It looks like the New York Mets made a damn good decision with parting ways with Carlos Beltran.
Carlos Beltran wasn’t just involved in the Astros’ electronic sign-stealing scandal, he reportedly helped create the scheme along with then-bench coach Alex Cora, according to The Athletic.
“What happened was Cora and Beltrán decided that this video room stuff (Astros executive Tom) Koch-Weser was doing was just not working, inefficient, too slow,” one person with direct knowledge of the investigation said. “They just had some lower-level guy put up this monitor and did it themselves.”
During home games, a video monitor would be positioned to transcribe signs from a center-field camera and members of the team then would bang on a garbage can within earshot of the batter.
Beltran told The Post in November that he was “not aware of that camera,” and that “we were studying the opposite team every day.”
That was clearly a lie.
When he joined the Astros in 2017 after spending the 3 previous seasons with the Yankees, he reportedly told the Astros they were “behind the times” when it came to stealing signs.
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Veteran catcher Brian McCann reportedly tried to step in and stop the scheme, but it did not work.
“He disregarded it and steamrolled everybody,” one of the players said. “Where do you go if you’re a young, impressionable player with the Astros and this guy says, ‘We’re doing this’? What do you do?”
Members of the 2017 team described Beltran to The Athletic as “the Godfather,” “El Jefe (the boss),” “the king” and the “alpha male.”
“I was in my first year, man,” former Astros and current Pirates pitcher Joe Musgrove previously said on MLB Network. “Along with [Alex] Bregman and a lot of those guys, and in your first year in the big leagues you’re around guys like Beltrán and (Brian) McCann, some big names. And I’m not going to be the pitcher to walk up and tell ‘em to knock it off.”
In the wake of the unearthed scheme, three managers and a GM lost their jobs.
The Mets hired the 42-year-old Beltran in November, and would fire him in January.
