Andrelton Simmons is Getting Better but Should Not be Rostered

The two things we know about Andrelton Simmons offensively is that he will not be good at stealing bases and he will not take many walks. The rest of whatever Simmons is offensively is up for interpretation.

In 2012 he hit .289. In 2013 he hit 17 home runs. In 2014 he didn’t really do much of anything. Despite the rough 2014 season, there is little doubt that Simmons has offensive tools. Just how powerful and impactful those tools are in coordinance with each other is the question we need to answer if we ever plan on owning Simmons in fantasy leagues or playing him in the daily formats.

The one fact I know, having spoken to a few members of the Braves front office over the past few seasons, is that the pull happy fly ball hitting Simmons is not the type of offense they are looking for out of Simmons. Maybe it was the fact that batting practice for the Braves used to be a miniature home run derby with Justin Upton, Evan Gattis, Freddie Freeman, Jason Heyward, and Juan Francisco that caused Simmons to want to show his muscle to the rest of the group. That is just speculation, but it is not speculation that Simmons hit a good amount of home runs in 2013 and his swing started to be that of a dead pull power hitter’s.

So far this year, in both watching the Braves games and in analyzing the numbers, Simmons swing and approach at the plate has been refreshing. Mind you this is only a week, of course, but his fly ball rate is down from 31% to 12.5% and his line drive rate is up to 20.8%, the highest it has been. Looking at his spray chart, he has three line drives to the right side of the outfield and three line drives to the left side. Two of his four extra base hits have been to the opposite field. He has no pulled fly balls.

To me this means a few things. It means Simmons has and is taking a noted effort to detach himself from the dead pull homer happy approach. It means that we will likely not be seeing 17 home runs any time soon. Lastly it means that the days of a BABIP under .265 are likely long gone. All of these assumptions are based off of this being who Simmons is and the first week not being noise. I make that assumption because simply seeing what Simmons is doing at the plate is so different from what we have seen in the past, that his 2014 was so poor that he certainly has tried to make adjustments, and that the Braves have hired a new hitting coach and I would bet high helping Simmons become effective – as he and Freeman are the only certain long term Braves on offense – is one of the tasks he has been burdened with.

So, what does all of this mean from a fantasy perspective? To me, Simmons’ most value in the fake format was the 2013 version. Hitting .250 and belting 17 home runs has a lot of value for a shortstop this day and age. Hitting .280 with 8 is not quite as great. If Simmons continues to hit, he is likely to move up in the order and might even be a three hitter on a team lacking quality options, but even if that does occur his run production will not mask his lack of power or steals.

Simmons is currently owned in 16% of Yahoo! leagues, and I would recommend he only be owned in the deepest of leagues. Unfortunately, fantasy leagues just do not value guys like Simmons as much as the real life game does. Even though he is making strides towards being a productive hitter and a 100 wRC+ season is not inconceivable, his fantasy production simply is not there.