I don’t completely disagree.

I assume you’re joking. But on a serious note, if Helton gets in, it will likely be due to the influence of sabermetrics on how we read stats. HoF voters love batting average, and he does well there. But they also want HR and RBI out of a first baseman, and his current totals of 321 HR and 1181 RBI are not impressive for a player in this era.

I think a non-saber type is more likely to over-discount his stats based on the park (due to simplistic thinking like looking at road stats alone to determine his “real” level of ability). A saber type is more likely to appreciate Helton’s strongest stat, his OBP.

Without reading the article, it’s hard to know if he “discredits” Helton for his park. Knowing some of Jaffe’s work, I doubt he’s done this. There are some folks who know just enough stats to be dangerous, and do things like only look at road stats. Jaffe’s been at this a while, I don’t think he does that.

Fact is, Helton had his peak years when Coors field boosted offense by 40-50%. On has to account for that. A run in such an environment just doesn’t bring a team as close to a win as a run in a neutral scoring environment. (Otherwise, those teams would have won many more games, scoring 900 runs/yr). Now, as for the “luck” of finding oneself playing home games at Coors: you can make an argument that an individual player isn’t helped as much by the park as the general park adjustment due to some sort of characteristic, like a right-hander playing in pre-70’s renovation Yankee stadium, and thus, his stats shouldn’t be adjusted downward as much I think it’s hard to make that sort of argument for Helton, though. So far as I know, Coors helps both lefties and righties in power numbers and batting average, and Helton’s splits show a boost in these categories.

Now, it’s true that voters (and writers and the public in general) have not been that sophisticated when adjusting for park over the years, if they’ve done it at all. There have probably been some marginal HoF types who wouldn’t have made it had voters adjusted for park (one could point to Jim Rice, though there’s a lot of reasons to argue that he shouldn’t have made it in). Thing is, though, if you adjust for Ruth playing with the short porch, or Ted Williams playing in a park that boosts doubles and batting avg for lefties, well, they’re still HoF’ers.

Like all but the greatest players, Helton’s a marginal candidate at age 35. His career totals aren’t impressive at the moment and his peak is not impressive as his raw numbers would suggest. It doesn’t help his case that there were a large number of really good first basemen around the time he played (Mark McGwire, Frank Thomas, Jeff Bagwell, Jim Thome, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro, Albert Pujols to name a few) – he doesn’t stand out as the best at his position.

So like most candidates, he’ll have to keep playing well to make a better case.