Image credit: IMAGE IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Chandler Simpson spent the first two innings of Monday’s Game 3 a victim of his speed, and the bad things were to come after that.
You could argue that he demonstrated the dichotomy of baseball radio in the space of 10 minutes. In the bottom of the first, both starter Robert Gasser’s discord was exhausted, for the second change broke 1-1. It was good to jump, and to work; William Contreras picked off a 90-yard pitch as he broke into position, taking a perfect throw to Brice Turang at the runner. Who else would have been there at that moment, but Simpson, one of the fastest criminals in the league, already throwing in his bag, carrying the rest of his body through the attempted tag.
and through Perhaps sensing how close the game was, he threw himself into the pockets, and this time he was unable to cling to him except for his injured body, to left field. He lay prone in the dirt as Brice Turang turned to dispose of him.
Two outs later, they were running again. Sal Frelick hit a hard ball on the opposite field, toward the Tropicana field’s infamous 315-foot foul line, where Junior Caminero had buried it a week before the Cleveland Cavaliers. Simpson ran at a rapid pace towards the unseen wall, six feet in diameter, with his eyes closed on the ball in flight. When he touched her glove – the moment he touched her glove, before the mission was closed – he looked down and thought what was going to happen. His feet reached the base of the wall, and he had a free hand to stop. It worked. He snapped at her, the lip of the hat flying into her face before flying off, her body knocked back as if to fell. Even as he threw a blow to his back, he was beginning to roll, climbing to his feet to get the ball back on the field. In the middle he staggered on his knees, lost his grip on his fingers, and had to start again. But he was sure that the first runner would turn back.
Simpson — one of the worst outfielders, and perhaps even players, in all of baseball in 2025 — proved the Rays’ philosophy of finding talent hidden within the body, finding perfect inside ballplayers and outside flaws. And in this story, amid a series of blunders and mistakes, Simpson wondered what the pure tools of unsullied athleticism could do.
A few innings later we saw the limitations of that duo.
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