Let's get one thing out of the way from the start. Todd Helton is a most deserving Hall of Famer. If you're still stuck on the fact that his numbers were helped by Coors Field, then you've missed the boat. Quite simply, we have ballpark adjusted measures at our disposal that show us the Colorado Rockies franchise icon was a Hall of Fame quality producer even after his numbers are park adjusted.
By utilizing more modern and appropriate measures to evaluate his career, we can also see there is an active first baseman today that has been eerily similar in overall production through his age 35 season. Of course I'm talking about former Diamondback and current St. Louis Cardinal Paul Goldschmidt. Clearly Goldschmidt has already been on a Hall of Fame path, but the election of Helton should make his path that much smoother. Let's start with the comparison below.
For those that are unfamiliar with the acronyms and statistics above, here are some simple explanations.
wRC+ stands for weighted runs created, which is a linear weights metric to total the value of batting events. These are measured against league average and adjusted for ballpark. 100 = league average. So through age 35, Helton with a 139 wRC+ was 39% better at the plate than the league average hitter, even after making a large adjustment for Coors Field.
OPS+ is similar, in that the metric is set so 100 = league average, but it simply measures park and league adjusted OPS. Goldschmidt has a career 143 OPS+, so he's been 43% better than league average in that metric, while Helton had a 140 OPS+ through age 35. To illustrate just how powerful these tools are, Helton had a raw, unadjusted .994 OPS through age 35, while Goldschmidt has a .907. Without making these adjustments, it would appear that Helton has a very large advantage. Instead, it's actually Goldschmidt that actually has a the small advantage over Helton in batting once park factors are applied.
The next metric is WAR, or Wins Above Replacement. Despite being much maligned by many traditionalists, WAR does a decent job of capturing overall career value. That is because in addition to the park-adjusted batting component, it also takes fielding and base running into account. Furthermore, there are positional adjustments. Obviously if a shortstop and a first baseman have the same batting numbers, the shortstop is going to be the more valuable player. It's just logical.
Where people sometimes run into problems with WAR is the fielding component. Certainly there are larger error bars and differences between the various systems to measure defense. That's why here at Inside the Diamondbacks we like to average Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs WAR. This helps to smooth out any issues when the two system have a big discrepancy in the fielding metrics. In the case of Helton and Goldschmidt, the former has an advantage in fielding runs while the latter has the advantage in base running.
Overall, you can see these two players are very very close, and the differences are almost statistically insignificant. There is one major difference between the two players, however. Helton actually reached a slightly higher peak than Goldschmidt, but due to back and knee injuries, his power began to ebb by age 30 and he entered a gentle decline phase in his early 30's. By his late 30's he was a below league average hitter in three of his last four season, dropping his career wRC+ to 132
Goldschmidt meanwhile has been the pillar of health. The only season he missed any significant time was 2014 when he suffered a broken hand due to a hit by pitch. Since 2015, Goldschmidt has played in 97% of possible team games, (1312 out of 1,356 games). That includes 158 games in 2023. He won the MVP in 2022, and it was only this last season that his numbers fell off slightly. He still posted a 122 wRC+ however.
While one can never be sure what happens with a player after age 35, Goldschmidt is a good bet to remain healthy for at least a couple more years and have a somewhat better decline phase than Helton experienced. Should that be the ultimate result, the small advantage for Goldschmidt in the comparison through age 35 would only widen further.
Congratulations to Todd Helton for a fabulous career and receiving the honor of being voted into the Hall of Famer. Within five years of Paul Goldschmidt's retirement, whenever that comes, he will be joining Helton in the Plaque Gallery in Cooperstown.
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