Todd Helton to Retire at the End of the Season

Todd Helton has announced that he will retire at the end of the season, after spending his entire 17-year career with the Colorado Rockies, setting team records for almost everything. It’s quite fitting, as his number has been 17 for the past 17 years, and the icon of Rockies baseball. The 40 year old announced last night in a 9-2 loss to Arizona, in which he hit his 586^th career double. 

 

Career wise, his numbers are unbelievable, including having some of the best seasons last decade. He never won an MVP season, but if you look who would’ve won in terms of Wins Above Replacement, Helton would have won one. He would have one more, but remember he played in the Barry Bonds era. He has a career 61.1 WAR. He’s a four time silver slugger and a three time gold glove winner.

In 2000, Helton pulled a Tony Gwynn-like year, in which he hit .372/.463/.698 with 216 hits, 59 doubles, 42 homers, and 147 RBI’s. He didn’t win the MVP that year, but he should of. He probably didn’t because of the whole Coors field thing. 

In his career, Helton batted .317/.415/.539, with 367 home runs, 1,394 RBI’s, and 1,394 runs, all in 2,235 games with Colorado. He leads the team in games, hits, doubles, home runs, RBI’s, runs, and walks. He probably leads the team in silver slugging and gold gloves too, but I have to look into that.

I want to mess with some of these stats, though. First, let’s look at his prime years, so I’ll look at his years from 25 to about 31. Through those years, Helton batted .341/.442/.621, hitting 241 home runs and 807 RBI’s. That’s about what Miguel Cabrera has been hitting in these past three or four years. In those seven years, he was an all-star five times, the only five times of his career. 

 

I mentioned before that he was a career .317 hitter. Time to skew some stats even more. His stats obviously declined in his old years, so I’m cutting off his 2012 and 2013 season stats. In 2012, he batted a career low .238 batting average, and this year he batted only .244 in 112 games. It happens with so many players that have played for an extended period of time, and it doesn’t help with what they’re actually capable of. I’ll also cut out his first year in 1997, where he only played 35 games, but still batted a respectful .280. That leaves us from 1998 to 2011. In that span, he had 12 seasons where he batted over .300, and nine over .320.

However, like I mentioned before, he’s played at Coors field, in which offensive numbers are skewed in favor of the batter. On average, batters hit about 10 to 15 points higher than at a neutral ballpark, in where the park favors neither the pitchers or the batters. I’ll take off 12 points to average it. That leaves him with a .311 batting average, which, although six points lower than his actual career average, it is still highly respectable. 

So is Helton hall of fame bound? I would say eventually. It might take him a while, but for a guy that could thrive in a steroid-era career, without accusations, it seems that he deserves it. He won’t be on the ballot for a while now anyways, so we’ll just have to wait and see. I think he deserves it, though.

Fun Fact: Helton was a first round pick out of Tennessee in 1995. Not only did he play baseball, but he also played football before giving it up to Peyton Manning. He and Manning are good friends today. 

Todd, you had one hell of a career. Thanks for making baseball great.

Email me at statsbuddy42@gmail.com for any questions/comments/concerns.

-Evan Boyd