Carlos Beltran and Buyer's Remorse: Something to Make Astro Fans Feel Better
It's been a disastrous, disheartening season for Astro fans, and it doesn't show any signs of getting better.
Carlos Beltran: The Mets admit a mistake.
So you try to take your bright spots where you can.
Today's semi-bright spot is a frank admission of buyer's remorse on the part of New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon, who outbid the Astros for Carlos Beltran.
In a lengthy New Yorker profile, author Jeffrey Toobin attends a Mets-Astro game with Wilpon, and talk turns to Beltran.
The outfielder was a midseason 2004 pick-up by the Astros, and he had a terrific postseason. He then went on the free-agent market, where the `Stros came up short, a fact which causes some fans to boo him to this day.
Here's what Wilpon says:
When Carlos Beltran came up, I mentioned his prodigious post-season with the Astros in 2004, when he hit eight home runs, just before he went to the Mets as a free agent. Wilpon laughed, not happily. "We had some schmuck in New York who paid him based on that one series," he said, referring to himself. In the course of playing out his seven-year, $119-million contract with the Mets, Beltran, too, has been hobbled by injuries. "He's sixty-five to seventy per cent of what he was." Beltran singled, loading the bases with one out.
So yeah, bright spot. Take what you can get.
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