YES’ Beltran on Astros cheating scandal: ‘Looking back today, we were wrong’

It’s been more than two years since the Astros’ cheating scandal became public. It’s been even longer since that 2017 World Series winning team employed their system of electronically (and illegally) stealing opposing teams’ signs and relaying them in real time to their batters.

Baseball has, for the most part, moved on (minus GM Brian Cashman). But the simple question of “why” still lingers, particularly for Carlos Beltran — the only Astros player from that team to be named in MLB’s report — who returned from his two-year baseball exile to begin work as an analyst for YES Network this season.

In a candid hour-long interview on “Centerstage with Michael Kay” — which aired Monday, the day he makes his broadcasting debut — the slugger opened up about his involvement and regret over what his former team did.

“Looking back now, yes, we did cross the line,” Beltran said. “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.

“We felt that when teams are coming to our ballpark (Minute Maid Park), we felt that some teams have something going on,” he said of why they started stealing signs in the first place. “So we felt that we needed to create our own (system), you know, and that’s what happened. … We didn’t feel we were really crossing the line. We felt in our hearts that we were being more efficient and smarter than any team out there.”

Before the bombshell report released by The Athletic, in which former Astros’ pitcher Mike Fiers confirmed their sign stealing, Beltran’s baseball career reached its next high level post-retirement. He was hired by the Mets’ former general manager Brodie Van Wagenen to be the Amazin’s new skipper. It was a new day for Beltran, a celebrated Met who helped propel the team to a playoff run in 2006, but whose falling out with the organization in 2011 left some bitterness.

That happy feeling lasted all of 11 days.

Beltran was hired on Nov. 1, 2019, The Athletic’s report published on Nov. 12. On Jan. 13, 2020, Rob Manfred released the league’s findings of the Astros’ cheating, which singled out Beltran and former Astros’ bench coach Alex Cora — who lost his job at the time as the Boston Red Sox’s manager, but was re-hired by the team in 2021 — as masterminds of the sign-stealing system. Beltran lost his job as Mets manager three days after the MLB 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,’ ” Beltran continued. “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.”

In his interview with Kay, he also admitted the Astros’ 2017 title is stained. That’s a step in the direction of repentance while working for the broadcast network of the Yankees, whose GM recently called out the Astros’ cheating as the reason the Bombers have not been to a World Series since 2009.

This year will be the next defining moment of Beltran’s career. His new role could help sway some in his favor as he nears his first year of eligibility for Cooperstown. Time will tell the rest of his story.

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