned to his normal hitting form in 1982, swatting 23 home runs with 97 RBI and a 112 OPS+. The Brew Crew returned to the playoffs and made it to their first and only World Series, where they were matched up against Simmons’ former teammates in St. Louis. Simba returned home in style, getting a warm welcome from the Cardinals fans while hitting home runs in Games 1 and 2 (which were split between the teams).

In the final five games, however, Simmons slumped, going 1-for-15 with just one RBI. In the meantime, Simmons’ replacement in St. Louis (Porter) was the Series MVP as the Redbirds prevailed in 7 games.

Final Years

Simmons, starting 44% of his games as the team’s designated hitter, had one more solid season in Milwaukee (1983); he hit .308 with 13 home runs, 108 RBI, and a 126 OPS+. Simmons followed up that All-Star season (his age 33 season) with a miserable one in 1984; he hit .221 with just 4 home runs and a OPS+ of 61.

Simmons spent the last three seasons of his 21-year career as a part-time player with the Atlanta Braves. After the 1988 season, at the age of 39, his career was finished.

The Cooperstown Case for Ted Simmons

To make the case for Ted Simmons, you don’t have to go much further than the chart comparing his offensive prowess to Bench’s over a ten-year period or the fact that he has the second-most RBI and hits among all catchers in history but I’m going to do it anyway.

As we previously have seen, Simmons had a 10-year peak (1971-80) of superb offensive production. For ten years in a row, Simmons played at least 123 games (logging over 150 games in 7 of those ten seasons). Although he occasionally got a rest by playing first base or left field, most of Simmons’ starts were behind the plate, including dozens of games a year in the stifling heat and humidity at Busch Stadium, with the artificial turf seemingly raising the temperature by over 10 degrees.

For ten years in a row, Simmons had a park-adjusted OPS+ of at least 110 (which is 10% above league average). The only other catchers to log a streak like that are Hall of Famers Gary Carter and Mike Piazza.

For ten years in a row, Simmons had a WAR of 3 or better. The only other catchers with a streak like that are Hall of Famers Bench, Carter, and Rodriguez.

But Simmons’ ten-year run of excellence with the bat wasn’t just good “for a catcher.” His numbers compared favorably to all other players throughout Major League Baseball.

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The only catcher from 1971 to 1980 who shows up in any of these categories above either Simmons or Bench is Gene Tenace, who bested Simmons in home runs and OPS+. Tenace, however, was a catcher in only 58% of his games played; in 84% of Simba’s games, he was manning the tools of ignorance.

Another way to look at whether a player is compiling a Hall of Fame career is to look at each season individually, rather than looking at a leader board over a longer period of time, in which other players don’t appear simply because their careers started or ended at times inconvenient to that ten-year window.

How did the switch-hitting star stack up against the other catchers in MLB on a year-to-year basis? If you’re considering offense only, the conclusion is fairly easy. By looking at the year by year leaders among all catchers on Baseball-Reference, the eye can discern a player’s worth, using either traditional or advanced metrics. But let’s digress for a moment for a closer look at the defensive side of the game.

Is Ted Simmons’ Poor Defensive Reputation Legitimate?

Ranking players defensively is a little more difficult than it is with offense. For the casual fan, the context of defensive statistics can often be evasive. When looking at catchers year by year, I used dWAR (the defensive component of WAR). I don’t trust it implicitly but it’s the easiest approximation. If this gets a little dense, please try to hang in there for the next several paragraphs or skip to the next section.

Let’s start by acknowledging that any case for Ted Simmons for Cooperstown rests with his offensive prowess. If we can conclude that Simmons was at least average defensively then we can eliminate that as a reason for exclusion. I was surprised to see that Simmons, in his first two seasons as a full-time starter, was in the middle of the pack with dWAR. In 1973, he was actually fourth-best; he only allowed 64 stolen bases while gunning down 43 runners. In 1975, when he had 28 passed balls, his caught stealing percentage was only 26%; his dWAR was 18th out of 20 catchers with at least 81 games behind the dish.

Simmons rebounded in 1976, finishing 7th in dWAR with 41 runners thrown out and only 61 steals allowed. But, his numbers from 1978-80 were not great. He mostly fixed the passed ball problem but his caught stealing percentage dipped. He was consistently in the bottom tier of dWAR.

Stolen Bases Allowed

Let’s put the stolen bases allowed into context for a moment. It’s true that Ted Simmons was in the top 3 in his league in SB allowed 11 times in his career. His 1,188 stolen bases allowed is the 17th most in MLB history.

However, the 1970s and early 1980s were the golden age of base thievery. Carter allowed 1,498 steals in his career, 5th most all-time. His career CS% of 35% is nearly identical to Simmons’ 34%. Carlton Fisk, 9th on the SB allowed list, also had a career CS% of 34%.

What separates Carter and Fisk from Simmons is in the totality of their defensive games.

Advanced Defensive Metrics

There are two defensive statistics that you can research on Baseball Reference’s Play Index, which easily allows you to compare multiple players. One is dWAR, which we’ve discussed. The other is “WAR runs from fielding.” This may be a little “next level” for some but allow me to briefly explain the difference. The dWAR statistic is meant to compare players not only against others at their position but also against all other position players. Therefore, dWAR contains a significant adjustment for the importance of one’s position.

For this reason, Simmons’ career 4.7 dWAR is better than the 0.6 career dWAR for his Cardinals teammate Keith Hernandez. Intuitively, this is insane; Hernandez is arguably the best defensive first basemen of all time and also a worthy Cooperstown candidate. It’s the added value of showing up wearing the tools of ignorance that puts Simmons’ dWAR ahead. Just showing up for work helps a catcher’s dWAR.

Regarding the other sortable stat on Baseball-Reference (WAR runs from fielding), this number (which is often in negative numbers) is meant to tell us how many runs better or worse than average a player’s fielding contributions were. In this case, volume can work against a player. If you’re sub-par defensively, showing up for work can mean that you’re costing your team runs.

Anyway, I took a look at 70 catchers in MLB history with at least 4,800 plate appearances and 50% of their games played behind the plate:

• Using dWAR (where just showing up helps), Simmons is 58th out of 70. There are three Hall of Famers ranked lower: Mickey Cochrane, Ernie Lombardi, and Mike Piazza.
• Using WAR Runs Fielding, Simmons is 61st out of 70, with -33.6 runs from fielding. Piazza (who is 3rd to last on the list) is the only Hall of Famer lower. (Incidentally, Jorge Posada, who is often compared to Simmons because he too was a switch-hitting backstop, is 4th to last).

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The conclusion that Simmons was a below-average defensive catcher, which was the perception in the industry at the time, is backed up by the sabermetric numbers and is a legitimate argument against his Hall of Fame case.

Was Ted Simmons’ Offense Sufficient for a Cooperstown Plaque?

Going back to the year-by-year analysis of Ted Simmons’ offensive contributions, one has to remember the context of the era in which he played. His contemporaries were Bench, Fisk, and Carter, who (by WAR) are three of the four greatest catchers in the history of the game. Add in the fact that, in the 1970s, there was also another star backstop (Munson) who appeared in multiple post-seasons, it’s easy to see why Simmons got lost in the shuffle.

Given that we’ve established that Simba’s defensive game was indeed below average, a truly great career with the bat is required in order to entertain a Hall of Fame case. We’ve already seen that over ten years, he was Bench’s equal at the plate. We’ve also seen that he held his own among all MLB hitters, ranking 4th in RBI, 5th in hits, and 15th in OPS+.

Using a year-by-year analysis, here is how Simmons fared among all MLB catchers, even considering the quality of the competition:

• He was in the top 3 among catchers in RBI in 11 different seasons, but never #1. For 9 different seasons, he was 2nd among all backstops in RBI.
• He led all catchers in OPS+ on 3 different occasions (1977, 1978, and 1980). Two other times he finished 2nd.
• He led all catchers in oWAR once (1980) and was the runner-up on 4 other occasions.

There’s not much to conclude here. Simmons is one of those guys who had a lot of very good seasons but never one of MVP caliber (his highest finish was 6th place in 1975).

So, without a defensive case and without a MVP seasons case, we’re left with the cumulative potency of his consistent offensive production at a key position on the defensive spectrum.

Comparing Ted Simmons to his Contemporaries

Let’s remember, first of all, that catcher is a position that is under-represented in the Hall of Fame. With Simmons joining the club, only 16 catchers are enshrined in Cooperstown, the fewest for any position other than 3rd base. 8 of those 16 backstops played mostly before World War II. There are only 7 other Hall of Fame catchers who debuted in 1946 or later: Berra, Roy Campanella, Bench, Fisk, Carter, Piazza, and Rodriguez. Even though 3 of these 7 were contemporaries to Simmons, there was certainly room for another one or two.

So, first of all, let’s look at how Simmons stacks up at the plate with his contemporaries, the five other catchers with a career WAR of 45 or above between 1967 and 1993:

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I’ve thrown a bit of a monkey wrench in here by including Tenace, who is credited with the more WAR runs from batting than all but four catchers in MLB history (Piazza, Mickey Cochrane, Bench, and Bill Dickey). Because he was an on-base machine (his 984 career walks lead all catchers), Tenace has a career OPS+ of 136. We should remember though, that Tenace only played 57% of his career games behind the plate so it’s not quite apples-to-apples to compare him to the others.

Additionally, Tenace’s total of 5,527 plate appearances is low. Simmons had a 127 OPS+ (with a 45.0 WAR) after his first 6,450 PA, all with St. Louis. When you play longer, you add counting stats but your “rate” stats often suffer.

Anyway, what’s notable here is that Simmons’ offensive numbers are comparable to both Carter and Fisk. Though the latter two had more home runs, Simmons had many more doubles and thus a comparable slugging percentage. He had more hits and RBI than both; the reason why his overall WAR is so much lower is because of defense. For that reason, Carter and Fisk were obvious Hall of Fame choices while Simmons was not.

Why did Ted Simmons get so little Hall of Fame respect?

Having retired after the ’88 season, Ted Simmons debuted on the Hall of Fame ballot in 1994. At the time, Simmons had the 6th most home runs for any major league catcher in baseball history. His 1,389 career RBI was second-best all-time to Berra. His 2,472 career hits and 483 career doubles were, at the time, the most for any catcher ever. His 1,074 runs scored were the fourth most ever (behind Fisk, Berra, and Bench). While that might not sound like the stuff of a first-ballot Hall of Famer, it still seems like the resume of a strong candidate.

The collective body of baseball writers decided that Simba was not a strong candidate at all. Of the 34 players who received at least one vote, Simmons finished 26th, gaining just 17 out of a possible 456 votes, a total of 3.7%. Since he had fallen 6 votes short of the minimum 5% threshold, the ’94 vote permanently ended his chances at the Hall of Fame through the BBWAA.

Why did Simmons get so little support from the writers? I can think of a couple of other reasons although it’s all speculative. When it came time to cast votes for Simmons, the careers of Fisk and Carter had just come to an end. Both players had more career home runs and were two-way players, great behind the plate as well as at it. At the same time, a young Ivan Rodriguez was showing the world what a first-class defensive backstop looked like. In addition, a young rookie named Mike Piazza was showing what a premium hitting catcher looked like; Piazza hit .318 with 35 home runs and 112 RBI in his inaugural campaign, completed just months before the Hall of Fame vote.

The Star-Studded 1994 BBWAA Hall of Fame Ballot

It’s also true that the ’94 Hall of Fame ballot, like those in recent years, was packed with talented newcomers. 300-game winners Steve Carlton and Don Sutton were first-timers on that ballot, as was 300-saver Bruce Sutter. Other newcomers included Graig Nettles, Ron Guidry, and Dave Concepcion, who had the fame and pedigree of having won two World Series championships each. Among the holdover candidates, the ballot also contained future inductees Phil Niekro, Tony Perez, Ron Santo, and Orlando Cepeda (who was in his final year of eligibility via the BBWAA).

There were other solid candidates to vote for: Steve Garvey and Luis Tiant were on that ballot. There was also Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat, Dick Allen, Ken Boyer, Joe Torre, Vada Pinson, Minnie Minoso, Curt Flood, Bobby Bonds, Rusty Staub, George Foster, Mickey Lolich, and Vida Blue. Pete Rose got 19 votes as a write-in candidate.

And there was Munson, the Yankees’ backstop who died tragically in 1979 and was on the ballot for the 14th time. As we’ve seen, in part because of his untimely death, Munson’s counting stats weren’t close to Simmons’ but, when they played, Munson was a star (the case for Thurman here) and Simmons wasn’t. For 13 years, Munson got nowhere close to the Hall of Fame. Is it possible that voters felt, “well, I haven’t been voting for Munson and he was a better all-around player than Simmons”?

The bottom line is that this ballot was teeming with talent. There were at least 20 players for whom a reasonable Hall of Fame argument could be made. Not that anyone knew about this statistic at the time but, if you count Rose, there were 26 players who received votes who had a career WAR of 40 or above; 18 (including Simmons) had a WAR of 50 or better. The tally of 18 players with a 50+ WAR was the most on any ballot in 32 years.

And there’s this: for whatever reason, possibly the feeling that the Veterans Committees had for decades been inducting second-tier members like drunken sailors, the BBWAA was especially stingy when it came to conferring Hall of Fame votes in the 1990s. The 456 writers cast 2,903 votes, an average of 6.37 per voter (out of a maximum of 10 each). At the time, the total of 6.37 votes per writer was the third-lowest in the history of the voting, better than only the 1992 and 1993 votes, the two years prior.

Out of all of these players, only the 329-game-winner and 4-time Cy Young Award winner Carlton was granted a Cooperstown plaque. The stinginess continued in 1995 when the BBWAA elected only the obvious choice in Mike Schmidt. In 1996, the writers pitched a shutout, not conferring 75% of the vote on anyone.

Finally a Hall of Famer

Ted Simmons was first considered by the Eras Committee (what used to be called the Veterans Committee) in 2011. He did not receive enough support for the Hall of Fame to report his vote totals. General Manager Pat Gillick was elected that year; Marvin Miller fell a vote shy with 11 votes.

In 2014, Simmons was on what was called the “Expansion Committee” ballot. Unfortunately for the players, the ballot was de-facto rigged against them because they were being judged at the same time as three all-time great managers (Torre, Bobby Cox, and Tony La Russa), who gobbled up virtually all the votes. The three skippers each received 16 votes, leaving the scraps of just 16 votes left for the seven players to split between them.

In December 2017, the 16-member Modern Baseball Eras Committee panel that elected Jack Morris and Alan Trammell gave Simmons 11 votes. Sometimes Hall of Fame voting can be cruel. If you’re doing the math and understand the Hall’s long-standing policy of only inducting players who get 75% of the vote, you’ve figured out that Ted Simmons fell just one vote short of the Hall of Fame plaque in late 2017. Just one vote shy of a plaque in Cooperstown and baseball immortality.

In my preview feature, posted on the day of the December 2019 vote, I speculated that Simmons would be the favorite because he had come so close two years prior. 7 of the 16 members of the 2020 Modern Baseball Committee were also on the 2018 panel that gave Simba those 11 votes. So, we would assume, Simmons already had some votes “in the bank” and possible advocates on the panel, including his former teammate in Milwaukee, Robin Yount.

However it went down, Simmons finally was recognized for his accomplishments. Simmons has been used to waiting for his day in the sun and, because of the Coronavirus pandemic, he had to wait another year for his plaque. He’ll be sharing the stage tomorrow with Derek Jeter and Larry Walker.

Still, better late than never, Ted Simmons is going to the Hall of Fame.

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