Todd Helton's road stats

He came close to getting into the Hall of Fame with 72.2% of the vote. I am not against him being in the Hall since he ranks pretty high in WAR (114th among position players with 61.8).

Helton had 318 Win Shares (from the 2014 Bill James Handbook). I don't know where that would rank right now all time but looking at the original 2002 Win Shares book, it would tie him for 133rd among both position players and pitchers (if anyone knows of a website with the current all time leaders in Win Shares, please let me know). I know his rank would be lower now but I don't know where. Probably still pretty high. I would guess that he would fall no more than 20 places.

But from 1998-2013 he ranks 24th in the NL in road OPS with .856 for guys with 2000+ road PAs. That seems a little low. See NL OPS Leaders 1998-2013 (from Stathead as are all other links given below).

If we just look at each of his best years (from 2000-2004) and have a PA minimum of 200, here are his ranks in the NL each year in road OPS:

2000-4th
2001-11th
2002-24th
2003-14th
2004-9th

These links have the leaders in road OPS in the NL for those years:

2000 

2001 

2002 

2003 

2004

But for guys with 1,000+ road PAs over the entire period of 2000-2004 in the NL, he was 7th with .973. So, at his peak, he was a pretty good road hitter. Click here to see those leaders.

Here is another way to look at it. Where would he rank in overall OPS if we only looked at his road OPS in each of the years 2000-2004?

The numbers below show his road OPS in each of those years and where that would rank in the top 10 in the NL in OPS, but OPS including both home and road. The number after his OPS is the rank but with him actually removed from the original ranking.

2000) 1.074 (T3)

2001) .977 (10)

2002) .875 (21)

2003) .949 (8)

2004) .991 (8)

 

In 2000, Helton actually led the NL in OPS. Vladimir Guerrero was 4th at 1.074. Taking Helton out moves him up to 3rd and since Helton had 1.074 in road games, those two tied for 3rd. 

What about adjusting his road OPS upward based on normal league home/road splits? That probably won't make much difference since from 2000-2004 the NL had an overall OPS of .770 in home games and .741 in road games. 

So we could up his OPS in road games each year by .015 (about half of the difference between .741 and .770). The we would get the following OPS with ranks among the leaders

2000) 1.089 (2)

2001) .992 (10)

2002) .890 (19)

2003) .964 (6)

2004) 1.006 (T7)

 

He moves up just a bit in those rankings.

See a related post titled: Rockies, including Charlie Blackmon, dominate home/away splits. It is from August 14, 2020. Excerpt:

"I used Baseball Reference's "Stathead" database to find all the players who had 2,000+ PAs in both home and away games in their careers. Then I ranked them by the difference between their home OPS and their away OPS. Their were 1,270 players.

Six of the top 10 are guys who played all or a good part of their careers with the Rockies: Charlie Blackmon, Carlos Gonzalez, Dante Bichette, Nolan Arenado, Larry Walker and Todd Helton."

Which players were underrated by both MVP votes and Hall of Fame Votes?

The links to the two relevant posts are given at the end of this post. Those links explain the regression method and have links to the complete rankings. The basic idea is that if a guy got fewer MVP shares or fewer Hall of Fame votes than expected based on his WAR, he was considered underrated.

Some players were very underrated in one measure but very overrated in the other. The MVP study had 810 players and the Hall of Fame study had 430. So the ranks are not quite comparable.

Table 1 shows how the 20 most underrated by the Hall of Fame measure ranked in the MVP measure.

Table 1

HOF Rank	Player	MVP Rank
1	Ron Santo	53
2	Ken Boyer	524
3	Bobby Grich	9
4	Duke Snider	620
5	Scott Rolen	11
6	Eddie Mathews	5
7	Dick Allen	624
8	Sal Bando	354
9	Richie Ashburn	24
10	Jim Wynn	46
11	Kenny Lofton	17
12	Cesar Cedeno	60
13	Jim Fregosi	101
14	Alan Trammell	56
15	Bobby Abreu	12
16	Graig Nettles	14
17	Buddy Bell	8
18	Keith Hernandez	707
19	Minnie Minoso	738
20	Bobby Bonds	163

 

The players in red are in the top 20 in both lists, so they could be considered very underrated.

Table 2 shows how the 20 most underrated by the MVP measure ranked in the Hall of Fame measure.

Table 2

MVP Rank	Player	HOF Rank
1	Lou Whitaker	30
2	Willie Mays	340
3	Wade Boggs	393
4	Rickey Henderson	392
5	Eddie Mathews	6
6	Willie Randolph	36
7	Ozzie Smith	426
8	Buddy Bell	17
9	Bobby Grich	3
10	Willie Davis	NA
11	Scott Rolen	5
12	Bobby Abreu	15
13	Chet Lemon	28
14	Graig Nettles	16
15	Johnny Damon	69
16	Darrell Evans	31
17	Kenny Lofton	11
18	Hank Aaron	390
19	Carl Yastrzemski	399
20	Tony Phillips	51

 

When I did the original posts back in 2014, Damon, Rolen & Abreu had not yet become eligible for the Hall of Fame. Since they have come up on the ballot after that, I estimated their predicted vote % and ranked them accordingly. Willie Davis never actually appeared on a Hall of Fame Ballot.

Here are the two original studies:

Was Willie Mays The Most Underrated Player In History? Or Was It Wade Boggs? Is Albert Pujols The Most Overrated? (Revised) (has the MVP study)

Using A Player's WAR To Predict First Year Hall Of Fame Vote Percentage (and possibly estimate "underratedness") g

Update Jan. 9: Joe Posnanski recently came up with a top 10 list. See Baseball's Most Underrated Players Ever.

Five of the seven guys I have highlighted in red above made his top 10 (the guys who were in the top 20 of both of my studies). They were

Bobby Abreu
Buddy Bell
Bobby Grich
Kenny Lofton
Eddie Mathews

What about the other five on Posnanski's list? How did they do in both of my studies? In general, they were underrated in both.

Willie Davis was number 10 in my MVP vote study but did not have a rank in the Hall of Fame study since his name never actually appeared on the ballot. If we give him 0% his score would be -.22 since he would have been expected to get 22% of the vote. That would put him 21st in the Hall of Fame study.

Darrell Evans would be 32nd in the Hall of Fame study if we included Davis. He was 16th in the MVP study.

Lou Whitaker was first in the MVP study and 31st in the Hall of Fame study.

Dwight Evans was 47th in the Hall of Fame study and 54th in the MVP study

Keith Hernandez was 19th in the Hall of Fame study and was 707th in the MVP voting study (which means he did well in the MVP voting during his career).

The two guys among the seven who were in the top 20 of both my MVP study and my Hall of Fame study that are not in Joe Posnanski's top 10 are Scott Rolen and Craig Nettles.