Todd Helton's case for Hall of Fame hinges on Coors Field

Thu, Jan 20, 2022
MLB News (AP)

Editor's Note: The results of the Hall of Fame election will be announced on Jan. 25. In anticipation, AP Sports MLB Writers are looking at their favorite names on the ballot, even if they aren't headed to Cooperstown. Here, Jordan Shusterman examines the statistical case for Todd Helton.

Let's begin at the finish line.

On Sept. 25, 2013, 48,775 fans gathered at Coors Field to watch the Colorado Rockies take on the Boston Red Sox. It was more than had attended any other Rockies game that season besides the home opener and the Fourth of July.

In fact, no non-Opening Day, non-Fourth of July weekend, regular-season Rockies home game since that Wednesday evening has drawn more than 48,775 fans. On that night, Colorado was wrapping up a disappointing season in which it had been in first place for much of the first two months but was in last by the time Boston arrived for the final home series of the year.

But that didn't matter. Todd Helton was about to play his final home game in a Rockies uniform, and the city of Denver wasn't going to miss it.

If you knew nothing about Helton and had shown up to Coors Field on that September evening, you would have gotten a pretty good idea of how big a deal the dude was.

The pregame ceremony was elaborate.

"He's from Tennessee, but he's all Colorado now," the PA announcer boomed in his introduction.

Helton's daughter, Tierney, threw out the first pitch. The Rockies gifted Todd a horse. Red Sox DH David Ortiz, a legendary slugger in his own right, stood on the top step of the dugout giving an ovation. Helton's longtime friend and former college football teammate, Peyton Manning, was in the Colorado dugout to greet him.

On that day, it had been more than 16 years since Helton played his first game in Rockies purple a few weeks before his 24th birthday.

Against the Pirates in Pittsburgh, he came in with a bang: two hits, including a homer.

More than a month removed from his 40th birthday, Helton went out in similar fashion: two hits, including a homer.

Fast-forward a decade, and that place that was packed for Helton's grand finale is the No. 1 thing holding back his case for Cooperstown.

Hall of Fame discourse nowadays seems to frequently focus on why a player shouldn't get in, rather than why he should. In Helton's case, the reason is the undeniably hitter-friendly paradise that mile-high Coors Field was and still is. As voters have spent much of the past decade arguing about how much we can trust the validity of statistics posted by players accused of using steroids, Helton's career-long stay in Denver has been routinely side-eyed in a somewhat similar fashion.

No one is blaming Helton for staying a Rockie forever, but his inflated numbers are held against him nonetheless. Still, I don't believe Coors Field made him a Hall of Famer; I think Helton was a Hall of Famer who happened to play at Coors Field. He had greatness written all over him from the very beginning.

Helton was a two-sport star at Knoxville Central High School in Tennessee. He was good enough as a baseball player to be a second-round pick; the Padres chose him 55th overall in the 1992 MLB Draft, three picks before Oakland took Jason Giambi. But Helton was too good at football to turn down a scholarship offer to his hometown school, so off to the University of Tennessee he went.

Helton spent the fall months in Knoxville on the gridiron and the spring months as a walk-on on the baseball team, playing first base and pitching. But injuries knocked him down a quarterback depth chart that featured Heath Shuler and Peyton Manning, and by Helton's junior year, baseball became his main focus.

It paid off. Helton won the Dick Howser Trophy as the best player in college baseball with a season for the ages: a 1.66 ERA on the mound and 20 home runs at the plate. In his three years with the Vols, Helton posted a 2.24 ERA and a ridiculous .370/.473/.636 slash line in 903 plate appearances. He was the Shohei Ohtani of the SEC.

The Rockies selected him eighth overall in the 1995 draft, and two years later, he was in the big leagues.

Now, it's undeniable that the high altitude and spacious gaps in the Coors Field outfield gave Helton's numbers a boost.

At Coors, he was utterly dominant. His 1.048 OPS is seventh all time in Home OPS, behind only those of Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Jimmie APx, Larry Walker, Barry Bonds and Lou Gehrig. Helton's overall career slash line of .316/.414/.539 is matched or bested by only those already in Cooperstown.

Even if you round down the standards a bit, the only other career .300/.400/.500 hitter - something I care greatly about - not in the Hall is Manny Ramirez, who is being kept out for his PED suspensions, not his performance. The only three active .300/.400/.500 hitters? Joey Votto, Mike Trout and Juan Soto. Yes, Coors Field helped Helton clear those thresholds, but he cleared them easily.

Also working against Helton is that his peak just so happened to coincide perfectly with arguably the highest peak of any hitter we've ever seen: that of fellow NL West slugger Barry Bonds.

But if 1997 was Larry Walker's pièce de resistance, 2000 was Helton's greatest work of art. That season, he put up a line awfully similar to his collegiate days - .372/.463/.698 - in Major League Baseball. Against the best pitchers in the world! Not some poor freshman from East Tennessee State thrown to the wolves on a Tuesday afternoon.

But despite leading the NL in WAR (not that anyone knew what WAR was at the time), Helton finished fifth in NL MVP voting, likely due to Colorado's fourth-place finish in the NL West, the division that housed Bonds and the actual MVP winner, Jeff Kent.

Still, 2000 was just the start of an epic run for Helton. From 2000 to '05, only Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, who were putting up some of the greatest statistical seasons the game has ever seen, produced more bWAR. That's incredible!

And if the raw numbers still seem fishy, might I point you to the wonderful world of park-adjusted stats? OPS+ accounts for park factors and compares hitters to a league-average mark of 100.

Over that six-season span, only Bonds, Albert Pujols, Jason Giambi and Manny Ramirez posted a higher OPS+ than Helton's mark of 158. Here's another way to put that in perspective: The highest single-season OPS+ posted by Nolan Arenado in his eight years in Colorado was 133, in 2018. Helton posted a 133 OPS+ in 2007 - and had six other seasons with a higher mark than that.

It's also important to remember that the Coors Field effect, historically, has hampered Rockies hitters on the road as much as it helps them at home. Adjusting back and forth between playing at altitude and playing at sea level is not something many hitters in franchise history have been able to do successfully. Yet Helton hit .287/.386/.469 for his career on the road! His .855 OPS away from home is just a shade below that of Ken Griffey Jr. (.860) and ahead of guys such as Sammy Sosa (.851), Eddie Murray (.838) and Harold Baines (.812).

Helton also exhibited some of the best plate discipline of any hitter in the modern era. He is one of 33 hitters in the Integration Era (since 1947) to have more walks than strikeouts in a career with at least 9,000 plate appearances. Eighteen of those players are in the Hall of Fame, and Helton is one of only two who played into the 2010s (the other being Hall of Famer Chipper Jones).

The league-wide strikeout rate, which was 16.9% during Helton's rookie year in 1998, had climbed to 19.9% by the time he retired. But Helton didn't budge; his career strikeout rate was 12.4%.

The walks, meanwhile, were also a product of his being downright feared by opposing pitchers. Helton's 185 intentional walks are 26th all time, ahead of the tallies of several other iconic sluggers, including Jim Thome (173) and Frank Thomas (168). What's more, 151 of Helton's IBBs came during 2000-07, a span in which he ranked behind only Vladimir Guerrero (194) and Barry Bonds (390 LOL) in that category.

Another point in Helton's favor is something that might be overrated but is still exceptionally rare in the modern era: He played for only one team. The reality is most of the best players in any sport usually end up on another team at some point. That's not a knock on the countless all-time greats who bounced among a few teams before hanging up the spikes, but it's a thing.

To me, this is not about any sort of mythic concept of loyalty in sports. Rather, it's about appreciating when the circumstances allow for a player to stick in one place for his entire career. In this case, our memories of Helton will always be in the Mile High City. He was a Denver icon from day one to the end of the road.

Helton is one of 47 players in MLB history to play with one team for an entire career of at least 17 seasons. Thirty-six of those players are already Hall of Famers; Helton should be the 37th. The history of Rockies baseball is a relatively short one, but Helton's career spans an enormous portion of it. He debuted in a lineup with Walker, Andres Galarraga and Vinny Castilla and played his final game with Arenado, Charlie Blackmon and Troy Tulowitzki. He played with Eric Young Sr. and Eric Young Jr.!

Even more than Walker and more than Arenado ever got to be, Helton is the Colorado Rockie. He's the franchise leader in nearly every offensive category and likely will be for a very long time.

Now, this is Helton's fourth year on the BBWAA ballot for the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In the year following the induction of his longtime teammate Walker, Helton has begun to see a boost in support from voters who might have previously been skeptical that someone who played so many years at Coors could deserve Hall induction alongside his venerable at-sea-level peers.

Walker of course had the benefit of proving his offensive prowess beyond Colorado, but if you look at their Rockies tenures, you'll find that Helton was every bit the hitter Walker was:

- Walker's 10 years in Colorado (1995-2004): 1,170 G, 4,795 PA, .334/.426/.618, 1.044 OPS, 147 OPS+, 12.3% walk rate, 13.7% K rate

- Helton's 10-year peak in Colorado (1998-2007): 1,543 G, 6,657 PA, .332/.432/.585, 1.017 OPS, 144 OPS+, 14.6% walk rate, 11.3% K rate

Don't get me wrong: Walker was the better overall player. But his candidacy was held up until his 10th and final year of eligibility for mostly one reason: Coors Field. Helton shouldn't have to experience the same wait.

After receiving 44.9% of the vote last year, Helton has gained at least 16 checkmarks from returning voters who have shared their ballots publicly. It is exceedingly rare for a player to cross the 50% threshold - Helton currently sits at 56.7% - and not eventually get in. With Helton having six more years on the ballot, things are looking good.

Ultimately, when it comes to Hall of Famers, you know one when you see one. Helton had Cooperstown written all over him from his amateur days in Tennessee to his final at-bats at Coors Field. And whenever he does finally get the call, you can be sure that a good portion of those 48,755 fans will make the trek to Cooperstown to celebrate their franchise icon.

Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for AP Sports. He lives in D.C. but is a huge Seattle Mariners fan and loves watching the KBO, which means he doesn't get a lot of sleep. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.