Rays draft pick Chandler Simpson built a ‘throwback profile’ through contact, speed
In four decades of coaching college baseball, Danny Hall had never seen someone score from second base on a sacrifice fly.
But as Chandler Simpson tore toward third on May 21 and a Pitt outfielder lofted a poor throw toward the cutoff man, Georgia Tech’s head coach watched that exact scenario unfold from his dugout perch. His middle infielder had a chance.
The third-base coach waved him home, and Simpson — the Rays’ third pick in the 2022 draft (No. 70 overall) — slid his hand across the plate ahead of the catcher’s tag.
“(If it’s) anybody else running, you’re not scoring in that situation,” Hall said.
Each of Simpson’s coaches have their own stories about his speed. He scored from first on a bloop single. Bunted for base hits. Turned a single into a triple. Beat out grounders with ease. Rays senior director of amateur scouting Rob Metzler called his speed “top-of-the-scale.”
When Simpson paired his speed with a contact-based approach (an NCAA-leading .433 average) and low strikeout numbers (just 16 in each of his last two college seasons), he morphed into a player with what Metzler called a “throwback profile” who the Rays likely plan to develop as an outfielder.
“Baseball has become kinda one-sided to a certain extent of it’s one of three outcomes: walk, home run or strikeout,” said Perry Roth, Simpson’s coach for two years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and now Class A Charleston’s hitting coach. “And he’s outside of that norm.”
Since Roth knew Simpson from UAB — first spotting the mostly unknown prospect at a Georgia tournament, former Blazers head coach Brian Shoop said — Rays area scout Milt Hill sought him out before the draft.
Simpson didn’t have the big, powerful swing that launched home runs, Roth said. Instead, he reached base, occupied the pitcher’s mind and watched as the distraction he created turned into mistakes that hitters behind him with the big, powerful swings blasted.
That approach defined Simpson since he first started playing. During his Little League years, opponents couldn’t throw him out even though they knew he’d bunt “98% of the time,” his father Ralph said. They crept further up the infield grass but still failed. Simpson and his father realized a bunt opened up a hole between shortstop and third base, so they worked on letting the ball travel deeper so Simpson could slap hits through the gap.
Strategizing at the plate continued through high school. Simpson sifted through basic scouting reports with St. Pius X assistant coach Andrew Mabini about an opposing pitcher’s fastball speed and breaking ball trajectory. At UAB, Shoop said they divided the strike zone into nine areas, and Simpson had to call out where each batting-practice pitch landed regardless of whether he swung. His coaches credited that knowledge for his low strikeout numbers.
“Just trying to have that relentlessness of not accepting the strikeouts,” Simpson said.
Simpson’s skill set also evolved from a general curiosity about baseball — about his game, about the games of others like him. He recently told his father he has cataloged every plate appearance since his freshman year at UAB, cutting video clips of each and storing them in a folder.
“I started watching (the clips) and I just said, ‘This is crazy,’” Ralph said.
When Ralph thought his son was watching Braves games, he was pouring into the clips. The start of Simpson’s file coincides with when he earned a spot in UAB’s starting lineup his freshman season, one that only lasted 14 games because of COVID-19. The end, at least for now, contains segments from this season at Georgia Tech, where he transferred for the 2021-22 season.
Between those points was when Ralph felt Simpson’s baseball trajectory starting to take off. He signed a temporary-turned-permanent contract with Fond du Lac Dock of the Northwoods League last summer and by the end of July positioned himself to snap the league’s record for most stolen bases in a season. Head coach Charles Thielmann said that if he gave Simpson a thumbs-up sign, he had the green light to steal whenever he wanted.
Before the game with Simpson’s record-breaking steal, Ralph thought about Rickey Henderson — one of his favorite players — and the time he broke the MLB career record, swiping his 939th bag and holding the base over his head afterward. He didn’t expect his son, who hadn’t even been born in 1991, to know about Henderson or that celebration.
That night, however, Simpson sprinted toward third. He arrived safely. The record of 50 (he finished the season with 55 in 51 games) had been broken. He bent down, grabbed the bag and hoisted it over his head. He’d spent the previous night watching videos from when Henderson broke the record.
“I think there’s a lot of players that don’t know really who they are or they try to be somebody that they aren’t,” Roth said. “And he knows himself.”
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