Long-term deal would end Carlos Beltran’s days in St. Louis.
Carlos Beltran (Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports)
So much for everyone thinking that Carlos Beltran would get a two-year deal. Seems Beltran wants a deal that will take him to his 40th birthday.
Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports notes that Beltran will decline the $14.1MM qualifying offer from the St. Louis Cardinals and hit the market. The hopes are to land a deal of three or four years. This will most likely end his two-year stint as a Cardinal.
My first thought was that an American League team that will seem most to benefit from such a deal. Even though Beltran hasn’t been as gimpy due to those darned knees, an AL team would benefit from having Beltran available as a DH in order to save wear and tear on those knees. Then you see what Beltran has done over the past three seasons.
He has played in 438 of a possible 486 games (90%) of his team’s games over that span. Of those 438 games, he has started in 410 (94%) of those in which he has played. For the same timeframe, Beltran has slugged 78 home runs and driven in 265 runs. His triple slash is .288/.356/.503 in those three seasons.
Beltran will turn 37 next April, so if a team should ink him to a four-year deal, he would be the big 4-0 when that deal ends.
Now which teams might be willing to give Beltran a contract of that length? Brown provides a list: Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers, Orioles and Phillies. You know, some of the usual suspects. Not surprising that only one of the teams Brown mentions is a National League club.
(H/T: Hardball Talk)