Chandler Simpson spent the first two innings of Monday’s Game 3 a victim of his own speed, and the ills of coming to a stop afterward.

You could argue that he displayed the dichotomy of Rays baseball in the span of 10 minutes. In the bottom of the first, having depleted both of starter Robert Gasser’s disengagements, he broke for second on a 1-1 changeup. It was a good jump, and it needed to be; William Contreras plucked the 90-mph pitch even as he spun into positioning, firing a perfect throw that carried Brice Turang’s glove back into the runner. Anyone else would have been out on the spot, but Simpson, one of the league’s fastest sprinters, already had his mitt on the bag, his momentum carrying the rest of his body through the attempted tag.

And through. Perhaps sensing how close the play would be, he threw himself at the bag, and this time he wasn’t able to cling to it as his body hurtled past, toward left field. He lay prone in the dirt as Brice Turang turned to dispose of him.

Two outs later, he was running again. Sal Frelick hit the ball hard to the opposite field, toward Tropicana Field’s infamous 315-foot foul pole, where Junior Caminero had buried the Cleveland Guardians’ season a week before. Simpson ran at full speed toward that unseen, six-foot diagonal wall, his eyes locked on the ball in flight. When it touched his glove—the instant it touched his glove, before the mitt was even closed—he looked down and measured what his future would be. His feet touched down at the base of the wall, and he had time to put up his free hand. It did no good. He crashed into it, the brim of his cap snapping down into his face before flying off, his body bent back as if being sucker punched. Even as the impact threw him onto his back, he was beginning to roll, trying to climb to his feet to get the ball back into the infield. Halfway up he staggered on his knees, his fingers losing their grip, and he had to begin again. But the out was secure, the runner forced back to first.

Simpson—one of the worst fielders, and perhaps even players, in all of baseball in 2025—was proof of the Rays’ philosophy, of finding the talent hidden within the body, finding complete ballplayers inside their external flaws. And in that play, amid a series of gracelessness and error, Simpson reflected what pure tools, unfiltered athleticism, could do.

A few innings later, we saw the limitations of that duology.

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