With Major League Baseball finishing up its investigation of the Astros and an announcement coming as soon as next week, Carlos Beltran appears more likely than not to avoid hard discipline and begin his new job as Mets manager without any hiccups.
Discipline, in the form of suspensions, appears quite possible for the leaders of the 2017 Astros championship club, against whom strong evidence has surfaced that they illegally stole opponents’ signs via electronic means. Houston president of baseball operations Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch rank as the most obvious candidates to be sidelined, and Alex Cora, Hinch’s bench coach that season who left afterward to manage the Red Sox, also appears in danger; furthermore, MLB announced on Tuesday that it would look into new charges that Cora’s champion 2018 Red Sox illegally stole signs.
Beltran found himself in the unique position of being a player for the 2017 Astros and now part of management, which means 1) MLB has the right to suspend him from his current job, even if it’s not related to the time and place of any wrongdoing; and 2) the Players Association couldn’t and wouldn’t defend Beltran from discipline regarding his current gig. The 42-year-old met with investigators about the Astros’ sign-stealing and cooperated, multiple sources said; tellingly, since initially denying to The Post that he was a “key player” in the Astros’ scheme, as The Athletic reported, Beltran spent the Winter Meetings politely demurring on all questions about this subject.
With baseball planning to disclose a transparent accounting of its investigation, Beltran could get fingered as a contributor to what went down. However, as a player at the time, Beltran wasn’t expected to read the Sept. 15, 2017 memorandum that commissioner Rob Manfred distributed to all 30 teams. The memo threatened serious penalties for breaking rules on the electronic sign-stealing front, in the wake of the Yankees-Red Sox Apple Watch controversy. Hence, he carries less culpability. ESPN reported on Tuesday that, according to three Astros players who were interviewed, involved players will not be disciplined.
However, if more damning evidence about Beltran’s involvement emerges, either before or after the announcement, MLB could still suspend the nine-time former All-Star.
