Todd Helton Selected For the Baseball Hall of Fame On His Sixth Try

“Wow.”

Andrew Moffitt -age 12.

I don’t normally quote my son. He is 12 after all. But for a column about a ballplayer who had an exemplary career and who has had to wait for a long time to be recognized, I asked Junior to check out Todd Helton’s career numbers. His response is all you really need to know, for it is “wow” that should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Wow” entails the following: .316 career batting average, 101 runs per year, 101 runs-batted-in per year, top-25 all time in doubles and on-base-plus-slugging. He also walked 160 times more than he struck out. Hitter only? Nope: fifteenth all-time in put-outs (which is a sign of durability if nothing else). More importantly, he is third all-time in assists by a first baseman.

There are some guys who are borderline hall-of-famers, which is to say, not hall-of-famers. Helton is not one of those guys. He came out swinging (.280) in his first 35 games with the Colorado Rockies and never stopped. He acquired three Gold Glove awards for his defense at first base and four Silver Sluggers. And most importantly, he dominated for a decade: in a dozen years, he had 11 .300 seasons consecutively from 1998-2009. And to think, the starter for the Tennessee Volunteers college football team could have set his sights on the National Football League. Thankfully, he didn’t.

So, why the delay? Why six years to elect him? Two words: Coors Field. In this January 4, 2022 post in The Athletic, Peter Gammons lays out the reason why so many may have discounted Helton:

Facts: Helton’s 1.048 home OPS is the eighth-best ever among players appearing in more than 1,000 games, trailing names like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, (Larry) Walker and Barry Bonds.

The key word being, “home.” The Rockies’ offensive advantage during Helton’s playing days because of the thin, mile-high air are well-known. But, Helton wasn’t exactly a AA player on the road. He hit .287 with an .855 OPS. Interestingly, fellow inductee Adrian Beltre hit .286 for his career, good for 148th among inductees (Fun fact: Pete Rose hit .303 over 24 seasons, which is the average for an inductee).

Notably, the Rockies could never muster enough pitching to go with all of that hitting and the Rockies made just one postseason in Helton’s career. He struggled mightily in the 2007 divisional and championship series in his lone opportunity. But, he did hit .333 in his only World Series, a loss in four games that year to the Boston Red Sox.

But in his first year of eligibility, Helton seemingly became victim to the “He’ll still be on the ballot in five years so we don’t have to do this now” way of thinking. He received 16.5 percent of the vote from the Baseball Writers Association of America in 2019. That increased to 29.2 percent the next year, 44.9 percent in 2021 and 52 percent the year after that. Then Helton almost made the class of 2023, receiving 72.2 percent.

At least he knew it was coming. Larry Walker made it in ahead of him and the numbers get increasing. It just took longer than it should have. At least Billy Wagner can take solace. He received 73.8 percent this year. We’ve been advocating for him years, too.