Todd Helton’s second coming? Rockies rookie Michael Toglia isn’t there yet. But his glovework vs. Milwaukee was awfully close.

The glove? The glove’s nearly there.

Michael Toglia’s most Todd Helton-esque moment came at the top of the second inning Monday at Coors Field, on a ball that left Jace Peterson’s bat the way the funny cars leave the line at Bandimere.

While Toglia, the Rockies’ rookie first baseman, held Milwaukee’s Kolten Wong at the bag, Wong’s teammate Peterson fired a two-out screamer — exit velocity: 101 miles per hour — right at Toglia’s noggin.

It was the kind of ball that sends 98% of the free world to reconstructive nose surgery. Toglia tracked the stitches from the launch, did a pirouette and coolly swept it out of the air, the way a matador sweeps his muleta.

“That was pure reaction,” the Rockies’ first baseman said after Monday’s 6-4 setback. “That’s either, you catch it or you take it off the teeth.”

With that, Toglia grinned. Every chiclet was clean and accounted for.

“The last 24 hours, he hasn’t even had time to think,” Toglia’s girlfriend, Jenna Nastrini, told me Monday as her dude took warm-up swings at the on-deck circle in the bottom of the sixth.

“I think (Monday night) will be his first moment of actually digesting it. Hopefully, (we’ll) grab some food, get some sleep and have a good, fun night game (Tuesday).”

Let the kid get some rest before we start comparing him to Todd Helton, ya know?

Rockies general manager Bill Schmidt set the bar this past March when he likened Toglia, the Rockies’ first-round pick out of UCLA in 2109, to Helton, the premier first baseman in club history, the franchise’s gold standard.

“He should remind you of somebody,” Schmidt told The Post’s Patrick Saunders.

If Toglia’s Coors Field debut was any harbinger, the bat’s still got a ways to go to catch that somebody in particular.

The 24-year-old drew a first-inning walk to keep the line moving against Brewers starter Adrian Houser, helping the hosts to put up a 3-0 lead heading into the top of the second.

Results were mixed after that, as the switch-hitting Toglia, who hit fifth, grounded out to short in the third, struck out looking in the sixth, and flew out to deep right in the top of the eighth as the potential tying run.

“Triple-A pitching, Double-A pitching, is much different than the big leagues,” manager Bud Black said of the rookie. “And he’s figuring that out.

“But he’s being competitive, which I liked. He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

And to be fair, that same head’s been spinning for much of the last 10 days or so. Nastrini said Toglia and his family figured they’d probably finish the season at the Rockies’ Triple-A affiliate in Albuquerque, where he was hitting everything in sight, so the call-up to the big club on Aug. 30 came as a happy shock. For everybody.

“It’s been insane. I mean, all the nerves came out in Atlanta (during his Aug. 30 debut),” Nastrini recalled. “We were crying. We were laughing. We were sweating. It was just chaos that whole week.”

Jenna, who lives in Southern California, got a little Front Range teaser last week, as she landed for a layover in DIA en route to Atlanta. She recalled zipping up and down the concourses, trying in vain to find Rockies stuff to bring to the Braves’ Truist Field, before the second leg of her flight.

“I was sleep deprived,” she laughed, “and was like, yelling at the person in the airport, ‘Do you hate baseball? Why are there no (Rockies souvenirs)?’”

Labor Day was … calmer.

“(Toglia) texted me when I flew in (this morning), and he goes, ‘I’m home.’ So it’s been a long time coming. He feels confident. He’s so excited to come play here. He feels at home here, being in the clubhouse and with all the staff.”

The staff might be a little shaky on some details, though. When Toglia’s bio first appeared on the Coors Field scoreboard, it announced that he’d made his MLB debut on June 7, 2011. When he was 12.

Apparently, the rookie wasn’t the only one who could’ve used a little more rest heading into Monday.

“Give me a normal night’s (shut-eye) to get to the night game (Tuesday) and we’ll be ready,” said Toglia, who’s hitting 6 for 24 (.250) in his first taste of The Show. “We’ll be ready for this stretch.”

Even if the rookie lost the game, he still won the race. In the top of the sixth, with two outs and the Rockies down 6-3, the first baseman fielded a rope up the line via the Brewers’ Garrett Mitchell — Toglia’s old UCLA teammate.

The sprinting rookie beat his buddy to the bag for the final out. If you’re wondering why that’s a big deal, Mitchell was expeditiously 34-for-36 on stolen bases over his last 132 minor league appearances.

“All those years of racing each other,” Toglia said with a laugh. “So I guess that means I’m faster.”

Spoiler alert: He isn’t.

“I know,” Toglia said, beaming again. “But I took a hit away from him.”

Imagine what he could do after a little sleep.

Source: Read Full Article