KANSAS CITY — The foundation of Carlos Beltrán’s now-Hall of Fame career began in Kansas City.
The former center-field star and 1999 Rookie of the Year for the Royals was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Tuesday night and will join Andruw Jones and Jeff Kent in the Class of 2026. Beltrán received 358 votes (84.2%) out of 428 ballots cast by voting members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
This was Beltrán’s fourth year on the ballot, and his strong candidacy received an increase in support in each year he appeared. The 48-year-old will join Jones (also elected Tuesday) and Kent (elected in December by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee) in Cooperstown for the induction ceremony on July 26.
Beltrán finished his career with a .279/.350/.486 slash line and a 119 OPS+. He’s one of only five players in AL/NL history with at least 500 doubles (565), 400 homers (435) and 300 steals (312), joining Willie Mays, Andre Dawson, Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. With 1,582 runs and 1,587 RBIs, he is one of only 39 players in history with at least 1,500 in each of those categories.
And Beltrán was an October legend, with a 1.021 OPS and 16 home runs in his postseason career (65 games).
While Beltrán likely won’t don a Royals cap as he enters Cooperstown, he will always be a part of Royals history. The organization drafted him in the second round of the 1995 MLB Draft out of Fernando Callejo High School in Puerto Rico, and he made his debut three years later on Sept. 14, 1998, when he was 21 years old.
Beltrán played 14 games in that first season but broke out in 1999, when he hit .293 with a .791 OPS, 22 home runs, 108 RBIs and 27 stolen bases across 156 games as the Royals’ center fielder en route to his Rookie of the Year Award — the fourth Royal to ever win one.
The young Beltrán was a very bright spot in an otherwise dark time in Royals baseball. He played parts of seven years in Kansas City, accumulating 24.8 wins above replacement (per Baseball Reference) and posting a .287/.353/.483 slash line with 123 home runs and 164 stolen bases. He finished ninth in MVP voting in 2003 — when he slashed .307/.389/.522 with 26 homers and 100 RBIs — before the Royals traded him to the Astros during an All-Star 2004 campaign.
He went on to play for the Mets, Giants, Cardinals, Yankees and Rangers across his 20-year big league career, and he built a strong analytical Hall of Fame case given his 70.0 career bWAR, which ranks eighth all time among center fielders. Of the 64 AL/NL position players to reach 70 career WAR in the Modern Era (since 1900), all but eight are Hall of Famers.
But his link to the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal from 2017 — the final season of his playing days — complicated the case. Because of that, Beltrán was ousted as Mets skipper before even managing a game in 2020.
Voters have steadily increased their support for Beltrán on their Hall of Fame ballots, though, and a sizable jump in his fourth year on the ballot from the 57.1% of votes he received in 2025 earned Beltrán his entry into Cooperstown.
Also on the ballot for the first time this year was Royals legend Alex Gordon, but he fell off the ballot with only one vote. Gordon was elected to the Royals Hall of Fame last season, but his Baseball Hall of Fame candidacy was not as strong. He finished his 14-year big league career — all with the Royals — with 34.9 bWAR and a .257/.338/.410 slash line.
