When Todd Helton takes center stage Sunday in Cooperstown to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, more than 50 Hall of Famers will be seated behind him.

Among their ranks will be some of the most fearsome sluggers of all time, the greatest gloves the game has ever seen … and more than a few pitchers who may regret a time or two when they stood opposite the Rockies’ iconic first baseman.

That includes former Atlanta Braves John Smoltz and Tom Glavine.

“Todd Helton was an elite hitter, no doubt,” Smoltz said.

“Todd could hit for average, hit for power and he didn’t strike out a lot. Those kinds of guys were tough to pitch to,” added the left-handed Glavine, Smoltz’s teammate during Atlanta’s glory days in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Against the A-listers, Helton brought his A game.

During his 17-year career, the left-handed hitting Helton slashed .316/.414/.539. Against the nine Hall of Fame pitchers he faced, Helton slashed .369/.425/.503.

Former Rockies manager Clint Hurdle, with whom Helton has remained close, ensured early on that Helton would not be intimidated by any pitcher, regardless of pedigree.

In August 1999, during a series in Milwaukee, Helton was struggling a bit, which prompted Hurdle to have a heart-to-heart talk with him. One of the overriding messages: Helton needed to change his body language in the on-deck circle.

“Every time the pitcher looks on deck, you should be looking at him. You don’t let him breathe,” Hurdle told Sports Illustrated for a story in 2000.

The way Helton tells it, one of the reasons he had such great success against the best of the best was because he approached every at-bat with the same mindset.

“I respected and treated all big league pitchers as the best in the world because they were,” he said. “When my brother (Rodney) was at Alabama I asked if one player was any good and he replied, ‘It’s the SEC, all the players are good.’ Same with the big leagues.”

There may not have been a more consistent closer who overlapped with Helton’s time in the National League than San Diego’s Trevor Hoffman, a right-hander who compiled 601 saves during his own Hall of Fame career.

Hoffman famously arrived to the mound accompanied by AC/DC’s “Hells Bells,” confounding scores of excellent hitters with his changeup. Nobody gave him fits quite like Helton.

“He had a knack for barreling the ball up, making hard contact and hitting the ball where we didn’t have players positioned,” Hoffman said. “I certainly had a hard time getting him out.”

He certainly did. Helton hit .520 (13 for 25) with three doubles and a homer while posting a 1.316 OPS against Hoffman. Those 13 hits are the most by any one player against him. And only three of the 83 hitters who faced Hoffman 12 or more times had a higher OPS: Scott Rolen (1.962), Mike Piazza (1.625) and Dante Bichette (1.409). Of course, the first two are Hall of Famers.

Facing Glavine, Helton hit .393 (11 for 28), with three doubles, one homer and seven walks. Of Glavine’s 2,607 career strikeouts, just one came against Helton over 33 plate appearances.

“If a guy was primarily a home run hitter, you figured he had some holes you could attack and some impatience that you could sometimes attack,” Glavine said. “An average hitter might be a little more patient, but they didn’t hurt you with the big swing very often.

“But a guy like Todd, who could take you deep, was also patient. Plus, he wasn’t going to strike out very often. That made him a unique and difficult threat.”

Helton struck out in just 12.4% of his at-bats during his career. In his incredible 2000 season, when he flirted with a .400 average into mid-August, Helton fanned just 8.8% of the time while posting a .463 on-base percentage.

“He did a really good job of wasting some of your better pitches,” Hoffman said. “He would waste your best two-strike pitch and then have the advantage. He would make these adjustments during an at-bat that most players just couldn’t.”

Glavine agreed, and even though he should have had an advantage facing Helton, that wasn’t always the case.

“In the beginning and in the middle of my career, lefty on lefty, I was not very good inside, so that was a struggle for me against a guy like Helton,” said Glavine, who won 305 games with a 3.54 ERA over 22 seasons.“I knew that Todd was a guy that I had to pitch inside, to get him off my sinker and off my slider away, but I wasn’t great at it.

“As my career went on, I got better at it, particularly throwing to lefties inside. But Helton was always tough.”

Facing Helton meant facing a “double-whammy,” Glavine said.

“He was the kind of guy who was really good at prolonging an at-bat and then he’d make you pay,” Glavine said. “As a pitcher, you know that you have maybe one chance to make a specific pitch to a batter. Maybe two.

“But with a guy like Todd, you might make the exact pitch you wanted to make, but he’d foul it off. So now the hitter has prolonged the at-bat. As pitchers, we know that the more the guy prolongs the at-bat, the more the pendulum swings in his favor. That means you’re probably going to make a mistake pitch. That’s what made Todd so difficult to pitch to.”

Helton didn’t thrive against every Hall of Famer. Randy Johnson, the intimidating 6-foot-10 left-hander, struck out Helton 10 times in 50 plate appearances (20%). But Helton still managed to hit .271 (11 for 28) with five doubles vs. Johnson.

“Todd hit me pretty well,” Johnson recalled. “He was one of the handful of left-handed hitters who were confident in the batter’s box against me and saw my pitches pretty well, better than other left-handers did.

“I faced (26) Hall of Famers in my career. Among left-handers, I would say that Todd was right at the top of the list. He and Larry Walker.”

Walker, the Rockies’ other Hall of Famer, hit .393 (11 for 28) against “The Big Unit.” By comparison, Wade Boggs hit .118 (2 for 18) with eight strikeouts.

Glavine dominated the Rockies. In 29 career starts, he was 11-6 with a 2.97 ERA. But he was always wary of facing Helton.

“Any time we played the Rockies, I wanted to try and make sure he didn’t beat me,” Glavine said. “I wanted to take him out of the equation, so to speak. You knew he was going to get some hits, but you just didn’t want him to beat you.

“But I tell you what.I enjoyed pitching to Todd because I liked the challenge. He brought out the best in me, and me the best out of him. You always knew it was going to be a battle.”

Helton vs. the HOFers

A look at how Todd Helton fared against each of the nine Hall of Fame pitchers he faced during his 17-year career:

(Can’t see chart in mobile? Click here.)

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Originally Published: July 21, 2024 at 5:45 a.m.