Should Carlos Beltrán earn induction to baseball’s Hall of Fame – and he probably should – it might present the ultimate case to be bronzed without the cap of a specific team.
See, over 20 major league seasons, Beltrán left an indelible impact on almost all the seven franchises for which he played – performing at an All-Star if not superstar level at many of them.
From the baby-faced prospect turned superstar in Kansas City, to the half-year rental followed by an epic postseaon run in Houston, to seven excellent seasons – five of them All-Star campaigns – with the New York Mets to his mercenary era, Beltrán always left his mark.
Sure, it wasn’t always perfect; he performed gallantly for a San Francisco Giants club futilely trying to defend a World Series title in 2011. Their failure to do so cost them a young pitching prospect named Zack Wheeler.
And Beltrán’s penchant for the game’s dark arts caught him up in the game in his final stop, Houston, where he finally became a World Series champion yet left with the stain of helping architect a sign-stealing operation on par with the Astros’ rivals – yet they had the misfortune of getting caught.
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It’s not exactly a complex legacy. But it’s always one worth exploring.
The case for
Let’s start with the basic, traditional plateaus: Just 20 players in major league history have matched Beltrán’s 435 career home runs paired with at least 2,700 hits. All are in the Hall of Fame, save for those awaiting ballot eligibility (Miguel Cabrera, Albert Pujols) and a handful strongly tied to performance-enhancing drug use (Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, Alex Rodriguez). Sure, if you sort by a metric such as adjusted OPS, Beltrán ranks tied for 18th among the group of 20. Still, getting sandwiched among Andre Dawson and Adrian Beltre is hardly damning company.
And that’s before we consider Beltrán was a three-time Gold Glove-winning center fielder, probably the preeminent switch hitter of his era and a nine-time All-Star. The WAR tally similarly buttresses Beltrán’s case: He accrued 70.1 bWAR in his career, tied with Hall of Famer Scott Rolen for 69th all time and just one-tenth behind the enshrined Gary Carter.
Among modern era players above Beltran on that list, just two players not marred by PED connections and eligible for Hall election aren’t enshrined: Second basemen Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker, the latter long considered a prominent snub.
While Beltrán did not earn a World Series championship until his final season in Houston, his playoff resume tells yet another story: In 65 career postseason games, Beltrán posted a .307/.412/.609 line, with 15 home runs in 215 at-bats. His first go-round in Houston, after a June 2004 trade from the flailing Royals, was a 12-game master class: Eight home runs, 11 extra-base hits and a 1.157 OPS as the Astros took out Atlanta and pushed St. Louis to a seventh game of the NLCS as they bid for their first World Series appearance.
The case against
The hardest-line voters might peer at the career numbers above and drop Beltrán into the “borderline” bucket, which, for some, might mean an automatic no.
While that’s perhaps an overly harsh approach, Beltrán seemed to pick up more detractors when, after his first three seasons with the Mets included All-Star appearances, he was limited by injury to 64 and 81 games in his last two full seasons in Flushing.
X factors
Beltrán has been harder to find on the game’s radar since 2020, when he lost his job as Mets manager before his first spring training with the club could commence after his role as ringleader in the 2017 Astros’ sign-stealing scandal was exposed. Beltrán, almost a player-coach at that point, worked in concert with then-bench coach Alex Cora to concoct the logistics of the operation.
Beltrán, just two years Cora’s junior, has not yet received another managerial opportunity, even as Cora and former Astros manager A.J. Hinch have returned to the dugout after Cora’s dismissal and Hinch’s one-year ban, respectively.
While it is hard to imagine Beltrán’s role in the scandal sinking his Cooperstown chances, it’s likely to have cost him votes from hard liners, likely those who’d take on the absolutist stance against likely or confirmed PED users in the Hall.
Voting trends
This is Beltrán’s third year on the ballot, with a 46.5% debut in 2023 and a solid leap to 57.1% in his second shot. He’s currently receiving 80.6% support among 133 publicly-released ballots on Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame tracker, just above the 75% required, though that support may soften once the oft-stingier private ballots are accounted for.
Bottom line
As the aforementioned polling data shows, Beltrán should be right on the borderline for induction in 2025. Should he fall short this time, he will be a virtual shoo-in with seven more chances on the ballot and the electorate likely leaning further in his favor as it evolves.
Beltrán fans shouldn’t yet book lodging for summer 2025, but that day will come soon – regardless of which hat he may or may not wear.