Archive for Todd Helton

The All-Star game rosters were announced Sunday, which of course means chaos ensued when the selections were revealed. Player X shouldn’t have gotten in while Stats-Stud Y should have been a lock. Since many of the selections were pretty predictable, those snubbed from the festivities, as usual, garnered a tremendous amount of attention.

Of those who were not selected, perhaps nobody was more egregiously snubbed than Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The 24-year-old center fielder ranks eighth among National League hitters with a .395 wOBA. His 6.9 fielding runs derived from solid play at the toughest outfield position ranks third in the league behind Shane Victorino (also snubbed, but on the final vote, unlike McCutchen), and Troy Tulowitzki.

All told, his 4.6 wins above replacement ranks him ahead of everyone except the two Joses: Bautista and Reyes. Any list of first-half MVP contenders would be incomplete without his name, and yet fans, players and the coaching staff of the National League team somehow found a way to select other less-qualified players. That he isn’t even included on the final ballot for fan voting — the list includes Victorino, Todd Helton, Ian Kennedy, Michael Morse and Andre Ethier — further perpetuates the madness. McCutchen is one of the top players in the sport right now, better than Jay Bruce, Carlos Beltran, Chipper Jones, Morse and Ethier. Yet the first three members of that group were voted in by the players, and the latter two still have a fighting chance of making the team.

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I know, I know: Hall of Fame discussions can be a bit tiresome these days. Still, something struck me a bit odd during a conversation with my father recently that merited further discussion amongst all the loyal readers and commenters here. Our conversation dealt with Todd Helton of the Colorado Rockies and whether or not his career accomplishments and accolades are “worthy” of inclusion into baseball’s hallowed hall. Essentially, I had contended that it would be very difficult for a Rockie to be inducted. For pitchers, the reasons should be a bit more obvious, but for hitters, they would have to have numbers great enough to transcend the initial, and likely true, belief that they benefited from playing in Coors Field.

Based on win probability statistics, Helton has been one of the, if not the, best first basemen in the National League since his Rookie of the Year-winning 1998 campaign. From 2000-2004 he contributed 26.88 WPA wins, 30.51 context-neutral wins, and averaged 69.78 BRAA per season. Other than his 2002 WPA, which ranked 5th, he finished #1 or #2 amongst NL first basemen in each of these categories, each year.

Since his career began in 1998, and amongst those with at least 1,000 games in that span, Helton’s .332 BA ranks second to only Ichiro Suzuki; his .432 OBP ranks second to none other than Barry Bonds; and his 1.017 OPS ranks fourth to Bonds, Albert Pujols, and Manny Ramirez.

The Hall of Fame tests created by Bill James may be a bit outdated in not accounting for park factors and such but still do a good job of stacking up current numbers against Cooperstown equivalencies and/or averages. Based on these it would seem Helton is a borderline case:

Black Ink: Helton=16, Average=27
Gray Ink: Helton=141, Average=144
HOF Standards: Helton=50, Average=50
HOF Monitor: Helton=154, Average > 100

He vastly exceeds the monitor, which serves to award points based on milestones and numbers accrued, but currently falls short in the ink tests; Black Ink measures how often a player leads the league while Gray looks at those who finish amongst the top performers. What hurts Helton from a statistical standpoint is that he looks to be borderline based on the aforementioned tests yet his career home/road splits confirm the theories of Coors dissenters:

Home: 3617 PA, .363/.461/.653, 1.114 OPS, 190 HR, 341 K
Road: 3488 PA, .294/.394/.494, .888 OPS, 120 HR, 467 K

Now, his road numbers are still quite good, and are well above average, but they definitely pale in comparison to the Ruthian efforts at home. Ultimately, though, I’ll pose the following questions:

a) When all is said and done will Helton be inducted? (Keep in mind “will” does not necessarily mean “deserve”)
b) What would it take for a Rockies hitter to be inducted? Equally impressive home/road splits?

Coming into play yesterday Braves third baseman Chipper Jones sported a .418/.495/.674 slash line, thanks in large part to his 77 hits in 184 at bats. In an 8-1 win over Milwaukee last night, Jones went 2-4 with two walks, raising his numbers to .420/.500/.670. Make no mistake: Chipper is playing out of his mind right now and doing much of the gruntwork in preventing the Braves from getting off to a terrible start. However, he is not the only player in recent history to get off to such a torrid start.

Trent McCotter, in a Retrolist message, passed along the following five instances of a player starting his season 77-184, or better:

Andres Galarraga, 1993: 80-184, .435/.462/.701, 1.163 OPS
Rod Carew, 1983: 79-184, .427/.473/.535, 1.008 OPS
Lenny Dykstra, 1990: 77-184, .418/.486/.546, 1.032 OPS
Paul O’Neill, 1994: 77-184, .418/.511/.703, 1.214 OPS
Todd Helton, 2000: 77-184, .418/.511/.815, 1.326 OPS

Pretty impressive stuff. Trent also acknowledged that this did not take into account years when a good amount of play by play files are missing so there may be others not mentioned here.

Curious about what happened from here I looked at the overall numbers of these players as well as what happened from their 185th at bat on. Here are their numbers starting with at bat #185 (their season totals in parentheses):

Andres Galarraga: 94-286, .329/.366/.538 (.370/.403/.602)
Rod Carew: 81-287, .282/.370/.331 (.339/.409/.411)
Lenny Dykstra: 115-406, .283/.386/.390 (.325/.418/.441)
Paul O’Neill: 54-188, .295/.408/.503 (.359/.460/.603)
Todd Helton: 139-396, .351/.440/.644 (.372/.463/.698)

While all five posted OPS counts over 1.000 during their 77-184 “streak” just Helton kept it up during his post-hot start plate appearances. On average, these five guys posted a .310 BA onwards from their scorching start. If Chipper were to hit .310 for the rest of the season, assuming his total number of at bats will be in the same range as the last few years, he would go 97 for his next 312, putting him at 174-496 to finish the season; that would be a .351 batting average.

Realistically, and with regards to this small group, Chipper has two options:

a) sustain a BA higher than .351 from last night to the end of the season, giving him the highest BA of the group (Helton hit .351 for the rest of his season after starting out .418, giving him a .372 for the season)
b) begin to regress, finishing the season with a tremendous slash line albeit not nearly as impressive as .418/.495/.674.

It is not very likely Chipper will finish the year with a BA over or around .400 based either on this evidence or our own intuition; however that does not, in any way, make what he is currently doing any less remarkable. We all tend to understand how difficult it is to sustain a .400+ batting average primarily because nobody has done so in recent years and Chipper is at the point of difficulty right now where a 2-5 night actually decreases the average.

Still, a large part of me is hoping he can somehow pull it off as it would be great for baseball.