Peter Gammons Colorado Conondrum and the MLB HOF Voting Cycle 2015

Peter Gammons: The Colorado Conundrum

January 3, 2015 by Peter Gammons 9 Comments

Some of us go into Hall of Fame Tuesday hoping that at least a half-dozen players are voted into Cooperstown, beginning with Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Mike Mussina and John Smoltz on down the line. This has been a month when there has been a great deal of thought given to the process, partly because on this year’s ballot there were at least a half-dozen players beyond the allowed ten.
Edgar Martinez, obviously, is one, in many ways a discussion bridging Paul Molitor and Frank Thomas to, in time, David Ortiz. How many appreciate what a fierce hitter Gary Sheffield was? That log-splitter swing produced 509 home runs, while walking 270 more times than he struck out, never reaching 90 strikeouts in a season. Heck, Jackie Bradley, Jr. struck out 121 times in 384 at-bats, and the Reds traded for a guy (Marlon Byrd) who had more strikeouts in 2014 than Sheffield had in his two worst seasons, combined. Jeff Kent hit 377 homers, played hard and tough and could really turn the double play.
But the player that has most confounded me the last two votes is Larry Walker. One former teammate, Brad Ausmus, fondly recalls “he did a lot of things really well,” and another, Jerry DiPoto, says “he was a great all-around player. He was a great right fielder who could throw. He was an instinctively great baserunner. He had power, he hit for average. He was one of the best all-around players I ever saw.”
OK, yes, we see the splits. .381 at Coors, .282 on the road. 1.172 OPS at Coors, .873 on the road. Thus Walker received 10.2 per cent of the vote last January, and Tuesday could find himself off the ballot with less than 5 per cent.
Yet, I am convinced that Walker is a far better player and complex study than a two-and-out guy. Growing up in British Columbia, he did not ask to play in Denver. He was never going to be fully appreciated playing in Montreal, even if that 1994 team was the best in the game before the lights went out on the season.
Walker is not alone. Todd Helton was a tremendous player whose career was lowercased by the Coors splits. The same goes as Troy Tulowitzki reaches baseball middle age. Take a look at Walker, Helton, Tulowitzki and the aggregate Rockies’ numbers over a 20-year period, then perhaps you’ll at least re-assess the careers of Walker and Helton and beg for Tulowitzki to be traded to the Reds, Cardinals, White Sox or some home city where his numbers are freed from the Coors Asterisk and his body can recover enough for him to play 145-150 games a year.
The numbers:



Walker won seven gold gloves. In a three year run he hit .366, .363 and .379. His 1997 slash line was .366/.452/.720 with 49 homers, a 1.172 OPS and 409 total bases, winning the MVP. He’s 12^th all-time in slugging, 15^th in OPS, ninth in double plays from right field.
But the career 1.172/.873 OPS and 209 points difference in slugging? Can’t be explained, or forgotten or overlooked.
DiPoto and Dan O’Dowd talk how different it is when players go on the road. “At Coors, with the altitude and the air pitches simply don’t run,” says DiPoto. “Breaking balls are not the same. The infield is hard, and balls shoot through the gaps, no matter what they try to do with the balls (and the thermidor). Hitters get used to very little movement. Then they get out on the road and it’s just the opposite. It seems like everyone’s pitches are running like they’re Kevin Brown. Breaking balls seem to break harder and deeper. Pitchers deal with the reverse.
“It’s as if you’re playing two very different games, which isn’t easy.”
If Walker, Helton and Tulowitzki had played in a normal hitters park like in Cincinnati, the south side of Chicago or Baltimore, how would their numbers look, and how would they be perceived?
One thing that has hurt Walker is that in his 17 year career, he played 145 games in a season once. He averaged 123 games. Granted, he opened his career in Montreal and wound down in St. Louis, but his peers and his general manager, O’Dowd, maintain a major factor in that games played —aside from his reckless, fearless style—is the recovery difficulties because of the altitude. “We tried everything to try to deal with it, but nothing worked for any length of time,” says O’Dowd. “Everyday players don’t bounce back. It takes a tremendous toll on pitchers (remember Mike Hampton’s hyperbaric chamber?).”
Helton was the most durable of the three, albeit playing first base; as he aged, he played as many as 124 games one of his final six years. The altitude has taken a toll on Tulowitzki, who is only 30 but has played more than 126 games once in the last five seasons. That he is recovering from hip surgery and may have to prove he’s back while playing in a home park where recovery is such an issue, has scared some teams interesting in his tremendous talent.
At this point, do we undervalue Walker because of his inflated Denver numbers? And fail to appreciate how hard it is to play what essentially is two different games, half at an elevation that makes recovery so difficult?
Do we truly appreciate Helton and Tulowitzki?
My sense is that Larry Walker was a Hall of Fame player who, in the end, won’t make it because he played at Coors Field; had he played in Baltimore he likely would have been a first ballot invitee to Cooperstown.
We’ll never know. What we do know is that the Rockies have never won a World Series game, much less a World Series, they’ve never finished first or won 93 games…and there are reasons most of us will never fully appreciate.