With everything that came out late Tuesday night, it’s a surprise that Carlos Beltran hung onto his New York Mets managerial position as long as he did. Obviously at the current time everyone knows that Beltran played a central role in the Astros’ sign-stealing controversy. Still, exact details were not known.
Now over at The Athletic MLB, Ken Rosenthal has all the skinny for us on Beltran’s 2017 involvement. Remember, Beltran was not a bench coach but an aging veteran player in uniform.
Details emerge about Carlos Beltrán’s role in the 2017 Astros clubhouse and the team’s sign-stealing scheme. Story with @EvanDrellich and @MarcCarig: https://t.co/3SQdU0fvb1
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 11, 2020
Here is a key part to parse from The Athletic:
The Astros’ development of an algorithm to decode signs from video was legal as an advance scouting tool, and the use of that algorithm would have remained legal if it had not been deployed live during games — a practice the Astros eventually adopted. However, it was their other sign-stealing effort, involving the trash-can banging to signal pitches in real time, which Beltrán and Cora helped direct, that MLB found most egregious.
“What happened was Cora and Beltrán decided that this video room stuff Koch-Weser was doing (with Codebreaker) was just not working, inefficient, too slow,” a person with direct knowledge of the investigation said. “They just had some lower-level guy put up this monitor and did it themselves
Next – and pardon the longer article to get in the key points – Beltran actually detailed some of what was going on to lower level New York Yankees officials.
One Yankees official said whenever he would ask what the Astros “were doing down there,” Beltrán would chuckle and say, “Nothing no one else is doing.” Two other former Yankees with the Astros, McCann and Joe Espada, who took over for Cora as bench coach in ’18, essentially would say the same in casual conversations with their former club. But Beltrán, according to one team source, divulged particulars of the Astros’ scheme to certain low-level Yankees officials, providing confirmation the team was justified in ramping up its efforts to combat sign stealing.
Obviously, this leaves behind a tarnished reputation for Beltran. It’s hard to believe he would ever get another spot on a coaching staff, let alone a managerial job in baseball. One just wonders if Beltran was asked now, what his perspective is and if it was all worth it.
