Adrián Beltré is only four hits shy of 3,000 for his career and when he reaches that vaunted milestone, he will become just the 31st player in major league history to do so.
It will be just the latest achievement in a career that will likely lead to Cooperstown.
Beltré is the fourth third baseman to reach 400 home runs and 1,500 runs batted in. He is a four-time selection for the Silver Slugger Award and a five-time Gold Glove Award winner.
And he was, for one fleeting season, a member of the Boston Red Sox.
On January 7, 2010, Beltré signed a one-year, $9 million deal with Boston (the deal included a $1 million buy out for 2011 if no long term agreement could be reached). The Sox got so much for their investment.
That season, Beltré led the Red Sox with a .321 in batting average, which was fourth-best in the American League, and tied David Ortiz for the team lead in RBI (102). He finished the year with 189 hits, 28 home runs and 84 runs scored. Beltré’s 49 doubles led the Majors and were a career high. He also finished fifth in the AL in total bases (326) and slugging percentage (.553).
By all accounts, the 31-year-old Beltré enjoyed his lone season in Boston and would have gladly returned to the OldeTowne Team if only the Sox had made a reasonable offer. Had Boston come to the table with a four-year deal in the range of $50-$60 million, they likely would have had a future Hall of Famer on their roster, perhaps to this day.
But the Red Sox had other plans.
That offseason, Boston traded a package of prospects (including Anthony Rizzo) to the San Diego Padres for Adrian Gonzalez and handed him a 7-year $154 million extension. They then moved Kevin Youkilis, who had previously won a Gold Glove at first base in 2007, back over to third base, where his career began.
How did that all work out?
In 2011, Gonzalez had an outstanding first year in Boston, slashing .338/.410/.548, with a league-leading 213 hits, 45 homers, 27 doubles and 117 RBI. However, he faded down the stretch and September was one of his weakest months in nearly every statistical category.
The Red Sox suffered an epic collapse that month, going 7-20, which was their most September losses since the 1952 club also dropped 20 games. The team pathetically lost 16 of their final 21 games, resulting in a September winning percentage of .259, the worst for any Red Sox team since August, 1964.
Through it all, Gonzalez showed a total lack of leadership, which contributed to the Red Sox’ demise. He displayed no passion, no drive, no desire, no fire and no ferocity. He was a star without a pulse.
Gonzalez took no responsibility for the Red Sox' collapse. Instead, he blamed the ‘big man in the sky'. When asked to describe the Red Sox epic choke, Gonzalez responded by saying, “I’m a firm believer that God has a plan and it wasn't his plan for us to move forward."
In August of the next season, the Red Sox orchestrated a historic trade with the Dodgers, offloading the bloated contracts of Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett, along with Gonzalez’s. Though he put up great numbers, Gonzalez didn’t act like a winner and he was the bait that allowed Boston to jettison Crawford and Beckett.
By second half of 2011, Youkilis’ career was flaming out and his sudden decline led Boston to trade him to the White Sox in June, 2012. Youk looked far from the player that had been an All Star the previous season. His body was breaking down and betraying him; he was out of baseball by early 2013.
Meanwhile, Rizzo has had three straight 30-plus home runs seasons. In 2016, he added his first Silver Slugger, Gold Glove and first World Series title with the Cubs.
In the seven years since Beltré’s departure, third base has remained an unsettled mess for the Red Sox.
Boston signed Pablo Sandoval to a highly-regrettable five-year, $95 million deal in 2014. The organization was driven to ink an obese third baseman, whose on-base, slugging and OPS had declined for three consecutive seasons, for one glaring reason: the Sox had fielded 14 different players at the hot corner for 10 games or more over the previous four seasons.
In other words, ever since they let Beltré walk away.
If there was one ray of light in this otherwise horrible decision, it was this: by letting Beltré walk, the Sox received two compensation draft picks in 2011, which turned out to be Blake Swihart (26th overall) and Jackie Bradley Jr. (40th overall).
For the last seven seasons, the Red Sox have lamented their decision not to re-sign Beltré and to instead allocate hundreds of millions of dollars for Crawford, Gonzalez and Sandoval. Over that period, Beltré has batted .307 and slugged .520 for Texas, while posting four 30-plus homer and three 100-plus RBI seasons.
This weekend, perhaps, the Red Sox organization will watch Beltré notch his 3,000th career hit, and a few years from now it will watch him become enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
What a shame and how regrettable? We are left to wonder what might have been. Beltré was a Red Sox and they let him slip away.
That decision set off a chain of events — a domino effect — that is still haunting the team to this very day.
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