On a muggy afternoon last weekend in Baltimore, Todd Helton disappeared into the bowels of Camden Yards. The darkness serves as a metaphor for his season.
The Colorado Rockies have played more than a third of their schedule. Helton, the greatest player in franchise history, is hitting .252. He ranks second on the team in strikeouts, receives few pitches to hit and misses mistakes he once routinely crushed off outfield walls.
“When I saw his average on TV, my first reaction was `Wow!”‘ former Rockies catcher Charles Johnson said Wednesday. “It’s such a surprise because he’s never, ever struggled.”
Entering Friday’s home game against the Royals, Helton finds himself hostage to a chilling slump.
It is necessary to compare the last 11 weeks to the previous eight years to understand the slide’s depth and historical perspective.
Three of Helton’s eight worst offensive months have occurred this season. He never had hit under .300 in back-to-back months. He hasn’t reached .300 in any month this season, sitting at .235 in June.
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Everybody from season ticket-holders to diehard bloggers are asking the question: What’s wrong with Helton?
“I have had bad days at work just like anybody else. I am no different,” said Helton, 31. “I am going to get out of this through hard work. That’s the only way I know how.”
Of the telling statistics, nothing stands out more than Helton’s average against left-handers. He had hit them at a .316 career clip. This year, he sits at .149.
“His ability to historically stay on left-handed pitching and hit the ball harder the other way have been the keys to his success,” manager Clint Hurdle said.
“Whether it be left-handed pitching or right-handed pitching, he has for the most part this season gotten in a hurry to hit and not stayed on the ball. When his focus is left-center field, the rest of the offensive game seems to come to him.”
Nobody thinks it will last for a perennial all-star who entered the season with the highest career average (.339, now .334) among active players. Then again, nobody thought it would go on this long.
“I have played against him so many times and have nothing but the utmost respect for him. You are talking about one of the elite hitters,” Cleveland third baseman Aaron Boone said. “He deserves the benefit of the doubt. You will probably look up at the end and his numbers will be there.”
During a career that has sniffed of Cooperstown since he homered in his 1997 big-league debut, Helton’s statistics have lost elasticity. It’s hard to stretch beyond his 1998-2004 average of 31 home runs and 105 RBIs.
This season he’s on pace to hit 14 homers and drive in 62 runs, easily career lows.
“I really don’t know why it’s happened,” said general manager Dan O’Dowd, who watched Helton snap his 99 at-bat homerless drought recently. “But in his career, he’s never been in a slump, so you figure it’s going to happen sometime. It’s been more prolonged, but I am confident he’s going to come out of it and carry us.”
Helton, a notorious perfectionist, blames himself for his problems while remaining on board with the team’s massive rebuilding project.
“For five or six years, he killed us when I was in Los Angeles. He was amazing,” said Cleveland Indians infielder Alex Cora, formerly of the Dodgers. “The (48) walks jump out. It’s obvious that teams don’t want to let him beat them.”
Expanding on that theory, former teammate and current Cubs outfielder Jeromy Burnitz explained: “Then what happens is that you try to do too much. I know I am guilty of it. You expand your strike zone and stop waiting for good pitches, and next thing you know you are struggling.”
No one has sympathy. Everyone, after all, expects him to hit.
“I think every pitcher in the league has talked about Helton busting out at any time,” Houston Astros closer Brad Lidge said. “When you see him in the on-deck circle, you still bear down a little bit more.”