Welcoming the HOF Class of 2026: Why Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones got in

The Baseball Hall of Fame welcomed two new members Tuesday night -- one of which, with apologies to Shohei Ohtani, is the greatest player I've ever seen.

Playing for the Houston Astros in the 2004 playoffs, Carlos Beltran introduced himself to many baseball fans for the first time with a dazzling display of power, speed and defense. Prior to coming over to Houston in a trade that season, Beltran had played in obscurity for the sad-sack Kansas City Royals, but in 12 wonderful games over two weeks that October, he hit .435, slugged 1.022, smashed 8 home runs, swiped 6 bases, scored 21 runs and ran down everything in center field.

"He was Superman," Astros teammate Craig Biggio said in 2014. "It was a display of something I'd never seen before."

While that was the best Beltran would ever play, he went on to a distinguished career that saw him hit 435 home runs while registering more than 1,500 RBIs and 1,500 runs scored -- one of just 39 players to achieve both milestones and one of just nine to also steal at least 300 bases.

And now, Beltran can call himself a Hall of Famer.

Andruw Jones also burst onto the scene in the postseason, a 19-year-old prodigy who hit two home runs in Game 1 of the 1996 World Series for the Atlanta Braves. Jones went on to hit 434 home runs, but he made his biggest impact on defense, winning 10 consecutive Gold Gloves and earning accolades as perhaps the best defensive center fielder of all time.

He is also now a Hall of Famer.

Beltran and Jones are just the fourth and fifth primary center fielders to reach Hall of Fame status who began their careers after 1960, joining Andre Dawson (who played more games in right field but earned more value as a center fielder), Kirby Puckett and Ken Griffey Jr.

It's a small group. Let's see how they got here.

Why Carlos Beltran is a Hall of Famer

The easiest way to describe Beltran: He was a five-tool player. We can use statistics to verify this claim. He's one of eight players with both 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases. He owns the highest career stolen base success rate (86.4%) among players with at least 200 attempts. He won three Gold Gloves and had a terrific arm, leading his league four times in assists. His single-season home run total topped out at 41, and he hit at least 30 four times and twice more hit 29. He hit .300 four times and .290 in three other seasons.

There are other numbers: The 1500/1500 club that shows his longevity; the nine All-Star selections; the impressive résumé in the postseason, where he hit .307/.412/.609 with 16 home runs and 42 RBIs in 65 games. Among players with at least 200 plate appearances in the postseason, he's the only one with an OPS above 1.000, higher than Albert Pujols or David Ortiz or Mickey Mantle or Reggie Jackson.

The numbers, however, don't capture the fluidity and grace with which he played, especially in the first half of his career before his speed declined. He could beat you in so many ways -- something New York Mets fans never seemed to fully appreciate. Following his big October with the Astros, Beltran signed a seven-year, $119 million contract with the Mets before the 2005 season. At the time, it was just the 10th contract in baseball history worth at least $100 million, and Mets fans spent the next seven years expecting Beltran to play at that level for an entire season.

Indeed, Mets fans' lasting memory of Beltran is the called strike three on an Adam Wainwright curveball for the final out of Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS. Unfortunately, that one strikeout overshadows Beltran's tenure with the Mets. Over the seven seasons, he ranked ninth among position players in WAR, including an 8.2-WAR season in 2006 and 7.0 WAR in 2008.

After a trade to the San Francisco Giants in the final year of his Mets contract, Beltran then moved around: to the St. Louis Cardinals, the New York Yankees, a couple months with the Texas Rangers. He was a winning player, making the playoffs with each of those clubs, a respected veteran leader. His final season was a return to the Astros in 2017.

That's where he tarnished his legacy, when it was later discovered the Astros had been stealing signs. Beltran was a central figure in the whole sordid affair, telling teammates the Astros were "behind the times" in an era when teams were learning how to monitor video to steal signs. He helped devise the infamous plan of banging on a trash can to more quickly relay the stolen signs to the batter.

So yes, he cheated.

It cost him a job as manager of the Mets, for which he had been hired in November 2019, just before the scandal broke. Then-Astros manager A.J. Hinch got another managerial opportunity. Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who was involved with the cheating as a coach with the Astros in 2017, was suspended for a season but returned as Boston's skipper in 2021. Beltran hasn't received another opportunity to manage, though he did join the Mets' front office in 2023. The scandal also undoubtedly delayed his entrance to Cooperstown as he might have been a first-ballot selection in 2023.

In the end, the depth of his achievements was too strong to ignore. Among players who played at least 50% of their games in center field, he ranks eighth all time with 70.0 career WAR. He's not an inner-circle Hall of Famer, but he's well above the line of borderline candidates. According to Jay Jaffe's JAWS system, which combines career and peak value, Beltran rates as an average Hall of Fame selection among center fielders.

He raises the quality of the Hall of Fame and, for one breathtaking October, was as good as anyone who ever played the game.

Why Andruw Jones is a Hall of Famer

Years ago, when John Smoltz was still pitching for the Braves, I asked him how Jones playing center field behind him helped him as a pitcher. The key, Smoltz explained, was that you could fall behind in the count but still feel confident throwing a fastball, knowing Jones could run down a hard-hit ball in the gap -- and that would lead to fewer walks or falling behind even further in the count.

Do the numbers back up that claim? Jones became the Braves' full-time center fielder in 1998 and was there through 2007 -- that's where his run of 10 consecutive Gold Gloves came. During those years, Smoltz allowed a .259 average after falling behind 1-0; the MLB average over that span was .339. Of course, Smoltz is a Hall of Fame pitcher, so you would expect him to be better than average. Still, that's an 80-point difference, and Smoltz's overall batting average allowed in that span was just 27 points lower (.240 versus .267).

It's impossible to know how much of that success to attribute directly to Jones, but one thing everyone who saw Jones play center field can attest to: 10 Gold Gloves don't lie.

Factor in those 434 home runs and Jones joins Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Schmidt as the only players with at least 400 home runs and 10 Gold Gloves. Needless to say, those are three players in the inner circle of the inner circle of Hall of Famers, and Jones' defense/power combo is the most succinct way to explain why he's now a Hall of Famer. Of course, Jones isn't really in the same class of those three, which is also why it took him nine ballots to get elected.

His defense for that decade was special -- and it should be noted the Braves made the playoffs every year from 1996 to 2005, back when only four teams per league made it in. Jones played an especially shallow center field, yet it still seemed impossible to hit a ball over his head. His jumps and anticipation were legendary and even while active, the comparisons to Mays were constant. There's a much-repeated story that former Braves third baseman Terry Pendleton told, that Mays was standing around the batting cage one day in San Francisco and told a young Jones that he was the best center fielder Mays had ever seen.

It's not clear whether Mays was including himself.

The defense metrics used at Baseball-Reference -- which are an amalgamation of different systems depending on each player's era -- rate Jones as the fourth most valuable defensive player ever, behind only Brooks Robinson, Mark Belanger and Ozzie Smith. That makes him the top-rated outfielder: 30 runs better than Roberto Clemente (the No. 2 outfielder) and a whopping 50 runs better than Mays (the No. 3 outfielder).

The kicker: Jones played 14,857 innings in center field, just over 17,000 innings overall in the outfield. Mays, meanwhile, played 24,331 innings in center field. Per 1,350 innings, about a full season's worth of playing time, Jones averaged 18.6 runs saved; Mays averaged 10.2 runs saved. Yes, Mays played into his 40s, losing some defensive value as he aged, while Jones' last season as a center fielder came when he was just 30 years old. (And once he left the Braves after the 2007 season, he was a role player within two years.)

Still ... nearly twice as good as Mays? Maybe that helps explain some of the skepticism about Jones as a Hall of Famer, even if his career WAR of 62.7 ranks 13th all time among players who played at least half their games in center field.

Like Beltran, Jones also had an incident that tarnished his image, one that caused -- and still causes -- some voters to skip over him. In December 2012, after he had played his final game in the majors (he would play two more seasons in Japan), Jones was arrested and charged with battery following a domestic dispute with his wife. He pled guilty, paid a fine and received probation.

Jones got in regardless. Like Ozzie Smith or Brooks Robinson, he was a vital player on winning teams, a staple on SportsCenter plays of the night, with enough value at the plate to get him elected.

Two center fielders. About time we get a couple more of them enshrined in Cooperstown.