RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesBack when he was in the midst of his tenure with the Mets, I remember telling some family friends that Carlos Beltrán would end up in the Hall of Fame. That suggestion sounded outlandish to them, and hey, maybe it’s because they were all Yankees fans who hadn’t yet had the pleasure of watching him play on an everyday basis.
Even a neutral fan might not have fully appreciated Beltrán in his prime, though. He spent the first seven years playing for the Royals, after all, and the team had just one winning season during his time there. And after winning the American League Rookie of the Year Award in 1999, Beltrán had his first truly spectacular season at the age of 24 in 2001.
After he was dealt to the Astros in 2004 ahead of his first go at free agency, Beltrán really made a name for himself by having one of the best postseason runs of anyone in the history of the sport. And even though Houston wound up losing Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, everyone who followed baseball was fully aware of how good Beltrán was.
If you hadn’t been watching him every day, you might not have known just how easy he made everything look. Once he signed with the Mets ahead of the 2005 season, though, we got to see it first hand for seven seasons. When it came to watching him patrol center field, sitting in the upper deck behind home plate at Shea Stadium was the best. You could very well appreciate his defense by listening to or watching games from home, but being there in person gave you a better understanding of just how simple he made it look to play Gold Glove-caliber defense in center field while hitting for average, getting on base, hitting for power, and stealing bases.
If Mets ownership hadn’t pushed its relationship with Beltrán to the limit as he dealt with a knee injury that cost him a huge chunk of the 2009 and 2010 seasons, we might’ve gotten to see him thrive in a Mets uniform for even longer. Given the circumstances in the final year of his seven-year contract in 2011, he couldn’t have done any better for the organization. In the 98 games he spent with the team that year, he hit .289/.391/.513, and while he drastically reduced his stolen base attempts following his knee surgery, his 150 wRC+ in that portion of the the season was his best single-season mark as a Met. That made it possible for Sandy Alderson to flip the last two months of his season to the Giants for Zack Wheeler.
Yesterday afternoon in Cooperstown, just two days shy of the fifteenth anniversary of that trade, Beltrán was the third and final inductee to give his speech, and unsurprisingly, he knocked his speech out of the park. Professional athletes aren’t always the best at giving speeches, but Beltrán looked as comfortable as anyone ever has up there on stage. He touched on his family, the history and future of baseball in his home of Puerto Rico, and the most significant parts of his major league career, highlighting the challenges and growth that he experienced in his time with the Mets. If you haven’t watched it yet, you should listen to the entire thing .
“Every organization shapes your career. New York shaped my life. It was here where I achieved my greatest success and some of my greatest challenges. Playing for the Mets made me a better man and a better leader,” said Beltrán.
While Beltrán had been hired as the Mets’ next manager only to lose the role following the fallout from the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal shortly before the COVID pandemic began, he didn’t step away from the sport. He’s currently part of the Mets’ front office, serving as a special assistant to president of baseball operations David Stearns. And with there having been some reporting that the Mets were interested in having him take over as manager after the team fired Carlos Mendoza, it would be pretty great for him to finally get his chance at taking the job—should he be interested in it—heading into the 2027 season.
Listening to his speech yesterday, you know he’d have the attention and respect of his players. Very few Hall of Fame-caliber players take up an interest in managing in the first place. And it’s probably a stretch to say that managing a team, especially the Mets, could be easy. If anyone could make it look like it is, though, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Beltrán pull that off, too.
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