Oh, all right. Beltran won't get a free pass for long By Jayson Stark In case you lost track of Carlos Beltran once he disappeared from his exotic October stage last fall, here's how life is treating him in his new home – Flushing, N.Y.: • Believe it or not, he hit as many home runs in the postseason last year as he has hit in the season this year (eight). • And that noted sprint champ, Derek Lowe, has stolen as many bases as he has (one). • He's been outslugged by Jason Ellison. He owns fewer extra-base hits than Bill Hall. He's scored fewer runs than Neifi Perez. • In fact, as Kansas City radio guru Soren Petro points out, there isn't one significant offensive category in which Beltran leads one of the men who have replaced him in the Kansas City outfield – the much-traveled 30-year-old bargain-binner Emil Brown. These are all actual, 100-percent-authentic, real-life baseball facts. So at this point, it would only be fitting for us to allow the New York talk-show chorus to sing one of its favorite tunes. … A-one, a-two, a-three: "The Mets paid $119 million bucks for this?" Well, uh, no, they didn't. Obviously. But sometimes, in baseball, stuff happens. Even to players as multi-talented as Carlos Beltran. So what's happened to this guy? Oh, stuff like this: A strained quad muscle. The city of New York. The frustration that sets in when your team starts to slide, and your numbers aren't what they ought to be, and those boos start to rumble out of the not-so-cheap seats. That stuff. Carlos Beltran is aware of it all: What's expected of him. What he's done. What he hasn't done. And why he hasn't done it. So you never hear him giving alibis. You never hear him second-guessing why he made the choice to wear this uniform. But you also never hear him apologizing for Not Being Worth The Money – because he still expects to earn it. All of it. "My time will come," Beltran said. "I believe in my ability. I believe in God. I believe in what God gave to me. It can't go on like this all year. It has to change." Has to. For many, many reasons. Not the least of which is that, when you're a $119 Million Man in New York, your honeymoon normally doesn't last much longer than Britney Spears' Vegas wedding. But in that honeymoon department, Beltran has actually been fairly lucky. His fellow holy-cow-look-who-we-signed free agent, Pedro Martinez, has been so good … and the Mets, for the most part, have been so much more interesting … and the Yankees have been so busy cornering the Big Apple underperformance market that the booing of Carlos Beltran has been remarkably tame. But don't bet your Statue of Liberty figurine that that period of compassion and understanding will last much longer. It's almost July. The Mets have just lost 10 of their last 14 games, and careened from one game out of first place to six. And, well, it's New York. Beltran continues to say: "It's been fun playing in New York." And we advise him to repeat that line as often as possible for the next seven years. But his manager, Willie Randolph, has seen this off-Broadway production someplace before. "Every great player, every really good player, who comes to New York always goes through an adjustment period," said Randolph, currently in his 26th season of playing, coaching or managing in New York. "They need time to go through it. They need time to learn how to exhale and deal with expectations. Some guys do it sooner than others. "I think Carlos will be fine, and he'll do some great things here. He just needs to find that comfort level and play the game the way he's always played it – that smooth, relaxed, easy kind of game. That's just something that comes in time." Preferably, however, not much more time. Because, sooner or later, those folks riding the No. 7 train are going to want to see their season-ticket dollars put to more attractive use. And Carlos Beltran is well aware of that. Whatever they ask of him, and however they want to ask it, he says it's nothing he hadn't figured would come with the territory. "That's just the way it is," he said. "It comes with playing in the city of New York. There's a lot of expectations. Not just for me. For the team, too. That's the way it is, man. I can deal with that. I have no problem dealing with that." He says this all so softly, so calmly, so assuredly that we have no reason to think it's just talk for the sake of sounding good. Even his teammates eyeball him and see a man who still carries himself like a guy who understands the gig he volunteered for. "He's got such an even disposition," said Mike Piazza. "Nothing really seems like it bothers him that much, and that's an advantage. He's very professional. He's a man of few words. And he seems to be a very focused guy, which I think is good. "You have to have that mentality … especially in our town, because it's got a little bit of a football mentality. You've got to try to stay off that perennial roller coaster." What has also helped Beltran and his fan club stay off that coaster is that it's been clear, just from watching him, that he hasn't been fully healthy. He rushed back too soon from a right quad pull last month. And he even tried, for a while, not to confess to that. But eventually, said assistant GM Jim Duquette, "it became obvious to us, after he wasn't stealing bases, that something was wrong." Beltran is, after all, a fellow who got traded to Houston last year and promptly stole an NL-record 28 bases in a row, plus six more in the playoffs. But this year, he's been thrown out stealing more times (two) than he's made it (one). So these days, Beltran admits that "sometimes I'll get to first, and I know the pitcher is 1.5 [seconds] to home plate, and I'd like to have the opportunity to steal a base. But I'm scared to accelerate for that long." Because of that quad, he has been just a station-to-station runner, a one-legged hitter and an often-cautious center fielder for the last few weeks. And even though he says he's now "90 percent," he still wakes up after pushing it to feel that soreness. You can hear the frustration in his voice when he says, "I just want to be healthy." But off in the background, there are always going to be people who don't want to believe this guy was ever a $119 million kind of player. So you hear the voices – baseball voices – who are now saying stuff like: "Good player. Not a franchise player." "Soft guy. Not a tough guy." "He'd rather bat second than third. Doesn't have the makeup to hit third." These are the same voices that were asking last winter: Where are all his Gold Gloves? Where are all those batting titles and home run titles and All-Star Game visits? And it's true. There's a definite shortage of all of those commodities. But if you're waiting for Carlos Beltran to apologize for his paycheck, you have a longgggg wait. "What happened in the offseason is over," he said, firmly. "I thank God for the contract I was able to get this year, and I thank God for all of things I've been able to [do] in the big leagues to get me to that point. But I believe that what I'm making is something I've earned. I'll continue to earn my money and play up to the best of my abilities and continue to help this team any way I can." Fine. Now everyone from Jackson Heights to Staten Island can spend the next 6½ years trying to define what will constitute "earning his money." But you know exactly what a lot of people are waiting for when they open their dictionaries: They want the Carlos Beltran who leaped off their widescreens last October. Well, good luck on that. Nobody is this good: .435 batting average, .536 on-base percentage, a home run every 5.75 at-bats. Those were Beltran's October numbers. How good is that? That's Barry Bonds Meets Ty Cobb good. But that wasn't the player Beltran had been for six years. That wasn't even a man in The Zone. That was a man who had just invented a whole new Zone. "That was a special time," Beltran says now. "It was an amazing experience. Everything was right. My timing was perfect. Every time I hit the ball, it went for a base hit or a home run. You don't have that experience very often." Most humans, for that matter, don't have that experience ever. But once a man has had it, he spends the rest of his life searching for it, trying to figure out how he pops the cork on that bottle and gets it all to pour out of him again. And again. That's Carlos Beltran, here in midseason 2005: Searching for that place. "I don't know how I got there, but I enjoyed every bit of it," he said, laughing. "I always think about it. About what things I was thinking before the game. What things I was working on in the games. Even when I was in the on-deck circle, thinking, 'What can I do out there? How are they going to pitch you?' Things like that." But the psychology of baseball slumps is so complex that last October isn't the only defining time in his career that Beltran swirls through his brain these days. He reflects on the best of times. But he reflects just as much on the worst of times. On the worst season of his big-league career – the summer of 2000. "There was something I learned in 2000, coming off the 1999 season where I was rookie of the year," he said. "In 2000, I didn't start the way I expected to, and I started to put pressure on myself. I was saying, 'I need to drive in 100. I need to score 100. I need to do the things people expect from me.' "People were saying to me, 'Calm down. It's only 30 games. You've got 130 to go.' But I didn't know then. I had to learn. So right now, where I am, I'm not worried at all. "I really learned from that. I think the best thing that happened to me was having my worst year of my career that year, because the next year, 2001, I started the same way. But I ended up hitting .307 with 100 RBI and 100 runs scored. I said, 'I can't believe this.' But that's the way baseball is." So here he is – on pace for his worst slugging, on-base percentage and extra-base-hit total since 2000. Yet somehow, it's the memory of his lowest point (2000) that drives him now – not the memory of his highest point (last October). Wouldn't you love to convene a panel of the American Psychiatric Association on that phenomenon some time? But it all makes sense, really. When a man gets this discouraged, why wouldn't he travel back to a place where he has already been (and survived), as opposed to compounding the aggravation by searching for a place almost no one has ever been? "It's tough sometimes," Beltran said. "This game gets you frustrated, because you expect a lot of good things from yourself and you get frustrated. But I learned from that in 2000. I always expect good things, but I know they will come. They'll come later on. It's just a matter of time." But "later" has never been one of New York's favorite words. So the clock ticks. The season roars on. The talk-show juries cast verdicts every day. This is the world you live in when you're a $119 Million Man. You can talk about "later" if it helps you stay sane. But if it's love Carlos Beltran is looking for in the city of New York, we'd suggest a different word: "Sooner."
Nothing would bother me either if I had $119 million in the bank. It's becoming clear that the Astros were right not to pursue Beltran at any cost. Their only mistake was letting Boras dictate their time table, causing them to miss out on other free agent opportunities.
aw poor guy, maybe you shouldn't have F#$KED with us for so long. i wonder why he only has one stolen base though?
It's becoming clear that the Astros were right not to pursue Beltran at any cost. Yup, because its easy to determine the 7-year value of a player based on 2 1/2 months of a season.
Take away his unbelievable postseason, his season was not that great. He only hit like .265 for the Astros.
**** Boras and Beltran. I'm so happy he is having such a horrendous season. Keep it up Beltran! I'm happy we didn't get him...but we wasted the offseason... Think they "we are buyers" mentality will stick through the year?
Why does Purpura keep saying he is trying to get a hitter since November. If he really wanted one, he should have one by now.
Thanks a lot VesceySux. Although he hasn't played well for the Mets thus far, I would take Beltran and his contract anyday.
