The Legacy Of Carlos Beltran
It's all so very complicated with the Mets.
With Mike Piazza it was the top-secret move to first base.
With Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry greatness was interrupted by substance abuse.
Even 'The Franchise', Tom Seaver, ended his career with other franchises.
No one ever has the perfect Mets career...and certainly not Carlos Beltran.
His numbers will help him go down as one of the greatest players in Mets history...
But his Mets legacy is so much more complicated than that.
You hate to admit it - but Fred Wilpon's assessment of Beltran pretty well sums up his nearly seven years with the club. In his famous interview with The New Yorker, Wilpon pantomimed the Beltran strikeout in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS when addressing whether his team was 'cursed'...and then in his comments taking shots at his players, talked about how "some schmuck [Wilpon] in New York...paid him based on that one series" [Beltran's 2004 NLCS with the Astros].
I think a lot of fans were expecting 7 years of production based on that one series. And certainly many never felt Beltran lived up to the dollar figure that accompanied his name. ($17 million a year.)
What Carlos Beltran did with the Mets he did quietly. When he played defense he did so gracefully. When the rest of the team was crashing down around him in 2007 and 2008, Beltran actually had good Septembers...but he couldn't do enough to stave off two historic collapses.
It's not his fault he couldn't pitch on those season's final days.
And even though he didn't underperform in those seasons...he did. It was Beltran who broke his trait of quiet leadership to declare the Mets in spring training 2008 as 'the team to beat'...directly calling out Jimmy Rollins of the Phillies in so doing. The Mets didn't win the division. It wasn't Beltran's fault...but he put his stamp on that season with his words.
Carlos Beltran hit 41 home runs in the 2006 season...but the only thing fans remember from that year is the called strike 3 when he could have cemented his fate as a Mets hero in the bottom of the 9th inning of Game 7. (Yes, it was a difficult pitch...but there were many more situations over the years where Beltran looked terrible swinging at curve balls. Hitting a breaking ball may have been his biggest weakness as a Met.)
And he was probably doomed by his excellent 2004 post-season. In 46 at-bats, he put up a .435 batting average and a 1.022 slugging percentage. He hit 8 homers and had 14 RBI against Atlanta and St. Louis that year.
Just two years later, with the Mets, against the Dodgers and those same Cardinals, Beltran hit just 3 homers (2 of which came in Game 4 against St. Louis) and had 5 runs batted in in 36 at-bats.
His relationship with the team soured when he decided to have knee surgery - against the team's wishes - for an injury that cost him part of 2009...the resulting surgery caused Beltran to miss most of 2010.
You can legitimately argue that Beltran shouldn't trust the Mets' doctors, because they've proven inept in recent years...but Beltran's decision reeked of setting himself up for a healthy contract year. It certainly worked - he finished his Mets career with one of his best seasons as a Met.
But 2011 will end with Carlos Beltran as a member of the San Francisco Giants...and it may just turn out that Carlos Beltran's legacy, which like so many Mets before him ends without bringing home a World Series championship, may just be how the youth the Mets got in return pan out in the big leagues. Maybe the championship stems from the players the Mets got in return for Beltran's value.
The past few weeks, when it became increasingly clear that Beltran would be traded, brought out a lot of good feeling towards Beltran...maybe fans always liked him, but in a more quiet manner, like the way Beltran approached his game. Maybe they just started to realize how good a player he is, and started to feel like they would miss his presence in the lineup.
As a result, Beltran seems like he'll be remembered fondly by Mets fans.
But I think he'll always be accompanied by a question that will never be answered...sort of like a swing that was never taken: What if...?
