Chandler Simpson, Rays speedster and occasional No. 3 hitter, has never hit a homer in the Major Leagues.
Just look at his MLB.com player card to prove it: “HR: 0,” in 985 regular season plate appearances, and none in the postseason, either, as befits one of the lightest-hitting players in the bigs. Another season of this, and we’re going to be talking about the most plate appearances in a big league career without a single homer, a mark that he’s more than halfway towards reaching – at least since the start of the Live Ball era in 1920.
That doesn’t even tell the whole of it. Simpson has never had a single barrel, which is a batted ball that has the best combination of exit velocity and launch angle. Only one ball in his entire career would have been a home run in any other park in the Majors, and even that – this Sept. 15 double against the A’s – would have only gone out of the short porch in Yankee Stadium, and nowhere else.
Which, really, is all fine. It’s simply not his game. He helps the Rays win in many other ways.
But all that doesn’t mean he’s never hit a homer, either. In more than 3,000 plate appearances over eight seasons, starting as an 18-year-old playing for the 2019 Brookhaven Bucks in a wood-bat summer league, on up through his time at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and then Georgia Tech, and then finally parts of four seasons in the Rays' Minor League system before reaching the bigs, it’s not zero homers. It’s three ...
… kind of, anyway.
What actually has to happen for a player like Simpson to go deep? We assumed that given his incredible speed and lack of power, it wouldn’t be about “going deep” at all. But, actually, only one of those three was an inside-the-park job. We went and found the videos for each. Here’s what a Simpson dinger looks like.
The first homer: Feb. 25, 2022
Georgia Tech 14, Gardner-Webb 0
Not just a home run. A grand slam. Seriously. Look at the fifth inning box score from a chilly February day, early in the first week of the Georgia Tech season.
Simpson, C homered to right field, 4 RBI (2-0 BB); Anderson, J scored; Borden, T scored; Hall, Co scored.
When you watch the video here, make sure you put that sound on. You'll want to hear the ping of the metal bat.
A grand slam, but not, incredibly, an inside-the-parker, as Simpson hit it in the air, and he hit it hard. He still needed just a little help. Gardner-Webb right fielder Curtis Robison had a bead on it. He got to the wall. He jumped, and he got a glove on it ... which then deflected the ball over the wall, as Simpson circled the bases incredulously.
He didn’t hit it out of the park, and he didn’t beat out fielders with his incredible speed, but it was still a homer – his first and only in three seasons in college.
“But, hey,” Simpson told USA Today in 2025, “it still counted.’’
It sure did.
The second homer: June 7, 2024
Montgomery 5, Biloxi 4
Two years later, Simpson – who had been drafted in the second round a few weeks after his lone collegiate homer – was playing for Double-A Montgomery in the Southern League. Batting against former Milwaukee prospect Adam Seminaris, Simpson slapped a ball down the third base line, and you can see in the video that he hesitated, thinking it might have gone foul. That part is key, that Simpson didn’t even get off to an elite jump, because this one was the classic inside-the-parker you might expect.
Mostly, anyway. The third baseman, playing off the line, never had a chance to get to this ball, and likely wouldn’t have been able to throw out Simpson even if he could. This was a double at minimum, no matter what. The problem, for left fielder Zavier Warren, came when he was unable to corral the ball as it skipped past the short wall near the on-field bullpens. The ball got behind him and rolled all the way to the wall, and Simpson was off to the races.
Could it have been a double or triple with an error attached? Sure, maybe, though unlikely because Warren never really got that close to the ball. Would that have sucked all of the joy out of the entire thing? It sure would have.
“When I hit the inside-the-park home run,” Simpson told WAKA News shortly thereafter, “that was my first one in the Minor Leagues, so just to see the one under the home run when I look at the stats up there is pretty cool.”
Even non-power hitters want to get one on the board. Everyone does.
The third homer: March 21, 2026
Rays 3, Twins 2
OK, this doesn’t “count,” officially, because this was a Spring Training game, held at Charlotte Sports Park, the spring home of the Rays on Florida’s Gulf Coast. It was at least off a Major League pitcher, given that Dan Altavilla has pitched in parts of eight seasons in the bigs.
Still, it was a real homer hit off a real pitcher – and yet even then, he didn’t get to enjoy a slow trot around the field. The ball hit a railing beyond the fence and immediately bounced back onto the field, resulting in Simpson waiting at second base while the umpires conferred and confirmed that it was, indeed, a homer.
“I knew it cleared. I saw it hit the wood, but I stopped at second just to make sure,” Simpson said later that day. “So when they waved their finger around, I'm like, 'Oh, yeah, I gotta jog, hit the [Caminero] celebration and enjoy it.'”
Unlike the others, we actually have some data on this one, coming in a Statcast-enabled spring park, and while it was hardly Judgian, it wasn’t exactly a cheapie, either. Simpson took this one at 99.9 mph off the bat – an official “hard-hit ball” – which, at the time, was the third-hardest ball Simpson had hit in the air since being promoted to the Rays.
There’s a fun postscript here, though. That was months ago, and Simpson never really came close to hitting another one. It’s exceedingly unlikely he will in the World Series, either, against Milwaukee’s top-level pitching and defense. It’s not the goal. Simpson is 3-for-8 in the first two games -- all singles -- with two stolen bases.
When asked after the spring homer if this was the start of a new normal for Chandler Simpson, elite power hitter, he laughed it off.
“Hell nah. Nah, nah, nah, nah,” Simpson said, back in March. “I was really just trying to hit the ball to shortstop still, and then it just so happened I hit that.”
Simpson’s hard-hit rate in his rookie year of 2025 was a mere 17%, among the weakest in baseball. (Kyle Schwarber and Shohei Ohtani were near 60%, for context.) This year, it was even lower, at just 14%.
Or, at least, it was. In the AL Division Series against the Yankees and AL Championship Series against the Guardians, Simpson’s hard-hit rate jumped to a massive – for him – 31%. That’s topped by the 102.1 mph rocket he sliced to right for a triple in Game 3 of the ALCS, which is now the hardest-hit ball he’s ever hit in the air. If he’s going to get another four-bagger, it’s most likely going to be with his legs, clearly.
But maybe, just maybe, the new most shocking moment in baseball history is yet to come. Maybe it won’t be Yandy Diaz or Junior Caminero who puts one over the fence in Milwaukee or Tampa Bay. Maybe it’ll be Simpson. After, all, now we know what that has to look like.