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Colorado's Helton Could Sneak His Way to Hall

© Joseph J. Checkler

Last week, a buddy of mine praised the greatness of Colorado first baseman Todd Helton. “Yeah, but look where he plays his home games,” I responded. I argued that if the Coors Field factor was removed, Helton would not be nearly as impressive. I told my friend that I would research my hypothesis, and prove that Helton is simply a product of his home stadium. Two days later, I did some thorough research (hey, I have little to do during college summer vacation), and e-mailed him my results. Below is the exact e-mail that I sent.
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(Rem, here is the reason Todd Helton looks so good. Actually, it's not as bad as I thought, but he does hit 126 points higher in the high altitude...

2001 Home - 408 average, 15 homers, 51 RBI's in 130 at bats Road - 282 average, 10 homers, 29 RBI's in 124 at bats.

So if you project his ROAD numbers over 600 at bats, it works out to a very respectable .282 average, with 48 home runs and 140 RBI's. At HOME, however, he would hit .408 with 69 home runs and 235 RBI's in 600 at bats, in what would easily be the best season in the history of baseball.

I guess the moral of the story is that he is a great run producer no matter where he hits, and probably a .300 or better hitter. I say this because most of the parks these days are good hitters parks, so the home average (where a hitter is more comfortable as he plays half of his games there) is going to be a bit higher for most players. Coors field puts him WAY over the top, though. For my money, he's still a bargain at 62 points when I create my team on Triple Play Baseball.

To my surprise, he may be in Cooperstown some day. His career average is .335, and he's only 28 years old. He has 132 homers in 3.75 seasons, an average of 35.2 per year. I don't see him getting 500 home runs in his career, or 3,000 hits, but I'll monitor him for you. After all, I love to research this stuff.

Joe)
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Obviously, I was surprised with the numbers. I began writing the e-mail before looking at the stats, and had to retract my feelings throughout. It’s tough to think of Todd Helton, Peyton Manning’s predecessor at Tennessee, as a Hall of Fame baseball player, but I think he is. The numbers above speak volumes towards that.

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