I'm as big a fan as any of Simmons, but this is a pretty weak case for the guy... cherry picking stats (more hits than Yogi Berra! More RBI than Johhny Bench!) doesn't help, nor does his first line of defense for Simmons' mediocre reputation behind the plate: "He caught two no-hitters."

The better way to put it would be that Simmons has more RBI than any catcher other than Berra, and more hits than every retired catcher in the history of baseball¹ :) Although hits are realistically a truly lousy stat by which to measure a career, that still sounds cool. Too bad Pudge Rodriguez had to come along and screw up the fact that Simmons simply had the most hits of any catcher.

I wonder how Simmons will do in this balloting. As sated in TFE, he got virtually no support the first time out. However, the powers-that-be did at least care enough to resurrect his candidacy, and also were kind (read: incompetent) enough to put together an underwhelming group of competitors. I don't think there's any chance that Simmons gets elected this year, but hopefully he'll get some attention to build upon.

¹ That is, of course, counting everyone who played more than 50% of their total games at catcher as a catcher 100% of the time. Simmons DHed a good amount, so the leaderboards would probably change significantly if you were going by stats actually accumulated while playing catcher. That's another thing we don't need to tell the writers about ;)

It is the Memphis Flyer. They consider OPS one of them new-fangled stats. You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new Mid-South. You know... morons.

I'm a big Ted Simmons fan as well. I would put him in the HOF if I had a vote, but I understand the case against him. To me he's the classic borderline candidate that should be discussed heatedly for years, not just discarded on the first ballot.