Pine Plains star named Freeman Player of Year
Pine Plains High standout catcher Cat Simmons was named Freeman Player of the Year.
Cat Simmons has gained a reputation.
It’s not a bad rep, just one that all power hitters acquire. Teams choose to pitch around her and, even when they did, the outfielders stood as far back as possible. The Pine Plains junior catcher also received what can be considered a compliment to her ability, but is about as welcomed as a Christmas fruit cake — the unintentional intentional walk.
“It sucks, but it doesn’t suck,” Simmons remarked. “I got walked a lot. It didn’t bother me, though, because I knew that my team was going to pick me up behind me.
“I would do anything to help my team: hit the ball consistently, block as many pitches and make my pitchers look good and be there for them,” said the Freeman’s Player of the Year, who was an integral piece of a Bombers
team that got all the way to the state Class C championship game.
“We had a great run. I’m proud of my team. I’m proud of my pitcher. It was great,” the veteran catcher said.
Although she was walked 19 times, Simmons was still a dangerous hitter.
She batted .567 with 38 hits and 38 RBI. Among those 38 hits were nine doubles, a pair of triples and seven home runs that translated into a 1.075 slugging percentage. She drove in five runs, including a decisive grand slam, in the Section 9 title game.
Most notably, Simmons never struck out.
“She challenges every pitch. She’s just a savvy, smart player,” Pine Plains coach Les Funk said. “I don’t know how many times she’s come up with huge hits. It’s not always a home run. There’s times where we needed a base hit and you have a kid has the power to hit like that, but she’s smart enough to know that she can get a
base hit and drive in some runs to start something.”
“I had a different approach because coach told me that people are going to walk you,” Simmons said. “I just had to be patient at the plate and just do my thing, I guess.”
Simmons was moved from the cleanup spot to third in the batting order this season.
“I was thinking about it before the season. I know she’s more comfortable in the cleanup spot and that’s something she’s always been,” Funk noted. “I know that if I was an opposing coach that looked at somebody like Cat, the thing is you’re not going to let her beat you.
“We have hitters like Jo (Schmidt) and Haley (Strang) that, if anything, they’ll going to work her. We got to use that to our advantage, because we have two great hitters behind her. I just wanted to make sure that, if they’re going to walk her, they’re going to have to go through two of our better hitters.”
Benefiting from Simmons getting on base, Schmidt batted .554 and Strang .564, combining for 87 hits and 75 RBI.
“I knew if Haley was behind
me or Johanna was behind me, they were going to come through and hit the ball and drive me in,” Simmons said. “He could put people behind me and teams paid for it if they walked me.
“Going through the year, getting known was more like a habit, but I knew that my teammates would hit the ball behind me,” she said.
“We worked on seeing different pitches and locating where they were going to be, hitting outside pitches to opposite field with power. I’ve been doing that a lot now, but I haven’t really hit with power to right field. It’s a work in progress.”
Simmons worked on inside pitches, something that paid off when she hit a big RBI double off Greenville ace Ava Fitzmaurice in the seventh inning in a 4-0 victory in the state semifinals.
”The year before when I played with Ava on the travel team, I couldn’t hit anything inside, but then this year it’s all we’ve been working on,” Simmons noted. “She threw me inside, because she didn’t think I would hit them there.
“I actually hit them
pretty well now. The outside pitches are what’s got to be worked on.”
Simmons caught and pitched while playing baseball until age 13. She switched to softball at the urging of teammate Alex McKenzie, this year’s Freeman Player of the Year. She couldn’t make the conversion to softball pitching, but years of blocking and framing baseball pitches helped develop her into one of the best catchers in the area.
“We’d always told each other that we’d make it really far. We just wanted to do it for Tia (Fumasoli),” said Simmons, referring to the Bombers’ only senior.
“We have a great bond with the younger ones. Just going forward, we have a brighter future with them, because they are good and we have a lot of potential coming up. We can do better than we did this year,” she added.
“Losing one (player) this year helps us, but she’s a key role that we’re going to have to fill. We could always count on her to be there and be positive and pick everybody up. She’s going to be a hard one to fill, but we can definitely get (back) there.”