New York Mets: Why Carlos Beltran had to go

Carlos Beltran and the New York Mets parted ways Thursday because it would have been impossible for the team to focus on winning games if he had stayed.

The departure of Carlos Beltran after only a two-month tenure as manager of the New York Mets was presented by both sides as “mutually agreed on,” and that is probably true. Both Beltran and Mets management had ample reason to not want to contemplate a full season explaining away Houston’s 2017 season.

“It became clear to all parties that it was not in anyone’s best interests for Carlos to move forward as manager of the New York Mets,” chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon and general manager  Brodie VanWagenen said in a prepared statement.

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Beltran echoed that in his own written statement.”I couldn’t let myself be a distraction for the team,” he said.

The report issued Monday by commissioner Rob Manfred named Beltran – and, among players, solely Beltran – as actively involved in the creation of the Astros’ sign-stealing scheme. Manfred found that “approximately two months into the 2017 season, a group of players, including Carlos Beltran, discussed that the team could improve on decoding teams’ signs and communicating the signs to the batter.”

It did not specifically implicate Beltran by name in the development of the system that eventually came into being.

Ironically, the very vagueness of the mention of Beltran may have hurt him as much as if there had been greater specificity. Due to that vagueness, had he remained as manager, he would have faced increasingly detailed media scrutiny about the extent and depth of his involvement.

Just as importantly, if Beltran remained in uniform he would have faced a drumbeat of questions about what else, if anything, he knew about illegal sign-stealing generally. And given his record of having previously lied to reporters about his involvement in Houston, even legitimate denials would have been looked upon with strong suspicion.

In short, it probably would have been impossible for Beltran to escape the subject.

The same scenario would have confronted Mets upper leadership, an ongoing distraction they certainly would have found increasingly distasteful.

Is it unfair to Beltran that he is penalized for his honesty with the commissioner? (This assumes that Beltran cooperated with investigators, presumably in exchange for immunity from being penalized by the sport itself. He may or may not have done so.) It’s entirely plausible to contend that had the Manfred report not contained that single Beltran reference, none of what happened to him Thursday would have happened.

Even cheerfully granting that supposition, the logical response remains “so what?” He was mentioned, and everything that has transpired since his mention follows as logically as water flowing downstream.

There is little that management of any large corporation — and the Mets are a $2.6  billion corporation – likes less than the imposition of storylines that cost them control of their master narrative …  in this case pursuit of a championship.

Keeping Beltran also would have appeared to paint the Mets, fairly or unfairly, as indifferent to the narrative that their team is being led by a cheater.

That this all takes place in New York, the media capital of the nation only intensifies the depth of the problem posed by Beltran’s continued presence in uniform.

The team realized this, and it’s entirely plausible that Beltran did, too.