Ted Simmons: HOF?

Simmons and Bobby Grich - both first round picks in the 1967 MLB Draft.

Coincidence???

 

So eat your heart out Jimmy Hart. [/obscure]

 

Both of them obviously had inflated numbers from the lower-mound era.

 

I started caring about baseball at the same time Simmons was in his prime. For a few years Simmons was the only power bat the Cardinals had (he was good for about 20 to 25 a year, which was a shit-ton in the old Busch*), and after he broke his wrist in '79 the up-and-coming team fell out of contention.

Of course, Whitey came along the following year and remade the team into what it became famous for in the '80s, based on defense and speed. Ted and Whitey didn't see eye-to-eye, so bye-bye Ted.

* I wonder if playing in a cavernous stadium like Busch before they moved the fences in should be taken into account when discussing Simmons' resume.

 

As late as 1977, Busch II was 414' to dead center and 330' down the lines. Hot as all hell during the summer. When they finally put in grass in the '90s, they moved the fence in center to about 400'.

 

Bit of a tangent here, but Simmons was an integral part of probably the best baseball game I can recall attending in my youth.

Back in 1977, against the Reds in their Big Red Machine heyday.

Game tied in the 9th, Al Hrabosky pitching for the Cardinals in his full Mad Hungarian persona. Loads the bases with no outs, then strikes out the side, including Bench and Foster.

Top of the 10th, Reds have the lead run thrown out at the plate for the third out.

In the bottom, Simmons promptly leads off with a homer. Ball game.

May 9, 1977 Cincinnati Reds at St. Louis Cardinals Box Score and Play by Play | Baseball-Reference.com

 

I was watching The Sandberg Game last week, and Tony Kubek mentioned that to that point in the season (June 23, 1984) the Cardinals had nine home runs at home.
The disparity in team road and home batting average on that date was a good 30 points.
That's the kind of stuff Simmons and others had to deal with playing in Busch.

 

Just out of curiosity, I remembered them having a particularly low home run total in 1986 (Jack Clark was injured most of the year) so I looked up the totals. 27 home runs all year at home, 58 all together. Twelve years later, Mark McGwire, whose MLB career started in 1986, would hit 70 home runs for the Cardinals. There's a college thesis in there if you have the right academic advisor.

 

CyclingWriter-
Herzog built his Cardinal teams for the ballpark before that even became a thing (I cannot find any evidence the Cardinals moved the fences in; I know the Astros did in that period).
In that era, I don't think run creation/prevention was even on teams' minds when they fiddled with the dimensions, but it was on Whitey's.
It will never happen, but I'd like to see a game played without fences- I think it would be pretty cool.

 

I'd be down for that, provided you compensate for the fielders' potential need to run a long distance to chase balls with the option of throwing the ball at a baserunner to tag them out.

 

There just hasn't been much evidence moving the fences in makes a team better. San Diego did it and became worse.