{"id":16525,"date":"2018-11-20T22:43:58","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T04:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/?p=16525"},"modified":"2018-11-21T00:16:16","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T06:16:16","slug":"the-mlb-texas-rangers-great-adrian-beltre-one-of-the-greatest-third-baseman-in-baseball-history-who-became-a-member-of-the-3000-hit-club-with-the-texas-rangers-retires-from-baseball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myboysay.com\/blog\/?p=16525","title":{"rendered":"THE MLB TEXAS Rangers Great Adrian Beltre, one of the greatest third baseman in baseball history who became a member of the 3,000-hit club with the Texas Rangers, Retires From Baseball"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"After 21 seasons of excellence at the MLB third base position, MBSSG reports that baseball great Adrien Beltre has decided that the time is right for him to walk away from the Texas Rangers, and the game he loves, BASEBALL.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Players past and present spent much of Tuesday (November 20) joining fans in saluting Beltre for all that he brought to America\u2019s pastime \u2013 after he announced his retirement in a letter that the Texas Rangers released before noon. In addition to sharing Beltre\u2019s message to the public, the Rangers switched their Twitter handle to #ThankYouAB, replaced the cover photo to an image of Beltre, and peppered the team\u2019s page with tributes to the 39-year-old Dominican star. In a statement by general manager Jon Daniels, he remembered him as the quintessential teammate and a worthy representation of the franchise\u2019s character.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fact that baseball is a game is often used to diminish it. “A game” is almost always preceded by “just,” and the phrase is meant to prove that baseball shouldn’t be taken seriously, or to claim that it can’t be held responsible for any significant influence, or to distract from everything else that it can be. Adri\u00e1n Beltr\u00e9 did something different with this fact. His career was a celebration of baseball because<\/em> it’s a game, not despite it. In watching him, it was impossible to forget that it’s all just a game\u2014and he made that not just a good thing, but a beautiful one<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

@MLB<\/b><\/span> <\/a><\/h2>\n

After 21 major-league seasons, Beltr\u00e9 announced his retirement on Tuesday<\/a>. His record speaks for itself: 477 home runs, 1,707 RBIs, 3,166 hits. He was a four-time Silver Slugger, five-time Gold Glove, six-time finisher in the top ten for MVP. By Baseball-Reference, Beltr\u00e9 will retire with 95.7 WAR. Only 25 position players in the history of the game have accumulated more; the only third basemen ever to do so are Mike Schmidt and Eddie Mathews. It’s a Hall-of-Fame career, and if there’s any justice, it will be rewarded as such.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Yet none of these numbers do any justice to the experience of watching him play. Beltr\u00e9’s most striking feature was not his skill, though. It was his joy. To watch him was to understand that enjoying baseball and taking it seriously do not have to be mutually exclusive acts. Fun was not a luxury item in his game, rationed out and tacked on when it could be spared. Fun was<\/em> his game, built into the foundation of everything that he did. He was here to play in every sense of the word.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adrian Beltre Was the All-Time Great You Failed to Notice<\/span><\/h1>\n

The Game of Baseball Won’t Be Nearly as Much Fun Without Adrian Beltr\u00e9.<\/h1>\n

During his 21 big-league seasons Adrian Beltr\u00e9 played like he didn’t believe in the idea of a routine out. As a result, nothing about his game was routine.<\/h1>\n

They say that every baseball game will show you something that you’ve never seen before, but this sounds truer than it feels. The game is built on repetition, on a small set of potential outcomes, on predictive models that work more often than they don’t. You usually have an idea of what’s coming, even if you don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like. A batter goes on one knee for a wild swing, and so he’ll whiff. A lazy pop-up is hit to the shortstop, and so he’ll catch it. An umpire tells a guy to move into the on-deck circle, and so he’ll move into the on-deck circle. And so on.<\/strong><\/h1>\n

@AdrianBeltreRD<\/b><\/span> <\/a><\/h2>\n

Beltr\u00e9’s baseball was not like this. Beltr\u00e9’s baseball saw the most mundane rhythms of the game as opportunities for joyous improvisation. Beltr\u00e9 goes on one knee for a wild swing, and he hits a home run<\/a>. A lazy pop-up is hit to the shortstop, and it’s the next act of an ongoing slapstick comedy routine between Beltr\u00e9 and teammate Elvis Andrus<\/a>. An umpire tells Beltr\u00e9 to move into the on-deck circle, and so he grabs the on-deck circle and moves it over to where he’s standing<\/a>. Beltr\u00e9 played like he didn’t believe in the idea of a routine out; as a result, nothing about his game was routine.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Part of Beltr\u00e9’s act was filling empty space. It was taking gaps in the action, moments typically skimmed over only because they cannot be skipped outright\u2014the walk back to the dugout, the pause after a force out, the lead-up to the postgame celebration\u2014and making them into little pockets of charm. These made for the clearest display of his humor, and they made for the best highlights: clowning around with an opposing pitcher, pretending to tackle a baserunner, grabbing a broom to defend himself from a shower of Gatorade. But all of this was just a small part of what made Beltr\u00e9 Beltr\u00e9<\/em>. The rest was in the game itself. It was the spirit of his swing, unleashed even at pitches that bounced in the dirt and flew above his head and ran way out of the zone. It was a set of soft hands at the hot corner, wielded with a special ferocity. You could call it a style, but that isn’t quite right. It was an energy\u2014crackling, kinetic, vital.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beltr\u00e9 seemed to see something special in baseball; it looked like a source of purpose, not one of obligation. Without him, it’s still a game. It just won’t be nearly as much fun.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MORE ON ADRIAN BELTRE<\/strong><\/p>\n

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With Beltre, you have the big traditional numbers: 3,166 hits, 477 home runs, 1,707 runs batted in. You have the awards: five Gold Gloves, four Silver Sluggers, four top-10 Most Valuable Player Award finishes. And you even have an outrageous advanced statistic: 95.7 career wins above replacement, which trailed only Albert Pujols among active players before Tuesday\u2019s announcement.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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By the statistic JAWS, which was developed by Jay Jaffe, author of \u201cThe Cooperstown Casebook,\u201d in an effort to capture a player\u2019s overall talent as well as the explosiveness of his peak, Beltre ranks as the fourth greatest third baseman in major league history<\/a>, behind only Mike Schmidt, Eddie Mathews and Wade Boggs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It may <\/strong>seems crazy to rank Beltre above such luminaries as Brooks Robinson and Chipper Jones, but Schmidt said that distinction might not go far enough for Beltre.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHow about Beltre?\u201d Schmidt said<\/a> in March. \u201cFirst-ballot <\/strong>guy, kind of hid in the weeds most of his career. Isn\u2019t he now a 3,000-hit guy? He\u2019s gotta be considered past me in terms of the greatest of all-time.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Beltre hit 477 home runs in his career despite spending his first 12 seasons in pitchers\u2019 parks. He made up for lost time once he got to a hitters\u2019 park with the Texas Rangers.<\/span>Credit<\/span>Michael Ainsworth\/Associated Press<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
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Image<\/span>\"\"<\/strong><\/div>
Beltre hit 477 home runs in his career despite spending his first 12 seasons in pitchers\u2019 parks. He made up for lost time once he got to a hitters\u2019 park with the Texas Rangers.<\/span>Credit<\/span>Michael Ainsworth\/Associated Press<\/span><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cHe\u2019ll bypass me,\u201d Schmidt added. \u201cWhy not? He wins a Gold Glove every year and hits 40 every year; that\u2019s better than me.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The most underappreciated aspects of Beltre\u2019s mastery of the game were his longevity, his defensive prowess, and the parks in which he spent much of his career.<\/strong><\/p>\n

His 2,933 career games <\/strong>ranks just ahead of Robinson for 14th all-time and his 11,068 at-bats rank eighth. He was a major league regular by the time he was 19 \u2014 it was determined after he had made the majors that the Los Angeles Dodgers had improperly signed him a year too early, which resulted in several suspensions as well as the team being forced to pay Beltre damages \u2014 and was still an above average player at 39.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI remember one time I was going to give him a day off, <\/strong>and we\u2019re on the field and he just could not help himself,\u201d Ron Washington, one of Beltre\u2019s managers with the Texas Rangers, said in an interview on MLB Network Radio on Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019ve never told anyone this story, but I said, \u2018Adrian, I\u2019m going to kneel down here, I\u2019m begging you to take the day off. People don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing, but I\u2019m on my knees begging you to take the day off.\u2019 That was the only way I got him to take the day off \u2014 I actually got on my knees.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beltre finally relented. \u201cAnd you know that resonated with everyone in that clubhouse,\u201d Washington said, \u201cbecause no one wanted to take a day off, simply because they watched Adrian.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Beltre\u2019s durability is that he kept himself on the field at such an advanced age thanks in large part to his glove.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Defense can be hard to quantify, as the more modern statistics have only been tracked since the early 2000s, but using the best methods available from each season, Baseball-Reference credits Beltre with 23.1 <\/strong>career defensive WAR at third base, which trails only Robinson, who had 39.1 using far less precise methods of measurement.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MORE ON MR <\/strong>BELTRE‘<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adri\u00e1n Beltr\u00e9 P\u00e9rez is a Dominican<\/a> former professional baseball<\/a> third baseman<\/a>. Originally signed as an amateur free agent<\/a>, he made his Major League Baseball<\/a> (MLB) debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> in 1998 at age 19. He subsequently played for the Seattle Mariners<\/a>, Boston Red Sox<\/a>, and Texas Rangers<\/a>. He bats and throws right-handed. He has since become one of the most all-around accomplished players in history; he ranks 13th in defensive Wins Above Replacement<\/a> and is the fourth third baseman to reach 400 home runs<\/a> and 1,500 runs batted in<\/a>. Beltr\u00e9 is a four-time selection for the Silver Slugger Award<\/a> and MLB All-Star Game<\/a>, and a five-time winner of the Rawlings Gold Glove Award<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beltr\u00e9 is the all-time hits leader among foreign-born players.<\/sup> The fifth major leaguer to hit at least 100 home runs for three teams, he has hit at least 20 home runs in 12 seasons, and in five, driven in at least 100 runs. He hit a major league-leading 48 home runs while playing for the Dodgers in 2004, was the team MVP of the Red Sox in 2010, and tied for the major league lead in hits<\/a> in 2013 while playing for the Rangers. Sharing the record as one of four major leaguers to hit for the cycle<\/a> three times, Beltr\u00e9 is the only one to hit three at the same stadium, Globe Life Park in Arlington<\/a>. He is the sixth player with a three-home-run game in both the regular season and postseason, and just the second with both a three-home-run game and cycle in the same week. On July 30, 2017, he became the 31st player in MLB history to reach 3,000 hits<\/a> and the first from the Dominican Republic<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He ranks in the top ten all-time at his position in games played, assists<\/a>, putouts<\/a>, and double plays<\/a>. Beltr\u00e9 was the second to last active player to have played in the 1990\u2019s and former Rangers teammate Bartolo Col\u00f3n<\/a> is the only active player left holding this feat.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n