Players to Celebrate in 2012: Todd Helton

This is the third part of a series celebrating players we have enjoyed watching for many years who we might be seeing for the last time in 2012. Today we celebrate Todd Helton. Helton actually has a contract that runs through 2013, but the Colorado icon is 38 and the contract was front loaded and he wouldn't be leaving a large sum of money on the table to walk away after this coming season. In light of his physical struggles the past few seasons, it's not out of the range of possibilities that 2012 could be Helton's swan song.

Placing Todd Helton's career in historical context is difficult for the same reason it has been to do so for Larry Walker. Helton has played his entire career for the Rockies and Coors Field is about as bad a stigma to baseball writers as PEDs seem to be. To this writer, judging Helton's numbers due to his home ballpark would be a large mistake. After all, Helton has a career on-base percentage of .421. Thin air does not aid taking a walk. Even if you took away his massive amount of intentional walks (183), Helton would still have an on-base percentage over .400 for his career.

What is often forgotten concerning Rockies' players is that despite playing half of their games at Coors, a large part of their road travels take them to tough hitters parks in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Todd Helton has played 1,039 games at Coors but has also played 333 games at those three sights. While that totally doesn't alter perceptions for his career splits from a home/road perspective, it certainly makes it somewhat understandable. And Helton's .869 career road OPS is nothing to sneeze at. That's a very good number. Yes, the home stats are incredible, but we can't say he was nothing on the road.

Helton's back problems have sapped his power in recent seasons. He hasn't slugged .500 since 2005. But he continues to hit and four of the six seasons since 2005 have been over .300. Plus, only one of those six seasons saw his OBP drop below .385. We all want first basemen who hit a lot of homers. Helton isn't that player anymore. His loss of power is similar to that of Don Mattingly who also struggled with back problems. But unlike Mattingly, Helton had a peak longer than Mattingly's but has managed to be quietly effective for a longer period beyond the peak.

And what a peak it was. Between 1999 and 2005, his OPS figures were in order: .981, 1.162, 1.116, 1.006, 1.088, 1.088 and .979. Between 2000 and 2005, his OBP was never lower than .429 and his batting average was never lower than .329. Between 1999 and 2005, Helton averaged 34 homers a season and 48 doubles! During those six seasons, Helton scored 741 runs and knocked in 807! Those were amazing seasons. Helton's teams were never very good through those years. But despite that, between 2000 and 2005, Helton had three top ten finishes in MVP voting and top twenty finishes in the other two seasons. He also won three Gold Gloves Awards and four Silver Slugger Awards.

Throughout his career, Todd Helton has also been a very good fielding first baseman. Baseball-reference.com gives Helton 9.8 dWAR for his career and Fangraphs gives him 56.7 runs above average for his career in the field. Add his defense on top of a great offensive career and you have had a treat of a career. It's hard not to like that Helton has struck out more than two hundred times less in his career than he's walked and Coors or no Coors, a lifetime slash line of .323/.421/.550 cannot be dismissed lightly. OPS+ takes into account park effects and Helton still comes out with a 136 OPS+ for his career.

Helton has been a class act and a graceful performer. Celebrate his career in 2012. It might be your last chance to do so.

The Todd Helton Conundrum

Last year made it easy for those who are uncomfortable with Todd Helton's place in MLB history. The long-time first baseman for the Colorado Rockies seemed to hit a wall. At the age of 36, Helton batted only .256 and finished with an OPS+ of 85. Those who were uncomfortable with Helton as one of the great first basemen of all time felt relief that for the second year out of three, Helton dealt with health issues and finished under league average in batting statistics. The bad finish mercifully left Helton short of some of those magic Hall of Fame numbers. He wouldn't be a factor for the Rockies anymore after a year like that, would he?

So here it is a year later and at 37, the new debate with Todd Helton is whether or not he should go to the All Star Game. Surprise! His resurgent 2011 coupled with a terrific 2009 now puts the whole Helton problem back to square one. Helton's place in the game is again a problem. Why is Helton's career a problem? It's not because of PEDs. It's not because he was only occasionally brilliant. He was brilliant more than he wasn't.. Helton sparks such heated debates because of where he plays his home games. Todd Helton has played half of his major league games at Coors Field, a ballpark where a special machine had to be put in place to deaden the ball a little bit to keep it from flying all through the thin air.

In some ways, the Coors aspect of Helton's career casts a larger shadow than what Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire have to deal with. At least in their cases, it can be said that they were more talented than all the other...umm....creative body changers. Neither of those players were considered to play at "easy" ballparks to hit. For years, the Colorado Rockies have been known for extreme home and away splits. Fairly or not, Todd Helton is lumped into the same category. He is the successor to Larry Walker, who finished his own questioned career short of those magic vote-worthy numbers.

Jump back now to 2011. Todd Helton has a slash line of .315/.389/.523 while playing impressively in the field. In this second year of the new era of the pitcher, those numbers add up to a 133 OPS+. Ah, but what about that troublesome Coors home and away split? Uh oh. Problem. Helton's road OPS this season is .953. His home OPS is .880.

And what of his home and away splits for his career? Okay, maybe you have a smoking gun there. His career road OPS is .875. That's still pretty darn good. But his home OPS for his career is 1.076. That's a 200 point difference. Helton has hit 76 more homers at home than on the road. That is consistent with his slugging percentage at home being 140 points higher.

But Helton is certainly not the first player to have extreme splits at home and on the road. Wade Boggs finished with a home OPS 147 points higher than on the road. Ernie Banks had a home split 110 points higher than on the road. Sandy Koufax had a home ERA that was 56 points lower than on the road. Players don't often choose where they get to play their home games. Sometimes those home games work for you and sometimes they don't.

But Helton has performed in the age of knowledge. More Hall of Fame voters are conscious of advanced analyses. And as such, his historical context will be more hotly debated than perhaps Ernie Banks was in his time on the ballot. It is because of this new reality that Helton's sub-par 2010 made those bracing for such a debate to sigh in huge relief. 2011 adds another dimension to the future debate. Helton's Hall of Fame Gray Ink is already over standard. His Hall of Fame Monitor and Standards are already in black ink. The debate will happen. It would have happened if 2010 ended his career. The season he's putting together in 2011 will not make the debate any easier.

Now should he make the All Star Team?

Heltoning it on the Head

A player has now, at the age of 34, amassed 2086 career hits, 321 homers, 504 doubles, 1181 RBI, a lifetime .328 batting average and has a lifetime OPS of .997. Future member of the Hall of Fame? The player is Todd Helton and his problem is his home field. Helton has played his entire career for the Colorado Rockies and unfortunately, his career is hard to take seriously because of it. Is that fair?

Well, one thing is certain: If he had a few more years like last year, it would have been a moot conversation. He had a .777 OPS last year and only hit .264. He became a forgotten man after that. But he is at the center of the Rockies resurgence this year and is batting .329 with an OPS of .919. So it is safe to assume that last year was an anomaly based on injuries or something.

But since he is back, the debate again comes up because, as this year proves, if Helton can put a few more decent seasons together, he's going to have a lot of good career numbers. The debate will rage around where he plays his home games and proof will be sought after by his career home/away splits. So let's look at them.

Home: .362/.469/.647
Away: .304/.394/.492

That's a pretty big difference. The BA is still very good as is the OBP. But the slugging certainly suffers. Is this a knock only on Todd Helton. Is his home playing field a singular event for just him? Are there others in history that are similar? Certainly Hank Aaron is a prime example of a true superstar. His stats at home and away are so similar over his storied career that they are within percentage points. Mickey Mantle suffered some in the home/away splits but still slugged .548 on the road during his career.

Here are a couple of Hall of Fame splits. The Fan will reveal the players after:

Player 1:

Home: .290/.349/.538
Away: .258/.311/.461

Quite a difference there.

Player 2:

Home: .354/.443/.491
Away: .302/.387/.395

Big difference there too.

Player 3:

Home: .320/.383/.506
Away: .290/.356/.469

All three of the above are in the Hall of Fame and all three have fairly significant number differences home and away. There could be more examples, but home and away splits are unavailable (at least on www.baseball-reference.com) before 1973. The players? Ernie Banks, Wade Boggs and George Brett.

So, there you have it. Three players have all gotten into the Hall of Fame despite significant differences in their home and away splits. But where the Rockies play their home games (whatever they call it now!) seems to have an even more biased history than other former hitters' parks. That is so much the case that Helton's unbelievable numbers in 2000 and 2001 are always blamed on his home field without a hint of steroids. Name any other player where that would be the case?

Steps have been taken in Denver to change some of the advantage the hitters have. The Humidor (whatever that is) is one example. One doesn't hear as much about pitchers not being able to succeed there now as there was in the past. Perhaps that will work in Helton's favor if he stays with the Rockies over his career.

Matt Holliday certainly heard the same whispers and his time in Oakland seemed to cement them as the truth. But now that Holliday is with the Cardinals and again whopping the ball, perhaps that will die down too.

What is a shame, perhaps, is that nobody really knows how good Todd Helton really was or is. As long as his past and present is tied up with the Rockies, his Hall of Fame resume will be debated for a long, long time.