The St. Louis Cardinals’ 50 greatest players

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#8 Ted Simmons C

Ted Simmons, belovedly known as “Simba” played 21 seasons in the big leagues, most for the St Louis Cardinals from 1968-1980 where he hit .298, with an on-base percentage of .366 and a slugging percentage of .459.

He was a first round draft pick of the Cardinals that played well during many dark seasons in the seventies with no chance to see the post season.

During the 1980 offseason, Simmons was included in a terrible trade to the Milwaukee Brewers along with Rollie Fingers” href=”http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=fingero01″>Rollie Fingers and Pete Vuckovich in exchange for Sixto Lezcano” href=”http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/lezcasi01.shtml”>Sixto Lezcano, David Green” href=”http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/greenda03.shtml”>David Green, Lary Sorensen” href=”http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sorenla01.shtml”>Lary Sorensen and Dave LaPoint” href=”http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/lapoida01.shtml”>Dave LaPoint.

Fingers won the Cy Young award in 1981 and Vuckovich won it in 1982, while the only player to make an impact for the Cardinals was LaPoint, who won 12 games in 1982 and 1983.

After making it to the World Series in 1982, he lost to the very Cardinals that traded him away. Simba hit home runs in game one and two of that contest, but only hit .174 in the 7-game series. After playing in Milwaukee for five seasons, Simmons was traded again to Atlanta where he ended his career.

In addition to being an 8-time all-star, he finished in the top 20 of MVP voting 7 times and won the silver slugger in his final year in St. Louis while batting .303 and slugging .505. Simmons also hit 174 of his career 248 home runs with the Cardinals.

Simmons posted a fWAR of 5.7 or higher in four of his seasons with the Cards and never posted less than a 3.7 fWAR over his last 10 seasons with the team, eventually totaling 49.2 fWAR for his Cardinals’ career, ranking sixth among all position players.

Paul Layton

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