Colorado Rockies: what Larry Walker’s Hall of Fame troubles mean for Todd Helton

Late yesterday afternoon, the results of the Baseball Writer’s Association of America’s votes for the next inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame were announced and unfortunately for Rockies fans, Larry Walker was not a part of the four players who made above the 75 percent threshold.

Not surprisingly, Larry Walker will not be apart of the festivities for the Hall of Famers in Cooperstown, New York this July.

However, he is trending in the right direction as he got 34.1 percent of the vote, a18.6 percent in the ballots since getting 15.5 percent of the vote in 2016 and a gain of 23.9 percent since 2014 when he got 10.2 percent of the vote on his fourth ballot in 2014. However, with another Rockie, Todd Helton, being on the Hall of Fame ballot starting in 2019, will he see the same issues as Walker has?

A career comparison between Walker and Helton

Longevity and Durability

One of the main things that critics of Walker’s Hall of Fame candidacy cite is his lack of longevity and durability. He only played for 17 seasons and he only played in more than 140 games in four seasons and more than 150 games in one season. Overall, he only averaged 117 games played per season in his career.

Todd Helton has the same longevity problem as he also only played in parts of 17 seasons. However, he played in more than 150 games in nine of those seasons and above 140 in two more seasons but in his final six seasons from 2008 through 2013, he only played in more than 124 games in a season once (in 2009). In those seasons, he only averaged 112 games played and if you take away 2009, he averaged 104 games per season.

Defensively

Both won Gold Gloves in their career but that often doesn’t tell the full story. Walker played much of his career before the invention of defensive metrics that many teams use to evaluate players today, like DRS, or Defensive Runs Saved, or UZR, or Ultimate Zone Rating. Prior to 2002, neither one of these existed and Walker only played through 2005. However, prior to that, the most accurate stat that was used to evaluate defense was TZ, or Total Zone. Like DRS and UZR, above zero is above league average and below zero is below league average.

For Walker, he won seven Gold Gloves and in right field in his career, and from 1989 through 2001, Walker had a TZ of 86 in right field, according to Fangraphs. He also had 2 DRS from 2002 through 2005 but he had zero in 2002 and 10 DRS in 2003 so you can safely say that his fielding deteriorated in his final two seasons.

For Helton, from 1997 through 2001, he had 33 TZ at first base and from 2002 through 2013, he had 29 DRS, according to Fangraphs. For these defensive numbers, there’s no exact science to them and especially with TZ, it can be a bit spotty but it can give you a rough estimate. Heck, even with the DRS, Fangraphs has 29 DRS and Helton’s Baseball-Reference page says that he had 32 DRS.

However, based on the combined numbers of 88 for Walker and 62-65 for Helton and Walker winning four more Gold Gloves, Walker is the winner here.

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Final Thoughts

Walker is trending upward in the Hall of Fame voting but he only has two seasons remaining on the ballot. With his current pace of gaining, though, he would still fall well short of the Hall of Fame. He gained 12.2 percent between last year and this year and if he does that each of the next two ballots, he’d still be 16.5 percent short at 58.5 percent of the vote. He need to make up 20.5 percent of the vote each year to get in as he is 40.9 percent short of induction now.

With Walker struggling this much in his first seven ballots, I can’t see Todd Helton doing much better, if he’s doing better at all. He’s not as good defensively, not as good offensively by OPS+, spent his entire career playing half of his games at Coors when Walker at least spent time in Montreal and St. Louis, and during their peak, Helton and Walker essentially put up the same numbers with Walker averaging nearly two dozen less games per season.

Next: The results of our hypothetical Hall of Fame ballots of us here at Rox Pile

Two of the Rockies franchise players will be on the ballot together for the first time and, barring anything unforeseen, neither one of them will be elected next season either.