There has been this prevailing notion the fate of Carlos Beltran should be determined by how honest he was with the Mets during his interviews for the managerial position.

The premise is if he lied they can’t trust him, and he should be fired. If he was honest, they really have no basis to fire him.

For a typical managerial hire, this would be true. After all, many managers are hired from outside the organization. As we saw with Mickey Callaway, you only really speak to a candidate once or twice, and then you vet that candidate.

But that’s not Beltran.

Carlos Beltran spent seven years with the Mets. During that time, Beltran and the team had a tumultuous relationship.

Fred Wilpon based Beltran in an interview with the New Yorker. The Mets fought with Beltran over his opting for knee surgery. Overall, Beltran was there for good times and bad times. In fact, with two collapses, the Madoff scandal, firing Willie Randolph one game into a west coast trip, and Francisco Rodriguez attacking his children’s grandfather in the family room, he was there for some of the worst times in team history.

Beltran is close with Omar Minaya and Allard Baird, both of whom are assistant general managers. He played for Terry Collins, who is a special assistant. He also played for AJ Hinch, who is a close personal friend of Mets General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen.

When you throw in Beltran’s personal relationships with other members of the front office like David Wright, and his playing for the Wilpons in all the seven years he played in Flushing, you realize the Mets know Beltran extremely well.

Based on that relationship, the Mets believed Beltran was the best person to lead the franchise in 2020 and into the future. A report where he was not explicitly found of any wrongdoing should do nothing at all to change that.

What happened with the Astros is a red herring as it pertains to the Mets. They know exactly the person who Beltran is, and they thought so highly of that person, they made him their manager. Right now, Beltran is the same person who interviewed for the job, was hired, and has been preparing for his first Spring Training as manager.

Don’t be fooled by moving narratives. Beltran is exactly the person they know him to be, and he’s not facing any punishment from baseball. As such, short of being instructed to do so by the commissioner, the Mets have zero basis to fire him for a supposed inability to trust a person with whom they have a long standing relationship.