Carlos Beltran will be joining Michael Kay in the broadcast booth on the YES Network this season. Before that happens though, the nine-time All-Star was Kay’s guest on the network’s Centerstage.
Kay didn’t take it easy on him either. Just over two years after winning the World Series with the Astros in 2017, The Athletic published a report detailing the team’s sign-stealing operation. Michael Kay asked how Carlos Beltran felt about that team and championship now.
“Looking back now, yes, we did cross the line,” Beltran said in the interview, which is set to air Monday. “We all did what we did. Looking back today, we were wrong. I wish I would’ve asked more questions about what we were doing. I wish the organization would’ve said to us, ‘Hey man, what you guys are doing, we need to stop this.’ Nobody really said anything. We’re winning, you know, and some days our system really worked. Some days [it] didn’t really work…but we had a good team, Michael. We had such a good team.”
The report from The Athletic came out just 11 days after Carlos Beltran accepted an offer to become the manager of the New York Mets. Two months after the article came out, Major League Baseball released a report, which implicated Beltran and current Red Sox manager Alex Cora as the brains of the operation. Beltran lost his job with the Mets.
Beltran acknowledges that the championship “is stained,” but admits that he does hold a grudge over the way the investigation played out and the way the report was released.
“The part that bothered me about that is that, you know, when I sit down to cooperate with them [MLB], they said to me, ‘We’re not going against the players. We’re going against… field personnel, front office and organization,’” he added. “And the fact that I’m the only player named in that report? So how… that happen? Like, that’s the part that I don’t understand. Everyone gets immunity except Carlos Beltran? I don’t get it.”