Chandler Simpson once scored a run on a sacrifice fly to centerfield when he began the play on second base.
The video goes viral every now and then, with Simpson then at Georgia Tech and wheeling around third before sliding headfirst into home with one of the most exciting sac flies you’re ever going to see. That’s how fast Simpson is. That’s how much speed the Tampa Bay Rays left fielder possesses.
That’s the kind of speed that will be on display in the 2026 World Series when the Rays take on the Milwaukee Brewers. Both teams do things just a bit the old-fashioned way, and that includes speed and stolen bases.
Simpson is the epitome of that. He’s one of the fastest baseball players on the planet.
That picture at the top of this article is Simpson celebrating beating out a bunt in the clinching Game 6 of the 2026 ALCS against the Cleveland Guardians. That’s how exciting speed is. And if you were wondering, there was absolutely zero chance the speedy Simpson was getting thrown out on that particular bunt. He was way too fast.
But how fast is fast? Let’s break it down with some comparisons.
How Fast is Chandler Simpson?
If we measure by Statcast’s home plate to first base sprint speed, Simpson is the fastest player in all of MLB.
He runs that distance on average in 3.96 seconds.
Second place is Pittsburgh’s Jake Magnum, at 4.04 seconds on average.
Interestingly, Simpson only has the 31st-place average sprint speed at 29.4 feet per second, but that represents all situations on the diamond and means that there are simply moments when he knows to take the foot off the gas.
When Simpson runs full speed, there’s no one faster.
Statcast also has a fun stat called “Bolts,” and Simpson led MLB with 129 of those — in which he ran at least 30 feet per second during his fastest one-second window of movement on a play.
Simpson does bat from the left side, which helps him get to first base faster, but that Bolts statistic shows that he’s actually just purely the fastest player in the league anyway.
Chandler Simpson 40 Time, 100-Meter Dash
There are two major measures of speed in other sports: the NFL’s 40-yard dash and the Olympics’ 100-meter sprint.
The problem for our math is that a batter starts from a contact point and facing not the direction of the base they’re heading to, and then he has to get into a lean going toward first.
The 3.96 seconds from home to first, taken as a 90-foot trip, only translates to a 5.28-second 40-yard dash, but that isn’t Simpson starting in a sprinter’s crouch.
A better comparison is when Simpson scored from second base on a sac fly in college, because he can get into more of a sprinter’s start for his tag-up.
There, it took him about six seconds based on the video timestamps for his 180-foot run from second base to home plate. That’s more like it.
While noting that there’s a headfirst slide on that play from Simpson, six seconds for 180 feet would translate to 4.0 seconds for 40 yards, which would be the fastest 40-yard dash ever.
That would also be a 10.93 second 100-meter dash, which is quite fast, but not quite Olympic pace — and again, these circumstances are all different.
Still, it’s very clear Simpson is fast.
How Fast Is Chandler Simpson? Rays Speedster Compared to 40-Yard Dash, 100 Meters