Andrelton Simmons’ first glove was a little black number his father bought him, of no commonly known make or model, as much a toy as a sporting good.
He was 4 or so, he recalls, when he got it. Simmons may go through two or three professional models in one season as a Braves shortstop. But that very first one he used for more than five years, until his fingers grew just too long and his left hand too wide and it began riding up over his knuckles.
Simmons was very good to that glove. “You could still use it now,” he said.
And that glove — as well as all those that followed — was very good to him. Recognized as one of the slickest defensive infielders in baseball in still his occupational infancy (age 24), Simmons was just handed a seven-year, $58 million contract. You can be sure he didn’t drop it.
Where now is the glove that started it all? His mother has preserved it in a glass case, Simmons said.
As for his first bat, he’s not so sure. He believes it may be the one he won, oddly enough, during a pitching-skills contest back home in Curacao when he was 10.
What’s become of that bat is anybody’s guess.
Defense by the numbers
If for some reason you don’t trust your eyes, there are metrics to back up the belief that Simmons is to the ground ball what Bobby Flay is to ground beef. Both are almost always going to make something good of it.
According to Baseball Info Solutions, Simmons compiled the best “defensive runs saved” total in the decade since they began calculating the stat. It is a number painstakingly arrived at, with points given or taken away for plays made or grounders butchered. Each play is weighted by relative difficulty. A plus-15 is considered superb. Simmons was plus-41 last season.
Oh, and his ultimate zone rating was off the charts, too. If you fully grasp that one, MIT might have some faculty parking for you.
“I’m glad there’s some kind of way to kind of measure it, sure,” Simmons said. “(The defensive runs saved stat) is not like 100 percent understandable to everybody — I don’t understand it completely — but I’m glad we’re starting somewhere.
“It’s something more than: Oh, you ‘feel’ he plays good.”
But the trusty eyeball method works pretty well also.
First baseman Freddie Freeman recalls a ninth-inning play against Washington last April. Charging Ian Desmond’s slow roller, Simmons ended up on the seat of his pants as his feet flew out from beneath him. No matter. Still seated, he threw out Desmond (granted, replays showed he may have been safe).
Simmons himself most appreciated going deep into the hole to track down a hard-hit ground ball from Arizona’s Paul Goldschmidt, then let go “the hardest-thrown ball I threw that season” to get him by half a step.
The manager is more forward-looking. “What’s my favorite play?” Fredi Gonzalez mused. “The next one. Because you never know what is next.”
Numbers, however, are much more likely to be attached to a player’s work at the plate. The hitter is measured more than a bride being fitted for her gown.
Those figures have yet to shower Simmons with stardust. He was nicely competent with the bat last season: .248 with 17 home runs. Had a great July when he hit .289 with five homers and 17 RBIs, with only two strikeouts in 108 at-bats.
That part of the gem is still uncut, let alone unpolished.
Armed and dangerous
Maybe twice, maybe three times in a season, if you watch real closely, you may notice Freeman taking a throw from short, grimacing slightly and throwing the ball back to where it came from with everything he’s got.
“He’ll get me in a good spot, and I’ll throw it as hard as I can back to him,” Freeman said. Good as in bad, one of Simmons’ fastballs stinging Freemen’s hand even though his glove is the size of a doormat.
The ball never goes back to Simmons with as much steam as it left. That is another tool unique to him, this arm that once had him marked as a pitcher until it was determined he was too valuable to not use every day.
That is the part of his game that Simmons loves to display the most, but he knows better than to employ it for show. “You only have so many bullets,” he said. There is little hubris behind the throw.
Beyond contributing to the occasional discomfort of his first baseman, the way Simmons plays short creates ripples throughout the infield.
For instance: “I’ll hug the line a little bit more than the normal third baseman probably, just because Andrelton gets to so much. And when he gets to it his arm is amazing,” Chris Johnson said.
And if the manager had his way, Simmons would have been mentioned in every story last season extolling the Braves’ pitching staff, and its league-leading ERA.
“He was a big part of that,” Gonzalez said. “You don’t throw extra pitches because plays aren’t being made. Innings get stopped. You don’t give away outs. There are a lot less stressful innings on pitchers when he goes out and makes plays.”
One player who can make such a difference with his glove could be somewhat excused if he chose to live — and live very well — on that skill alone. Simmons has chosen not to.
Looking to be a player in full
“You don’t want to go out there and do just one side of the game good,” Simmons said.
As a fielder, Simmons expects to get to everything. As a hitter, he’d be doing spectacularly to reach base one out of every three trips. There is a kind of patient mindset required of him at the plate that works almost counter to the way he attacks every ground ball. And Simmons admits he still has work to do attaining that balance.
Otherwise, his goals as a hitter are pretty straight forward. “I’m satisfied where my power is. I still want to improve on my average, improve on my situational hitting,” he said.
“Not everybody can be like Freddie Freeman and drive in a run whenever someone touches second base. But you want to improve and get better at it. Be a smarter hitter, knowing situations, knowing you are going to get certain pitches in certain situations,” he said.
Over the life of that seven-year contract, Simmons will color in a career. It will become abundantly clear just how total a player he can be. The fielding is a given. The hitting a matter of evolution.
Certain well-placed sources seem to believe the completion of Andrelton Simmons is going to be a joy to watch.
“Last year he was still learning and had 17 home runs and hit around .250,” Gonzalez said. “We think there’s a lot more there. I won’t put any numbers on it because I have no idea. He’s just figuring it out.”
Johnson, whose flirtations with a batting title last year proved he knows a little about the craft of hitting, did put a number on it. “I think at some point he’s going to be a .300 hitter. With some pop, too,” he said.
Why? “Just the way he works,” Johnson said, “the way he’s going about it. He wants to learn, he wants to learn how to stay inside baseballs a lot better. Guys become a lot better hitters when they show that willingness to learn and have the ability that he has.”
Not being satisfied could prove to be Simmons’ greatest gift yet.
