Quote:
Originally Posted by mr2686
I'm old school, and Johnny Bench is one of my all time favorite players...best catcher of all time in my opinion as well. With that said, Bench was a "slugger" more than a hitter. You can take all the new metric WAR this and that, and that's fine, but Simmons was a better "hitter". Simmons hit over .300 seven times and had more BB's than K's. All I can say is that you try catching 1771 games (those are the games he played catcher, not just played) and still have a career .285 avg. Too many people lump catchers with other position players, and that's a shame because it's the toughest position out there...and comparing Simmons with Baines is just wrong on so many levels.
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Bench had an OPS+ of 126, Simmons 118. If you are going strictly by batting average, Munson was better, so was Manny Sanguillen. I am not aware of any metric that says Simmons was the best hitting catcher of his era.