Earlier this week, baseball writers voted Carlos Beltran into the Baseball Hall of Fame. On his fourth year of the ballot, Beltran garnered 84.2% of the votes cast, well more than the 75% required to gain induction. He finished his career in 2017 as a member of the World Series champion Houston Astros.
Of course, he began it in Kansas City as a young star with the Royals. Quickly, he morphed into a superstar.
In 1999, his first full season in the Majors, Beltran posted the first of several career 20-20
seasons. At the young age of 22, he corked 22 home runs while swiping 27 stolen bases. For the year, he slashed .293/.337/.454. He led the Royals in runs scored while placing or tying for second in other major offensive categories such as bWAR (4.7), hits (194), home runs, RBIs (108), and stolen bases. He took home the American League Rookie of the Year Award in a landslide, collecting 26 of the 28 first-place votes, finishing 88 points ahead of the runner-up, pitcher Freddy Garcia.
The Royals finished 64-97.
That was pretty much the story for Beltran’s tenure in Kansas City: great individual numbers while the team struggled. In his third season, he had, by bWAR, his best year with the Royals, finishing 6.5 wins-above-replacement while posting a slash line of .306/.362/.514 for an OPS 23% above league-average. For the first of just two times in his career—both with the Royals—he finished with at least 10 triples. As evidenced by the slugging percentage, the power jumped, as he added another 76 extra-base hits to go with his triples.
He was 24.
The Royals finished 65-97.
The following season, when the Royals finished 62-100, Beltran came up a home run shy of a 30-30 season, finishing with 29 homers and 35 stolen bases. For the only time in his career, he played in all 162 games.
In 2003, the Royals actually competed but fell short of the playoffs with a record of 83-79. Beltran finally received some MVP consideration, finishing 9th in a year in which he finished with 5.8 bWAR, 10 triples, 26 home runs, 41 stolen bases, 102 runs scored, 100 RBIs, and an OPS of .911. He turned 26 in the season’s first month and looked to be the centerpiece of a Royals team that would finally start consistently competing.
None of that happened.
As Max wrote about in 2017, in 2003, Beltran and the front office appeared to have a deal that would’ve kept Beltran in Kansas City through 2005. Beltran, his agent Scott Boras, and the Royals brass had hashed out a three-year deal worth $25 million. That’s $25 million total, mind you, which comes out to just over $8 million per season.
But Dan Glass, son of the late and former Royals owner David Glass, pushed back on the deal, wanting it cut by $1 million. Again, that’s total, not per season. The new offer peeved Beltran and Boras, who broke off negotiations.
In June of 2004, after another stellar 69 games that would earn Beltran his first All-Star nod, as part of a three-team deal, the Royals traded him to the Houston Astros in a three-team trade for Mark Teahen, John Buck, Mike Wood, and cash.
Almost immediately, Beltran experienced something with Houston that he never did with the Royals—the playoffs. Before that, though, Beltran played 90 regular-season games with the Astros, and elevated his slugging to another level, going off for 17 doubles, seven triples, and 23 home runs. He remained a menace on the bases, too, going a perfect 28-for-28 in stolen base attempts.
When Houston reached the postseason, somehow, Beltran further upped his game. Check out these ridiculous stats from his 2004 postseason, which ended with a Game 7 NLCS loss to the Cardinals – .435/.536/1.022/1.557, 21 runs, three doubles, eight home runs, 14 RBIs, eight-for-eight in stolen bases, nine walks plus one intentional walk to eight strikeouts.
Absolutely insane.
Once free agency hit, Beltran left the Astros for the New York Mets in a massive deal for the time: seven years, $119 million. Once his career ended, Beltran would’ve played more games for the Mets than for any of his seven teams, including the Royals. In Queens, Beltran would make seven All-Star games, finish as high as fourth in MVP voting (in 2006), earn three Gold Gloves and two Silver Sluggers.
Mirroring his time in Kansas City, though, he made the playoffs only once, and it ended in an iconically disastrous way.
Also similar to his days with the Royals, Beltran’s career with the Mets ended in a trade during the last year of his contract, this time heading to San Francisco for a short spell with the Giants.
He spent his next two seasons back in Missouri, but with the Cardinals, reaching the World Series for the first time in his career in 2013, but falling to the Red Sox.
Once more hitting the open market, he returned to New York as a Yankee. Years removed from his graceful defending of centerfield, Beltran primarily patrolled right field while occasionally DH’ing. He posted decent numbers for the Yankees before once again getting traded in 2016 to the Rangers.
His last season came in 2017 as he returned to the Astros, and, well, you may have heard about the 2017 Houston Astros before today. On the field, Beltran posted by far the worst numbers of his career. He also became embroiled in a cheating scandal that would later cost him a managerial gig and forced him to wait until his fourth year on the ballot to get into the Hall of Fame.
Yet, he is now a Hall of Famer as it appears a majority of voters appear to have forgiven—or least moved past—those trashcan days.
Now the question becomes, what cap will he don in Cooperstown?
My bet is the Mets. He played more there than any other stop and also reached heights he’d yet to achieve while in Kansas City and wouldn’t again reach after leaving for the Bay.
That shouldn’t stop Royals fans from celebrating his career.
It was one of the finest, and it all started here.
