Beltré's stint in Seattle big part of HOF election
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A version of this story was first published in January, after Adrián Beltré was elected into the Hall of Fame.
SEATTLE -- Adrián Beltré’s tenure with the Mariners wasn’t the most prominent of the elite third baseman’s career, but it nonetheless represented a huge stretch in his candidacy for Cooperstown.
And at long last this weekend, Beltré will be enshrined to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, after being elected in January in just his first year on the ballot, receiving 95.1% of the vote conducted by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
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He will be joined by fellow electees Todd Helton, the longtime first baseman of the Rockies, and Joe Mauer, the face of the Twins during his peak. Iconic manager Jim Leyland was elected in December via the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee process.
Beltré, 44, will be most remembered for his late-career peak in Texas and his ascent to the Majors as a premium prospect with the Dodgers, but his mid-career stint in Seattle, from 2005-2009, was just as critical to his career. He is the seventh Mariners player to make it to Cooperstown, joining Gaylord Perry (1991), Goose Gossage (2008), Rickey Henderson (2009), Randy Johnson (2015), Ken Griffey Jr. (2016) and Edgar Martinez (2019).
Beltré won two of his five Gold Glove Awards with the Mariners and ranked among the team’s all-time leaders in most statistical categories -- ninth in batting average (.266), ninth in slugging percentage (.442), 11th in OPS (.759), 13th in on-base percentage (.317), 15th in homers (103) and 16th in RBIs (396).
He was also beloved by each of his teams and their fan bases -- which also included the Dodgers (1998-2004), Red Sox (2010) and Rangers (2011-2018) -- for the pure joy and passion that he played with.
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“I think that when you just play the game and you do what you do, it's easier, your talent, instead of thinking about you need to perform and you need to do this because it's what people are expecting you to do,” Beltré said earlier this year. “And that's one of the things that took me a little bit of time to understand, to just be able to play the game and have people have fun with it.
“And understand that when people are watching you, you have to be a role model. But at the same time, you know that they look at you and they see themselves in you -- that you can actually play the game right and enjoy watching them.”
Beltré signed with the Mariners ahead of the 2005 season on a five-year, $64 million deal. It was during his time in Seattle, or perhaps even after, when he reached his 30s, that he truly began his Hall of Fame trajectory. His 21.2 wins above replacement with the Mariners, per Baseball Reference, were fourth most among MLB third basemen in that span behind only Alex Rodriguez (34.2), David Wright (27.2) and Chipper Jones (24.9).
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One of Beltré’s best career games came with the Mariners, when he went 5-for-6 and hit for the first of his three career cycles on Sept. 1, 2008, in Arlington. He joined a select Seattle crew of John Olerud (2001), Rodriguez (1997) and Jay Buhner (’93) as the only players in Mariners history to accomplish the feat.
And though his performance during the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006 wasn’t in a Mariners uniform, he was critical to helping ascend the game’s premier international event with an epic performance for Team Dominican Republic.
“Since I was a little kid, all I knew was baseball,” Beltré said.
Beltré’s friendship and rivalry with Félix Hernández was also among his career highlights, even after Beltré left to play for Seattle’s AL West rivals. Beltré was a surprise guest for Hernández’s induction into the Mariners’ Hall of Fame in August, appearing midway through the event.
Also on the Hall of Fame ballot this year with Mariners ties was Rodriguez, who received 34.8% of the vote, short of the 75% needed for election.