Carlos Beltran gets surprising Hall of Fame vote — from a reporter who exposed the Astros' cheating scandal
Carlos Beltran is a frustrating candidate for Baseball Hall of Fame voters. He played from 1998-2017 and, somewhat refreshingly, saw his home-run-hitting ability spike after Major League Baseball began rigorously testing players for performance enhancing drug use. As far as the Hall of Fame's character clause is concerned, Beltran is clean, right?
That appeared to be the case until Jan. 2020, when Beltran became the third person indicted in the Houston Astros' cheating scandal to lose their job in the wake of sign-stealing allegations against the 2017 World Series champions.
Beltran's involvement did not surface in the original reporting published by The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich in Nov. 2019. But Beltran was the only player who was active in 2017 publicly identified in MLB's internal follow-up on the scandal. Astros manager A.J. Hinch and bench coach Alex Cora were also implicated for their roles in the scandal by commissioner Rob Manfred; both were fired by their teams before ultimately getting second chances to manage after their year-long suspensions were served.
Beltran is still waiting for his second chance as a manager. Rosenthal noted this in his comments Monday on the Fair Territory podcast, in which he somewhat surprisingly defended including Beltran on his 2025 Hall of Fame ballot.
Beltran is a nine-time All-Star and three-time Gold Glove Award winner. His 435 career homers and 312 stolen bases are a testament to his rare combination of power and speed. His 2013 Roberto Clemente Award, which recognizes positive contributions on and off the field, including sportsmanship and community involvement, attests to Beltran's character.
So did Rosenthal, who knows better arguably than any Hall of Fame voter that Beltran was directly involved in one of baseball's biggest scandals.
"At the time, as we wrote in that story and others, there were no firm (sign stealing) guidelines or rules or standards established by Major League Baseball," Rosenthal said on Fair Territory. "It was kind of a Wild Wild West situation. The Astros obviously were the most egregious in what they did. They used the trash cans, other teams did not. It was simply a step beyond what other teams were doing."
He continued: "... the Astros players, even though they were not punished by MLB, you cannot say that they have not been punished. They've been punished in the sphere of public opinion. They've been punished in other ways as well. Carlos Beltran lost his job as Mets manager. So I'm not saying all of this is enough to excuse any Astros player as a Hall of Fame candidate. You have to consider all of these factors. But to me, I am just not ready to go to that length and exclude a guy from the Hall of Fame.”
The character clause is squishy. "Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contribution to the team(s) on which the player played," it reads. That's it.
If 400 writers cast a Hall of Fame ballot, there might be 400 different ways to interpret that clause. People can disagree with Rosenthal's interpretation as it applies to Beltran, but there's no objective basis for saying he's wrong.
This is why many writers (present company included) only rarely apply character-related "penalties" when they vote. Rosenthal was hardly alone this year — 70 percent of the electorate agreed with him about Beltran — but he was uniquely responsible for exposing the scandal that cast doubt on Beltran's character in the first place.
Kudos to Rosenthal for making his argument public, even if you don't buy it.
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