The Never-Before-Told Story Behind Carlos Beltran’s Firing as Manager
An excerpt from Andy Martino's new book, Cheated
From Andy Martino’s new book, Cheated: The Inside Story of the Astros Scandal and a Colorful History of Sign Stealing.
Jeff Wilpon had called the commissioner’s office on Monday [Jan. 13, 2020] asking for a meeting, but the league, inundated with the Astros’ fallout, couldn’t get the sit-down on the calendar until Wednesday morning.
When the appointed time arrived, Wilpon and [then-Mets GM] Brodie Van Wagenen sat down at MLB’s offices on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan and set about learning why [commissioner Rob] Manfred had chosen to make Carlos Beltrán the lone player named in his report.
As they quizzed league officials about the investigation, the Mets’ owner and GM heard their fears realized: Their manager had been deeply involved in the cheating, and in fact was a leader of it.
MLB had many details and testimonials to prove this. Had Beltrán been a coach and not a player in 2017, his punishment would likely have been severe.
Wilpon and Van Wagenen left the meeting and went straight to the airport, where they boarded a plane bound for Florida. They had to sit down with Beltrán and decide if they could trust him.
As he mulled the decision, Van Wagenen worried about the judgment Beltrán showed in speaking to a reporter while the scandal was breaking, and in his ability to lead the clubhouse in the aftermath of the scandal.
His star pitcher, Jacob deGrom, and his closer, Edwin Díaz, had both suspected that they’d been victims of electronic sign stealing the year before. DeGrom, in particular, had been very angry about it. The Mets’ front office still remembered the day in May when, after a bad start at Dodger Stadium, deGrom and Van Wagenen had personally scoured the ballpark for hidden cameras. They couldn’t prove that the Dodgers were cheating but knew that they resented the concept of electronic sign stealing.
Now Beltrán was going to manage deGrom? Or pitcher Marcus Stroman, who was already tweeting criticism of Cora to his sizable following? The path forward seemed like a minefield.
Upon arriving in Port St. Lucie on Wednesday afternoon, Wilpon and Van Wagenen summoned Beltrán to a meeting at the team’s office. They wanted to look him in the eye and hear his side.
The group, joined by assistant GM Allard Baird, met for nearly four hours. At first, the vibe didn’t reassure anyone.
Beltrán was quiet and seemed evasive, back in his shell.
The Mets officials in the room needed to feel a sense of connection with Beltrán, and for an hour or two, they weren’t getting it. They pressed him on how difficult it would be to continue as the leader, and didn’t sense that Beltrán agreed, or necessarily understood the scope of the problem.
Finally, Beltrán warmed up and conceded that some of what he’d done in Houston was wrong. Like Cora, he told his bosses that it would be hard to move forward and not be a distraction from the team and its players. But he wasn’t nearly as resolved as Cora about leaving.
Beltrán went home. Van Wagenen, Wilpon, and Baird continued to talk, tossing back and forth the pros and cons of dismissing or retaining Beltrán.
They loved the version of Beltrán who had resurfaced midway through the meeting, but couldn’t be sure that the less-engaging guy, the one who had first walked into the room, wouldn’t emerge again with the team or the media. And they hadn’t been satisfied that they were safe from further details emerging about Beltrán and the Astros’ cheating.
As midnight drew closer, the group was not near a decision.
“All right,” Wilpon said. “Why don’t we sleep on this and reconvene in the morning.”
He drove home, then tossed and turned until rising to work out five hours later.
While the front office met that night, Collins called Beltrán at home.
“Are you okay?” he asked again.
“Yeah.”
Beltrán was friendly but short with his answers.
“There’s a rumor going around that you resigned. Is that true?”
“Nope,” Beltrán said.
Collins, worried for his buddy and upset on his behalf, went to bed fearing the worst.
Early Thursday morning, Van Wagenen called Collins.
“Can you come over to the complex?” the GM asked.
He wanted to consult as many people as he could before making such a significant decision. He’d already been to the commissioner’s office and spoken with his longtime friend (and now former Astros manager) A. J. Hinch, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, and many others.
“Do you think this can end?” Van Wagenen asked when Collins arrived. “Do you think there is anything he can say to make this better?”
He and Wilpon, clearly still agonizing over what to do, grilled Collins on how keeping Beltrán might play out publicly.
“If you’re the manager here, how would you answer these questions?” Van Wagenen asked.
Collins said that he would begin a news conference by apologizing to the New York Post reporter to whom Beltrán had downplayed the scandal.
“Just tell him, ‘I’m sorry, I just should have said no comment,’” Collins told the bosses. “Then say, ‘The report is out, I’m sorry it happened.’ And then move on.”
Collins left, suspecting his case for retaining Beltrán had not landed. On his way out, he saw Baird and asked what he thought was going to happen.
“All I can tell you, Terry,” Baird said, “is that there’s nothing to worry about—yet.”
At 9:30 a.m., the team officials met again with Beltrán. This time it was quick. After all the agonizing and lost sleep, no one could see a smooth way forward. The Mets felt they had to move on.
Beltrán wanted to prove that he could be a good manager and was more than just a talented athlete—he was a smart baseball man. But he was beginning to agree with the team officials who worried that the scandal would be a distraction, both in the media and in the clubhouse.
With his shoulders still sagging and his smile nowhere to be found, Beltrán agreed to leave a job he was never able to start. It was clear to him that he didn’t have much of a choice anyway, as the Mets seemed ready to move on.
Everyone in the room stood, shook hands, and parted in order to finalize details and compose their respective public statements.
Beltrán went home to Jessica in disbelief. He still wanted to manage the team.
Van Wagenen and Wilpon organized a conference call with the media to explain themselves and began to discuss how to approach the nearly unprecedented challenge of launching a manager search with less than a month to go before spring training.
Wilpon had to scurry off to an ill-timed obligation, the renaming of a street in Port St. Lucie after Mets icon Mike Piazza. Baseball marched on without Beltrán.
As for Collins, who had been in baseball for nearly fifty years and loved Beltrán more than nearly anyone he’d met in the game?
He went home that evening, had a few drinks, and picked up the phone when a friend called. In a rage that built as he spoke, Collins vented about how the sport had screwed over his good friend.
This excerpt is from Cheated: The Inside Story of the Astros Scandal and a Colorful History of Sign Stealing by Andy Martino, published by Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Andy Martino. For more information and to order a copy, please visit Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever books are sold.