Todd Helton's Career is More Impressive than You Know

We interrupt the NFL Playoffs to talk about baseball.

It’s a stretch to say now’s a great time to talk MLB. The Super Bowl is in two weeks and these NFL playoffs have displayed great storylines: teams with bright futures (Packers and Texans), the Cinderella whose clock struck midnight (Lions) and the continued dominance of the Kansas City Swifts. 

Yet my mind is on last week’s induction of Colorado Rockies first baseman Todd Helton into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  

If I didn’t live in Denver, there’d be zero chance of me writing about Todd Helton. Growing up as a Mets fan, the Rockies meant little to me. They weren’t a division rival; They rarely received national attention. The main thing I remember about the Rockies is the inconvenience of staying up for a 9:40 EST first pitch whenever they hosted the Mets.

But having lived a 15 minute walk from Coors Field for the past few years and having attended several games (including the 2021 Home Run Derby and All-Star Game), I feel responsible to pay tribute to the greatest Rockie of all time. 

Fortunately, Todd Helton’s scrutinized career doesn’t need defending anymore. This past Tuesday, Helton - the man with the sixth highest career batting average of the last half century - received his Cooperstown call in his sixth year of eligibility. 

For those six years and for the previous two decades, Helton’s on-field accomplishments have been diminished by writers, pundits, and fans alike, because he played his entire career in Denver.

We’ve all heard of home field advantage, in a generic sense, but apparently a home field advantage in Denver is a liability to the sanctity of competition. 

The layman knows mile high elevation makes a batted ball go farther. Just like with golfing at altitude, any projectile sphere will carry a distance around 6-8% farther than at sea level. 

In addition to increased carry when bat meets ball, the batter has an advantage even before making contact. Denver’s thin air density reduces spin on a ball which makes explosive pitches a bit more bland. Rising fastballs hover right over the plate and breaking pitches don’t break as much. 

To sum up the Coors Field advantage, a batter who has fewer guesses where a pitch might enter the hitting zone has a higher rate of making contact. Once he makes contact, the ball will go farther. 

So considering Todd Helton played 17 years for the Rockies and batted in more games at altitude than any other player in MLB history, the debate has been about the legitimacy of his .316 batting average and 592 doubles. 

It’s a shame that many fans from the 29 major league teams need to validate these incredible numbers, especially as a proxy for the Hall of Fame. 

I’m here to support Helton and stand up to his detractors. It’s not only about how Helton’s Coors Field boost is overblown, but how other non-statistical factors make him a fit into Cooperstown. 

In Defense of Helton’s Offense

As I alluded to earlier, only five players since the post-expansion era- Gwynn, Carew, Boggs, Vlad Sr., Puckett -  have finished their career with a higher batting average than Helton. 

The knock on Helton’s average isn’t about how impressive it is. In a vacuum, we know .316 is awesome. But instead of comparing his number those Hall of Famers, we should look at his production relative to his Rockie counterparts. 

Excluding Rockies legend Larry Walker, who played during the steroid era, the Rockies have had five great offensive players since the post-steroid era (2004 - present). Helton, Troy Tulowitzki, Carlos Gonzalez, Nolan Arenado, and Charlie Blackmon. 

These players are the prototypical “Coors Field” effect superstars - each having their share of seasons of .300 BA, 30+ homers, multiple All-Star games, etc. 

The table below shows how their road (non-Coors) averages stack up against Todd Helton:

Helton’s performances on the road trounce Blackmon, Gonzalez, and Arenado. While his ratios are similar to Tulowitzki, Helton executed for twice as many seasons.

Moving beyond this comparison to Rockie greats, note that Helton’s overall career road average is .287. For comparison, that’s higher than fellow 2024 Inductee Adrian Beltre’s career average of .286. 

I bring up Helton’s road average to remind people, not just that .286 is impressive, but that he still played half his games away from Denver.

No matter the stadium, the strong majority of batters hit better in the comforts of their home ballpark. That also means batters face a relative “disadvantage” on the road.  

Therefore if Todd Helton’s home field advantage was greater than others’, his road disadvantage was greater. 

Returning to our earlier physics lesson, if you’re a batter expecting a certain lack of break on pitches for 81 home games, then you’ll have to compensate and readjust to these same pitches for 81 road games. 

If Helton was accustomed to pitches not breaking or staying over the plate at altitude, then every time he’d play without altitude, he’d have to adjust his timing to pitches with more break and more movement. 

Depending on the Rockies road schedule, a Rockie batter might be adjusting to and from sea level at least once a week. 

This straining, draining act of retraining your eyes is one reason many Rockies players fizzle out and fade away. Ownership issues aside (which I’ll get into later), a big reason why Rockies players don’t last too long in Purple and Black is because constantly readjusting to altitude isn’t sustainable for a prosperous career. 

You would think that batters would be lured by “inflated stats” at Coors Field and want to play in a hitter-friendly ballpark. But after a few years, the process of playing 162 games in and out of altitude is physically and mentally exhausting. 

In the Rockies three decade history, the only other offensive player to play 10+ years in Colorado is outfielder Charlie Blackmon.

Helton’s ability to constantly transition elevations for 17 years, while hitting .287 on the road, is remarkable. 

He played only for Colorado. 

If only Helton played for another team, baseball talking heads would have the A/B testing they crave. 

“Todd Helton or Coors Field?” is baseball’s equivalent of “Belichick or Brady?”

NFL fans have wanted absolute truth about which figurehead was most responsible for the Patriots dynasty. Over the last four NFL seasons, with Belichick and Brady featured on separate squads, we have a collective idea of the correct answer. 

But unlike seeing Brady in a Buccaneers uniform, we never saw Todd Helton in a Padres uniform. 

Which is a shame considering San Diego’s Petco Park is 13 ft above sea level and arguably the most pitcher-friendly ballpark. All we have from Helton is a sample size of 76 games as a visitor in San Diego. 

Wanna know what he batted? .338