Andrelton Simmons Is Avoiding Strikeouts Like Tony Gwynn

Andrelton Simmons draws comparisons to Ozzie Smith for his defensive prowess. Both players are recognized as once-in-a-generation all-time greats at their positions, though Simmons has yet rival Smith’s Hall of Fame career.

Apart from the defensive skills, similarities have emerged between Smith and Simmons offensively, as well. Consider that, through the 2016 season, Simmons had taken roughly 2,500 plate appearances and put up a weak 85 wRC+. Compare that to Smith’s first seven seasons, through 1983, when he put up an even worse 74 wRC+ in more than 3,500 plate appearances.

Smith eventually turned his career around offensively, however, putting up a 103 wRC+ from 1984 through 1992 while producing 37 runs by means of the stolen base, a total which might even understate his total offensive value. Smith was bad on offense for quite some time, then he improved and was a good offensive player for a decent portion of his career. It’s possible we are seeing the same type of transformation from Simmons. The Angels shortstop put a 103 wRC+ last season at 27 years old; thus far this season, he’s doing considerably better, with a 143 wRC+ on the strength of his .331/.402/.466 batting line. Most remarkable about Simmons’ hitting numbers are the strikeouts — or lack thereof, rather — as Simmons has struck out in just 10 of his 200 plate appearances.

In 1998, Tony Gwynn stepped up to bat 505 times and struck out on just 18 occasions. The league-average strikeout rate of 17% at that point was nearly five times Gwynn’s 3.6% mark. Preston Wilson made his debut that season and struck out more times than Gwynn despite receiving only 60 plate appearances. Gwynn’s 3.6% strikeout rate isn’t the greatest of all-time. Joe Sewell struck out in under 1% of his plate appearances five times, while 68 players between 1919 and 1951 had qualified seasons with rates lower than 2%. There were 413 seasons during that time where a player’s strikeout rate was lower than Gwynn’s in that 1998 campaign. Gwynn himself even had four seasons with a lower strikeout rate than 1998, but when considering the overall context of strikeouts in the game, Gwynn’s 1998 season is probably the best of all-time. If Andrelton Simmons can keep this up, his season is going to be better.

Comparing across eras can be difficult. To try and differentiate between Gwynn’s 1998 campaign and Simmons’s currently season — as well as the seasons authored by Sewell more than 80 years ago — I first broke down the last 100 seasons into different eras depending on the strikeout rate. I then took all the qualified batters during those eras and found the average strikeout rate as well as the standard deviation (SD) of all the qualified batters. I ended up making some judgment calls, but the eras are broken down in the table below along with walk rates for perspective.

One thing to note is that walk rates haven’t moved significantly over the years. The other thing to note is that the strikeout rates presented here are lower than the MLB-wide rates for the corresponding periods, as we are dealing with qualified batters — that is, the sort who are generally going to be better than hitters on the whole (including pitchers who’ve batted, as well). We see a big shift in strikeouts moving into the pitchers’ era around 1968, followed by a period of stability before picking back up in the late 80s and early 90s. Rates have risen ever since.

With the information above, I created an IQ-like score for individual strikeout rates, with 100 representing average and 15 points added or subtracted for every standard deviation away from 100. In normal distributions, around two-thirds of all batters will be within one standard deviation either way — i.e. between 85 and 115. Below are the best seasons by that measure, including both Simmons’ current stats as well as the number he will end up with (7.9%)if he hits his projections the rest of the way.

One could argue that, if strikeouts are likely to be significantly higher this season than in years’ past, Simmons should place even higher up on this list than Gwynn. As the Simmons’ projected numbers suggest, however, Simmons isn’t likely to end up atop the list at the end of the season. His season should still be impressive, nevertheless. To put Simmons’ numbers in context with the current season, the scatter plot below shows all qualified batters by strikeout and walk rate.

Simmons is all on his own at the bottom of the screen. Michael Brantley is the only other player even below 9%, and he has half the number of walks of Simmons.

To follow up with an interesting exercise that has less to do with Simmons, I repeated the IQ methodology above with walk rates, and then combined the walk IQ scores with strikeout IQ scores via their geometric mean to determine which players have been the best this season in terms of both walks and strikeouts.

And for fun, here are the greatest seasons of all time calculated the same way.

No surprises at the top, right? Andrelton Simmons might not be hot on the trail of Barry Bonds, but so far he’s been a lot like Ozzie Smith and Tony Gwynn. That’s pretty good company, too.