Todd Helton and Context

It's hard to think of a more overlooked baseball player from the past decade than Todd Helton of the Colorado Rockies. Even his recent retirement announcement was completely overshadowed in the media, thanks to the hubbub surrounding Mariano Rivera's farewell. But there's one way Helton can grab your full attention almost immediately: by instructing you to visit BaseballReference.com, find the career leaders for OPS, and scroll down past the top 15 names or so. Doing so reveals some surprising information:
...
18 Johnny Mize: .959
19. Jim Thome: .956
20. Todd Helton: .954
21. Jeff Bagwell: .948
22. Mel Ott: .9471
...
The constantly-marginalized Helton sneaks into the top twenty all-time in OPS, his name mingling with some of the most prolific sluggers ever. Now compare Helton against a few Hall of Fame first basemen from recent decades:

Todd Helton: .954
Willie McCovey: .889
Willie Stargell: .889
Harmon Killebrew: .884

So: Helton's OPS ranks in the top 20 among all hitters ever, and he's in a different stratosphere compared to the recent great players at his position. His career line of .317/.414/.540 is nothing short of sensational. That has to be a Hall of Fame career, right?

Not exactly. By just using raw OPS, we're ignoring the most important word when it comes to Helton's candidacy: context. No batting line can be evaluated in a vacuum. And Helton played the bulk of his career in the most hitter-friendly environment in baseball history: Coors Field in the early-2000s. Playing in an era when hitting stats were inflated, playing in a ballpark where hitting stats were comically inflated, Helton's offense just wasn't as valuable as it would have been in a different time or place. Taking that context into consideration, his bat just doesn't stand out like a Hall of Famer's should. There are a few statistical ways to demonstrate this assertion, and some are much better than others.

One possible route is to use home/road splits. This is a bad idea. Inevitably, future baseball writers will discredit Helton's career accomplishments just by looking at these two statistical lines:

Helton's career at home: .345/.425/.576 (OPS of 1.048)
Helton's career on the road: .287/.386/.470 (OPS of .856)

As if this somehow proves that Helton was entirely a creation of Coors Field. No. This isn't smart. Don't use home/road splits. Why? For a lot of reasons. Namely: these splits tell me that Todd Helton hit way better at Coors Field than he did elsewhere, which is true of EVERY PLAYER WHO HAS EVER HIT AT COORS FIELD. Plus, the Hall of Fame has already enshrined players with large home/road splits (see: anyone who played in Fenway Park), so precedents exist. These splits don't provide any insight.

Instead, adjusted-OPS (OPS+) is far more telling. Raw OPS doesn't say anything about how a player performed relative to the players around him, which is one of the most important factors of Hall of Fame voting. OPS+, on the other hand, tells us how much better (or worse) a player's OPS was relative to the league average at the time. Because it uses a universal scale (with 100 being the average), it also provides a more accurate way to compare players across eras.

Helton's career OPS+ is 133 (his offense was 33% above average). That's certainly very good. But now let's re-do a previous comparison, pitting Helton against three notable first basemen in the Hall of Fame, this time using OPS+ instead of plain OPS:

1. Willie McCovey: 147
2. Willie Stargell: 147
3. Harmon Killebrew: 143
4. Todd Helton: 133

Now there's a significant gap. This reveals a crucial point. Helton might have better raw numbers than any of these players -- a higher batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. But comparing those numbers across eras is a flawed apples-and-oranges argument. The Hall of Fame cares about players' numbers relative to their peers. And based on OPS+, it's clear that McCovey, Stargell, and Killebrew were more dominant hitters within their eras than Helton was in his.

That makes a lot of sense when you think about it -- especially considering how much more prevalent offense was in the 2000s compared to other eras. To illustrate that point, here's the average number of runs that teams scored per game in six different seasons. See if you can spot the outlier:

In 1960, teams scored an average of 4.31 runs per game.
In 1970: 4.34.
In 1980: 4.29.
In 1990: 4.26.
In 2000: 5.14.
In 2010: 4.38.

One of these things is not like the other. From about the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, the number of runs scored per game took a huge spike relative to historical norms, culminating in that ridiculous 2000 season (over five runs per game!!!). Of course, the bulk of Helton's career came during that offensive explosion. So the value of the offense he provided was significantly devalued. That effect is compounded by Helton's home park during all those years, Coors Field, where offense was even more prevalent than it was everywhere else. In 2000, for instance, teams playing in Coors Field averaged over six runs per game. Six! In such an inflated run-scoring environment, the value of Helton's bat was severely diminished.

With that handicap in play, Helton's numbers aren't really "better" than those of past inductees like McCovey, Stargell, and Killebrew. But how does he compare to his contemporaries? The news isn't good on that front, either. Here's an OPS+ leader-board for some select first basemen and DHs during Helton's era:

Albert Pujols: 165
Mark McGwire: 163
Frank Thomas: 156
Jeff Bagwell: 149
Edgar Martinez: 147
Jim Thome: 147
Lance Berkman: 144
Jason Giambi: 140
David Ortiz: 139
Carlos Delgado: 138
Fred McGriff: 134
Todd Helton: 133
Rafael Palmeiro: 132

Helton's just too far down the totem pole.

On a final note: BaseballReference.com offers a pretty cool feature where they convert a player's stats into a "neutral" setting (a universe where 4.42 runs are scored per game). Helton's neutralized career batting line is .292/.387/.496, a fair step back from his actual career line of .317/.414/.540. The computer docks about 70 points from his OPS, from .954 down to .883. That's basically the difference between Jeff Bagwell and Fred McGriff.

Ultimately, it's fair to say that Helton's career looks a lot more like McGriff's than it does Bagwell's. Both were underrated, overlooked, upstanding baseball players. But they weren't among the very best at their position during their era, which is why Helton will fall short in his bid for the Hall of Fame.