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Krieger: Helton's still betting on a return to the mountaintop

Published October 7, 2006 at midnight

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It was the final week of his longest season, and you couldn't accuse Todd Helton of sugarcoating it.

Especially when I mentioned fan demands that the Rockies trade him.

"If I had to watch me for a whole season I might want myself traded, too," he said.

"They used to say it out of, like, 'Oh, he's a good player, he can still play and win.' Now they're like, 'Get this boat anchor out of here. He's holding us back.' "

When the man's right, he's right. Even in a relatively docile baseball market, two subpar years is all it took, subpar in this case meaning .320, 20 and 79 a year ago; .302, 15 and 81 this year.

I know these were subpar because Helton bet me both years that he would do better. Last year, he expected to hit .340. This year, after a debilitating intestinal ailment in April, he thought he'd play it safe, guaranteeing .330.

If he won, I had to wear something in camouflage. If I won, he had to wear something tie-dyed.

When I went to see him about this, he was almost pleading. It was a little embarrassing.

"I would never make you wear camouflage, that's all I'm saying," he assured me. "I might make you put on a hat or something."

Because enforcing the bet would hurt tie-dyed fashion more than it would hurt Helton, I let him off the hook.

(I would like to mention I am not making this option available to owner Charlie Monfort. I have not heard from him yet about his bet that the Rocks would win their division, but I have the e-mail and I won't be settling for a Grand Slam breakfast this year.)

For all Helton's struggles, he remains the career batting leader among all active players, by .0007 over Albert Pujols, .3329 to .3322.

In fact, the frustration with Helton is less about Helton than the Monfort brothers and the Rockies' incredible shrinking payroll. In 2003, Helton's salary of $10.3 million represented not quite 16 percent of a $67 million team payroll. This season, his salary of $16.6 million represented 40 percent of a $41 million team payroll.

His contract didn't seem so outsized next to Larry Walker's and Mike Hampton's, but these days he would have to be Spider-man not to be overpaid.

The overriding question about Helton now is whether he is this generation's Don Mattingly, a wonderful hitter whose sudden decline in his prime was brought on mostly by back trouble. Donnie Baseball, now the Yankees' batting coach, hit 30 or more home runs three times, but never after he turned 27.

Helton hit 30 or more home runs six times from ages 25-30 but hasn't since.

"I'm disappointed in the season I had, there's no doubt about that," he said. "It's like bringing a stick and a string to a gunfight. That's what I did all year. I never had a chance to catch back up. I thought I was tough enough or strong enough to be able to go out and play, and I was wrong. It wasn't fun, I'll tell you that."

It all started with the intestinal ailment that put him in the hospital in April and kept him out of action for two weeks.

"The lingering effect was my confidence and my head and my strength," he said. "I was having a hard enough time just getting out on the field, and I wasn't able to really do anything else.

"I know that if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't have come back so quickly. I would have made sure I got back in shape and not been . . . what's the word I'm looking for . . . presumptuous to think I could come back and be where I wanted to be."

At this point, the argument about trading him is academic. The only decision that would make less sense than paying Helton another $90 million for modest production would be paying Helton a large chunk of $90 million to produce somewhere else. No one is going to take on that contract without requiring the Rockies to underwrite much of it.

The question is this: At 33, can Helton recover his lost power, or must he inevitably continue to decline? Mattingly became a slap hitter because of a bad back. Although Helton has had back trouble in the past, there is no indication that is the cause of his recent difficulties.

"I just didn't feel strong and didn't feel confident and that's 90 percent of it," he said.

Complicating the calculation is the taming of Coors Field, which has brought all the offensive numbers down and rendered comparisons to Helton's early years meaningless.

Helton believes that makes his days of 40 homers and 140 RBI (2000, 2001) unattainable, but he does not think 30 and 130 should be out of the question.

"I am going to go out and have a monster year next year," he said.

I'll probably bet against it next spring, but I wouldn't mind wearing a little camouflage in defeat on that one.