Carlos Beltran in Cooperstown Won't Be a Can of Corn to Center

It comes as little surprise that Carlos Beltran has announced his retirement after attaining his first World Series ring with the Houston Astros to cap off a 20-year MLB career.

There are a lot of people who peg Beltran as a future Hall of Famer. He is certainly not without credentials. Beltran collected 2,725 hits for a .279 lifetime batting average with 435 career home runs and 1587 RBI along with 9 All-Star appearances and three Gold Gloves.

But cracking Cooperstown as a center fielder is no easy feat. Even Joe DiMaggio didn't get in on the first try. In fact, The Yankee Clipper didn't get in until his fourth appearance on the BBWAA ballot.

Consider some of Beltran's contemporaries. His fellow Puerto Rican Bernie Williams doesn't have Beltran's power numbers (287 HR and 1257 RBI) but he nearly finished with a .300 lifetime batting average (.297) and won four Gold Gloves along with 5 All-Star appearances. After getting 9.6% of the BBWAA vote in 2012, he fell off the ballot altogether in 2013 after garnering only 3.3% of the vote. Like Williams, Jim Edmonds doesn't have Beltran's power numbers (393 HR and 1199 RBI) but his 8 Gold Gloves only counted for 2.5% of the BBWAA vote in 2016.

In 2018 both Andruw Jones and Johnny Damon appear on the BBWAA ballot for the first time. Damon has 200 fewer home runs than Beltran but has 44 more career hits. Although Jones has fewer than 2,000 hits, he finished with 434 home runs - one less than Beltran. Jones also earned 10 Gold Gloves. Ye it wouldn't shock me if neither Damon or Jones get less than 5% of the vote.

Of course, Carlos Beltran will not appear on the BBWAA ballot until 2023. How Beltran does will depend in part on who he is stacked up against. It does help that Beltran played a good chunk of his career during the so-called Steroids Era and never fell under suspicion. So while fresh off his World Series win many people today see Beltran as a Hall of Famer as memories of the Astros' triumph fades and deep into the second term of a Trump Administration, his candidacy for Cooperstown might not be so obvious in a little over five years from now.