Maybe Carlos Beltran will blow Yankees officials away on Wednesday, demonstrate the combination of baseball IQ, leadership and empathy that made him such a magnetic, mentoring force in clubhouses, particularly during the second half of his playing career.
I assume that is part of the reason the Yankees have extended their manager search to at least a sixth candidate, seeing if Beltran can sell a quick change from player to skipper.
But I also suspect this is both a courtesy and courtship by the Yankees. They appreciate Beltran’s status and gravitas among players, particularly from Latin America. Beltran is almost certainly entering a long, vibrant, important second phase of his baseball life in which it is not hard to imagine his skill set translating to numerous positions in the dugout or front office. He is just 40, after all, old for a player, but a baby as far as step two in the sport.
Beltran played for seven organizations and left a large enough impression with each that they and pretty much any club would want to enlist him moving forward. The Yankees have the managerial opening to serve as a recruitment — a look how serious we are taking you that we are interviewing you for this role less than a month after you announced retiring as a player.
Perhaps he doesn’t get that job as the successor to Joe Girardi, but the Yankees can keep him in the flock as a batting coach or an adviser to the GM, or some capacity in which he becomes an asset.
This is reminiscent of how quickly the Yankees brought Hideki Matsui into their employ after post-Yankee playing stints with the Angels, A’s and Rays. Like Beltran, Matsui radiated qualities of dignity and baseball intellect to be a sturdy clubhouse presence. And, like Beltran in Latin America, Matsui has particular reverberations in Japan.
His prestige was used as part of the Yankees’ pursuit of Masahiro Tanaka and almost certainly will be an element in any pitch for Shohei Ohtani.
When it comes to, say, recruiting a native Spanish speaker in whom the Yankees are interested, whether a teenager from the Dominican Republic or Venezuela or a twentysomething from Cuba, the ability to present a player who fought for greater rights for Latinos — such as for them to have translators, as players from the Far East do, to communicate better with the media — would be powerful.
The Yankees certainly have noticed, for example, that the Red Sox have kept David Ortiz and Pedro Martinez in their employ, recognizing that duo’s popularity in Latin America.
Despite many terrific qualities, Beltran is fighting history in attempting to manage so quickly after his career. Since Pete Rose ended the player portion of his player-manager stint with the Reds in 1986, nobody has been named a manager in the immediate season after playing.
The closest approximation to Beltran since the mid-1980s is Lou Piniella. He retired in June 1984 while already serving as a player and hitting coaching for the Yankees. He was hitting coach in 1985 for Yogi Berra and Billy Martin and was named Yankees manager in 1986. Beltran, in the latter years of his career, often served as an untitled hitting coach as much as player. But Piniella had a uniquely close relationship with George Steinbrenner, something far greater than Beltran has with Hal Steinbrenner.
Larry Bowa also was hired, as the Padres manager, one year removed from finishing his career in 1985, serving as San Diego’s Triple-A manager in between (thanks to Eric Nehs of the MLB Network for the research).
No one else has even gone from playing to managing one year later like Piniella and Bowa since. Even those in recent years who have seemed to hop from one to the other quickly did not go that fast. For example, Girardi was three years later, Brad Ausmus was four years, Mike Matheny was six, Robin Ventura was eight.
Alex Cora, like Beltran from Puerto Rico, was named Red Sox manger this offseason. He retired after the 2011 campaign.
Thus, Beltran is working against a lack of separation from his career, a period of reflection or work in an area other than player at a time when managers are asked to have perhaps less power, but the need for more diverse skills than ever before. Still, his assets have made him someone the Yanks want to do business with, even if it is not as Girardi’s successor.