When Carlos Beltran’s name comes up in baseball conversations among baseball people, the term “respect” doesn’t fully capture the high regard in which he is held. It’s closer to “reverence.”
Maybe the Yankees and their fans are going to see why that is now.
Beltran’s ninth-inning, two-out, three-run, walk-off homer off Zach Britton powered the Yankees to their biggest win of the 2014 season, 5-3 over the rival Orioles on Friday night at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees (39-33) won their fourth straight and kept second place in the American League East for themselves — and stayed even with the division-leading Blue Jays (42-33) — while establishing a new high-water mark for the season.
This is the sort of offense the Yankees envisioned last winter when they signed Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Beltran. It’s a group that could frustrate the heck out of itself and its fan base for eight innings — during which they stranded 11 baserunners and went 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position — only to hang with ’em and blow up the opposing closer in the final frame.
And while McCann delivered a two-out, RBI single in the ninth to continue his best week as a Yankee and Ellsbury scored a run to maintain a solid campaign, it’s Beltran, even at the advanced baseball age of 37, who can be primarily responsible for elevating this underperforming offense into something special.
“He’s one of the best hitters in this league,” McCann said of Beltran. “I’ve seen it for a long time. He can carry you for a long, long time. He’s been working extremely hard, just like a lot of us. For him to come up with a huge hit like that was big.”
“When you feel good at the plate, you want to be in that spot. When you’re not feeling that well, you don’t want to be in that spot,” Beltran said. “Thank God, the past couple of days I would say I’m feeling more comfortable at the plate. I’m putting good at-bats together. I feel confident that I’m always going to do something positive.”
His slash line stands at an un-Beltran-like .227/.280/.426, and he missed three and a half weeks with a right elbow injury that seemed as if it would require in-season surgery to repair. A procedure to remove the bone chip would have put him out of commission for 8-to-12 weeks, according to the Yankees, and you started to wonder how little the Yankees would salvage from this three-year, $45-million commitment.
Yet Beltran powered through his rehabilitation, and he is displaying more pop in his bat. He also doubled and walked Friday, and in his last 11 games, he has two homers and four doubles.
“You could just see him start to square balls up,” manager Joe Girardi said. “You saw in Oakland, and it’s continued on this homestand. And to have this huge hit, everyone wants to be able to do that and contribute. And that’s a huge contribution.”
This game looked as if it would symbolize the Yankees’ inability to get out of neutral this season. Hiroki Kuroda’s five-inning no-hitter morphed quickly into a 2-1 Yankees hole in the sixth (and 3-1 in the top of the ninth). The Yankees loaded the bases three times in the first six innings and couldn’t harvest a single run out of those scenarios; Beltran got thrown out at home to end the second while tagging up and trying to score on Brett Gardner’s flyout to center field.
With two outs in the ninth and Gardner on first, Mark Teixeira drew a walk. Then McCann lined a single to center field, scoring Gardner to bring the Yankees within 3-2 and call up Beltran to the plate. The switch-hitter got ahead, 3-and-1, before crushing a Britton fastball into the left field seats.
“He’s been in it so many times — big stages, postseason,” Girardi said. “We all know what he’s done in the postseason. So we all know he’s not going to do too much. He’s used to the situation. He understands what he needs to do.”
The Yankees need him to resemble the Beltran of the prior two seasons in St. Louis. If he can climb back to that level, the Yankees will keep climbing to new high-water marks. And Beltran will gain a whole new level of reverence here in The Bronx.