Rays' Chandler Simpson might be baseball's most fascinating prospect. So what's the catch?

New York Times

04-03-2025

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. – What if a team could find a player who made contact like Luis Arráez, stole bases like Billy Hamilton and had the potential to play center field like Byron Buxton?
The Tampa Bay Rays think they have such a player.
Chandler Simpson is perhaps the game's most fascinating prospect. But because he rarely hits the ball hard, he also might be the most polarizing.
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'At every level, people have scratched their heads: 'Is this going to work? Is this going to play?' ' Rays manager Kevin Cash said. 'It plays, and then some.'
Simpson, 24, likely is headed to Triple A to start the season, but it might not be long before the Rays unleash their latest surprise on the baseball world. The excitement about Simpson in their camp is palpable, almost over the top.
Which, given the Rays' history of devising new ways to jolt the sport, likely means only one thing:
Look out.
'I would buy a ticket to watch him play,' Rays outfield and baserunning coordinator Jared Sandberg said. 'I just wouldn't miss the first four pitches because he might already be in the dugout with a run on the scoreboard.'
Sandberg, who said Simpson is more exciting than Hamilton, Juan Pierre and other speedsters of the past, raves about the player's makeup, too.
'He has, in my opinion, the best drive, best work ethic and most determination of any player in the organization,' Sandberg said.
So, what is the problem?
As MLB.com put it, 'On the traditional 20-80 scouting scale, evaluators joke, he has 90 speed and 10 power. He's that fast and that unlikely to hit the ball over the fence.'
Simpson, the Rays' second-round pick out of Georgia Tech in 2022, stole 104 bases in 121 attempts last season at High A and Double A. But he also is a left-handed hitter with only one home run in 1,041 minor-league plate appearances — and it was inside the park.
At a time when teams value exit velocity more than any offensive metric, Cash concedes that Simpson offers 'a unique skill set that was way more popular in 1990 than it is right now — high contact, elite speed, create havoc.'
The Athletic's Keith Law, who ranked Simpson the Rays' 12th best prospect, is among those with doubts.
'I get the excitement, and if I played fantasy baseball, I'd want him on my team,' Law wrote. 'But in real major-league terms, I find it hard to see him as more than a 0.5 WAR/year player.'
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To which Kevin Boles, Simpson's Double-A manager, countered: 'I've never seen a guy who is so undervalued by the industry.'
Simpson is aware of the skepticism. But last November in the Premier 12, a tournament for the world's 12 highest-ranked national teams, he batted .459 with a 1.014 OPS on 15 singles and two doubles and also stole nine bases in nine attempts.
Mike Scioscia, the Team USA manager, was duly impressed.
'Stay true to yourself. Don't let anybody change you,' Simpson recalled Scioscia telling him. 'See you in the big leagues.'
Earlier this spring, the Yankees' Jazz Chisholm Jr. told the New York Post he would beat the Cincinnati Reds' Elly De La Cruz in a race and that the Kansas City Royals' Bobby Witt Jr. was perhaps the only player who could match him stride for stride.
Simpson believes he is faster than all of them.
'Most definitely,' he said, 'I think I'm taking myself over everybody in baseball.'
In the Rays' Grapefruit League opener against the Yankees, Simpson beat out a tapper to first running 30.8 feet per second. Witt Jr. led the majors in that metric last season, averaging 30.5.
Asked if he could beat Simpson in a race, Cash, a former major-league catcher, burst out laughing.
'In his prime?' Cash asked. 'Or when he's 90?'
Rays second baseman Brandon Lowe had a similar reaction.
'He would beat me if he was hobbling on one leg,' Lowe said.
Drake Baldwin, the Atlanta Braves' top catching prospect, was Simpson's Team USA teammate in the Premier 12 and also competed against him in 2021 in the Northwoods college summer league and last season at Double A.
In the Northwoods League, Simpson stole 55 bases in 51 games. Baldwin threw him out once at third, and to his relief, Simpson stopped running on him. But last season at Double A, Simpson was at it again.
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'You just knew he was going to go every time he got on base,' Baldwin said. 'You kind of have to cheat for it. The pitcher could be perfect. The catcher could be perfect. And he still could be safe, with how fast he is.'
Rafael Valenzuela Jr., Simpson's manager at Single-A Bowling Green, recently watched video of a grounder Simpson hit last season that bounced off the second baseman. Both the shortstop and second baseman converged on the ball.
'My man takes a quick turn and ends up at second base on a ball that doesn't leave the infield,' Valenzuela said. 'I played against Billy Hamilton in the minor leagues. And I've never seen any player do that.'
Boles, the Double-A manager, can't understand why some make such a fuss over Simpson's low exit velocities, 'If he hits it slower, he can beat it out.'
Cash, watching Simpson in his first major-league camp, wonders whether he can beat out a hard-hit ball one step to the backhand of an elite shortstop such as the Rays' Taylor Walls.
'I'd bet on Walls,' Cash said. 'But I want to see it.'
Simpson is safe on almost every other kind of grounder.
'Every ball he hits on the ground, it's comical to hear the dugout: 'Put it in your pocket!' ' Cash said. 'All his Double-A buddies know, you're just not going to complete the play on him.'
Simpson's career strikeout rate in the minors is 8.7 percent. After reaching Double A last season, he dropped that rate to 7.5 percent.
Arráez's career rate in the majors is 6.8 percent.
'If you watch (Simpson's) batting practice, you don't appreciate it until you see it every day,' Cash said. 'There is no intent to play the long-ball game. It is very much like what I recall of Pete Rose. Peppering the ball everywhere. He's got the 90 to 95 mph line drive over the infield down.'
Simpson, though, is capable of hitting the ball hard. In his first spring game, he not only caught the attention of Yankees manager Aaron Boone flying down the line on his tapper to first but also with a 100.2-mph single to the outfield that Boone described as 'smoked.'
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'He's a better hitter than most people give him credit for,' Baldwin said. 'He's so fast, he will get some cheap hits. But he hits a lot of line drives and just puts the bat on the ball a ton.'
Simpson also is skilled at another of baseball's lost arts — laying down a bunt.
'I think bunting is going to start coming back a little bit, because pitching is so fricking good,' Cash said. 'Watching him, I don't want to put him on the spot, but I would love him to give a presentation to the entire team on how he does it.'
Shortly after the Rays drafted Simpson, team officials wanted him to get stronger. Simpson initially was wary, fearing he might lose speed, farm director Blake Butera said. But the Rays talked to him about improving his nutrition and working out properly. Their thinking was that if Simpson gained strength, it might make him even faster.
'We measured it,' Butera said. 'And it did.'
Simpson, who is 5 feet 11, described the process to determine his ideal weight as 'trial and error,' but said he found a happy medium slightly above his listed 170, in the 175- to 177-pound range.
Growing up in Atlanta, Simpson said he admired not only speedsters such as Hamilton and Dee Strange-Gordon, but also bat-to-ball specialists such as Rod Carew, Tony Gwynn and Freddie Freeman. Arráez is the current player to whom he is most frequently compared. Simpson believes he can be a more complete version of the San Diego Padres' three-time batting champion.
'A lot of people are saying, what if Arráez had speed and defense? I feel I can be that type of player,' Simpson said. 'I love Arráez. He's someone I look up to. I use his drills in my hitting regimen.
'I want to have that same hitting ability in the big leagues, plus the speed, plus the defense.'
Simpson played middle infield exclusively during his two years at Alabama-Birmingham and one at Georgia Tech. But when the Rays drafted him in 2022, it was as an outfielder.
Rob Metzler, who was the Rays' amateur scouting director before becoming an assistant general manager with the Detroit Tigers, said his group determined Simpson's long strides and elite speed would make him more of an impact defender in the outfield. And their background work on Simpson suggested that he had the aptitude and work ethic to learn a new position.
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'I was like, let's do it,' Simpson said.
Simpson felt his athleticism would help him make a smooth transition. He has started more than two-thirds of his games in the minors in center, playing the rest in left. Sandberg, the Rays' outfield coordinator, said Simpson's improvement last season was noticeable, to the point where he is now 'a true center fielder with speed.'
'I've learned to love it,' Simpson said. 'I've been working very hard at it. I'll be working hard at it until the end of my career.'
On Feb. 22, Simpson robbed two of the Red Sox's top prospects of hits in a span of three innings, making a diving catch on Marcelo Mayer in left-center and a sprawling catch on Kristian Campbell in right-center.
The Rays, who value defense even more than most clubs, plan to open the season with Jonny DeLuca in center. Simpson still has only 142 games of experience at the position. And he has yet to play at Triple A.
'As soon as the jumps and reads match up with the speed, he will be elite defensively,' Cash said. 'Everyone that works with him in the outfield has challenged him: 'Let's be willing to make some mistakes, overanticipate some reads and dive. If you want to dive for a ball and you miss it by five feet, you're not going to hear a word. We're not going to pass judgment.' '
Cash then references the catch on Mayer.
'He goes out, and he probably made the play of spring training,' Cash said.
'If there's anything we've learned with Chandler, it's don't limit him,' Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander said.
Simpson said his goal is to prove that his game can translate to the majors, minimal power and all. Boles, the Rays' Double-A manager, is convinced it will happen. He said Simpson is a complete package as a prospect, with a chance to become a star.
Let others scoff at Simpson's throwback style. The Rays see it as special.
'It's different,' Boles said. 'But it works.'
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic / Kevin C. Cox, Gene Wang / Getty Images)