Jorge Posada vs. Ted Simmons

Jorge Posada hit 275
career home runs.

The word during the weekend was that Jorge Posada has decided to retire rather that try to extend his career with some team other than the New York Yankees.

Which raises the immediate question with a (minimum) five-year wait for an answer: Should he go into the Hall of Fame?

My immediate answer is yes. He had a 17-year career as a key component of a great team. I think the 1996-2001 Yankees have be best claim of any squad as the greatest dynasty in baseball history. It deserves more plaques in the Hall that "just" Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.

And then I thought of Ted Simmons.

Simba and Posada strike me as similar players. They weren't great defensive catchers, but they were good enough to stick behind the plate, and at the dish they were definite pluses for their lineups. Both were switch hitters; neither was reckoned the best catcher in his era, but Simmons was a contemporary of Johnny Bench, and Posada's career overlapped with Ivan Rodriguez and Joe Mauer.

Ted Simmons hit 248
career home runs.

Simmons made nine all-star teams in his 21-year career and finished in the top 10 of MVP voting three times; Posada made five all-star teams and had two top-10 MVP years. Posada's career slash stats look better than Simmons', but the 1970s (Simmons' era) was a much tougher time for hitters.

Posada's career OPS+ --on-base plus slugging, adjusted for park effects and compared to his league -- is 121, meaning that he was 21 percent above league average. Simmons' OPS+ is 117.

Simmons appeared on just one Hall of Fame ballot, in 1994, and got just 3.7 percent of the vote. That's not necessarily the biggest travesty of recent balloting, but it's up there.

Posada will be a worthy inductee when his time comes. I don't know that he's all that much more worthy than Simmons.

The Catcher Project: Ted Simmons

Born: 8:9-49
Career: 1968-1988
Hall of Fame: No.
Career highlights: Nine All-Star teams. Six seasons above .300 while catching on an almost-daily basis. Played on one pennant winner, splitting time between catching and DH for the '83 Brewers; no team with Simmons as a regular catcher won even a division title.
Career slash stats: .285/.348/.437

See his stats here

Games caught after age 30 season: 332. Age last season as a regular catcher: 32. Win shares earned after age 30 season: 69. Win shares earned after age 33: 22.

Ted Simmons, like Jorge Posada, was a switch-hitting catcher with the emphasis on hitting, and in the 1970s — when basestealing was far more prevalent than it is today — a bat-first catcher was a bit of a liability.

But Simba could hit. In the context of the 1970s, in the context of old Busch Stadium, he was a better hitter than Posada.

And the Cardinals used him hard: 130 games caught at age 21, 135 at age 22, 153(!) at age 23, 141 at age 24, 154 at 25 ... if you've ever been in St. Louis in August, you know what a furnace feels like. And he consistently hit .300 through that workload.

It couldn't last, and it didn't. When Whitey Herzog took over the Cards, he decided he couldn't live with Simmons' declining defense — or, probably, his stature in the community. Herzog traded Simmons to Milwaukee.

Simmons' last season in St. Louis was his age 30 season. He hit .303/.375/.505 with 21 homers — a basic Ted Simmons season to that point. His first year in Milwaukee: .216/.262/.376. Simba had only one St. Louis-caliber season in the last eight years of his career. That came in 1983, when he caught just 86 games and DH'd for the rest of his playing time.

Another example of heavy use young leading to a decline late.

Why Pudge won't budge

Ivan Rodriguez is clearly in the nomad stage of his career. He was traded in midseason last year (Detroit to Yankees), after which he went deep into spring training before finding a team to sign with (Houston). And he was traded again this week, this time to his original team, the Texas Rangers.

If you take Pudge's career at face value, he has a real strong case for the title of greatest catcher ever. A lifetime .300 hitter with more than 300 home runs; 13 Gold Gloves; an MVP Award (1999); 14 All-Star teams ...

But this isn't so much about where he ranks among the all time greats, but about what he is now — which is a backup.

Consider this paragraph from the Fort Worth paper's game story from Wednesday's game with the Twins:

Despite (Rodriguez's) exploits Wednesday, Taylor Teagarden is still the No. 1 catcher. Rodriguez will be back on the bench for today’s series finale. (Manager Ron) Washington started him with Kevin Millwood because Millwood calls his own pitches and is a veteran.

What an indictment. Pudge has caught more than 2,200 major league games — more than anybody in history. Teagarden is a rookie with 51 games caught. But the Rangers trust Teagarden's calls more.

Rodriguez is not the first great catcher to decide it's worth it to hang on as a No. 2. Gary Carter stuck around for four years as a reserve, Ted Simmons for three years. I suspect the writers held their hang-around years against them when the Hall of Fame balloting rolled around for each (Carter eventually got in, Simmons not).

I wonder if Rodriguez has his eye on what would be a unique accomplishment: 3,000 hits. Nobody who spent the bulk of his career as a catcher ever reached that milestone. (Craig Biggio was a catcher for four seasons at the start of his career, 428 games total.) Pudge needs 310 hits to get there. It won't be easy, but he's "only" 37.

A hard-used 37.