BOSTON — Carlos Beltran’s first Fall Classic proved a disappointment, and now it’s onto a more familiar front for the perennial All-Star: Free agency.
“I’m a free agent. I’ve got to listen to everybody,” the right fielder said, shortly after his Cardinals’ season ended with a 6-1 loss to the Red Sox at Fenway Park in World Series Game 6, giving Boston its eighth championship. “I’ll make a decision based on this — the opportunity to play in the postseason, hopefully.”
Sounds like a return to the Mets isn’t happening, then.
Now 36, Beltran has long been interested in signing with the Yankees, who will be in the market for a right fielder with power if Curtis Granderson declines their one-year, $14.1 million qualifying offer. Of course, Beltran could receive the identical offer from the Cardinals, which would weaken his market by requiring another team to give up a draft pick for signing him.
Nevertheless, there figures to be no shortage of suitors for Beltran after he spent his two years in St. Louis re-establishing his greatness and his reliability. He played in 151 games in 2012 and 145 games this past season, and he eradicated the fiction he is “soft” when he started for the Cardinals in Game 2 after leaving Game 1 early with a right rib injury. In the Series, he put up a .294/.400/.294 line with no homers and three RBIs.
Perhaps it’s because it took him 16 years in the big leagues just to make it this far that he didn’t express devastation upon the Series’ conclusion.
“Honestly, I’m not disappointed,” said Beltran, who had an RBI single Wednesday night. “I think at the end of the day, we all want to win, but we fought. We battled to get to this point.We didn’t play too good. At the end of the day, that’s not the team that we know we can be.”
Beltran said he would take some down time now.
“I’m just going to go home, rest, sleep for a couple of weeks and wait for my agent [Dan Lozano] to call me, figure out what is the interest in teams,” he said.
A return to the Cardinals seems unlikely, given St. Louis’ superb farm system and modest payroll.
“I made it clear that I would love to come back, but we have to see what their plans are,” Beltran said. “I understand. I’m a veteran. I know an organization makes a decision on what makes sense for them. I won’t take it personally if I don’t come back to St. Louis.”
Beltran has reason to be forgiving of results both on the field and off the field. The negativity from Beltran’s Mets years has dissipated, at least nationally. He very well might do better this winter than he did two years ago, when he signed a two-year, $26 million deal with the Cardinals.
“I had a blast,” he said of his two years as a Cardinal. And so likely ends that chapter in what looks increasingly like a Hall of Fame career.