Mets Won’t Stand By Carlos Beltran Like They Have With Abusers

There is going to be a lot to be said here and other places about the New York Mets and Carlos Beltran “mutually agreeing to part ways,” but one thing remains clear – the Mets were unwilling to weather the storm and stand by their manager.

Despite the Mets profiting from a Ponzi Scheme and selling the team to a person who has paid the largest ever insider trading fine, this is apparently where they draw the line.

Perhaps, it shouldn’t come as a surprise with Jeff Wilpon having been alleged to fire a pregnant employee because he was not married, but the Mets have stood by their people who have committed violent acts against women.

In 2004, the Arizona Diamondbacks fired Wally Backman before he managed one game after discovering his previous arrests for drunk driving and for a fight with his wife.

He’d be unemployable for Major League teams for years, and he’d have to resort to managing in the independent leagues. Eventually, the Mets brought him back to the organization and gave him a job for six years.

The Mets found a way to give him a second chance and stand by him. That applied even as he pushed Jack Leathersich‘s physical limits and might’ve had a significant role in Leathersich’s career altering injuries.

In 2015, Jose Reyes was arrested for a violent altercation in their Hawaii hotel room which led to her being taken to the hospital for treatment. For this altercation, he was suspended for 51 games and released by the Colorado Rockies.

Later in that 2016 season, the Mets signed him. They then picked up his option for 2017, and despite his being among the worst players in baseball that year, they signed him to return to the Mets in 2018.

Despite Reyes’ involvement in his wife being treated in a hospital, his poor play, and his publicly pushing for more playing time, the Mets not only kept him, but we also saw Reyes nominated for the Marvin Miller Award.

Backman and Reyes are not the only two individuals who the Mets have stuck by through the years when it comes to improper and violent acts against women. There’s other players, and Steve Phillips survived sexual harassment allegations.

Through it all, one thing is clear – if the Mets employee harmed a woman, the team would unquestionably have that person’s back even when no one else would.

For anything else, they’ll just see which way the wind is blowing. That’s why Beltran was fired before getting an opportunity to manage the team, and it’s why Reyes was celebrated by this organization.

8 Replies to “Mets Won’t Stand By Carlos Beltran Like They Have With Abusers”

  1. Blair M. Schirmer says:

    Yesterday I put $100 on “Beltran will be fired” after I realized the Mets FO would be endlessly dogged by questions like “During his interviews you would have asked Beltran about his role in sign-stealing. So you either knew Beltran was already lying to the press about his role in stealing signs and you hired him anyway, or Beltran lied to you in order to get the job. Which is it?”

    The reason his firing took even this long was because the lawyers needed to get together and haggle money while drafting the NDA.

    I’m not glad to see Beltran go in this fashion even though I felt his hiring was a significant mistake on the grounds that (1) the Mets needed a very experienced manager to balance the ineptitude of the Wilpons and to balance Van Wagenen’s inexperience, and (2) that Beltran, for all the nice things said about him, never uses language in a way that evinces anything like deep or layered or nuanced thinking about the game.

    I’m not surprised by most of this, btw. This is incredibly Mets. The only thing that surprises me, really, is that the Mets didn’t drag it out for weeks before firing Carlos.

    1. metsdaddy says:

      I’m guessing it didn’t drag on because Jeff and BVW were called in to the commissioner’s office to discuss it.

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