IF YOU HAVE AN ARGUMENT FOR SIGNING BELTRAN... THEN MAKE IT

The voting came down in our BYB poll with a very simple question… Would you sign Carlos Beltran, Yes or No?  Simple enough.  Guess what? Yankee fans, or should I say, Bleeding Yankee Blue readers do DO want Carlos Beltran... but it was very close.

In our poll taken, 61 People voted and 30, or 49% said you didn’t want him on the Yankees. 31 said you did! It’s interesting but I can only imagine the reason why was age. It was very close though, I can appreciate that.  Fans make their argument simple. Breaking it down one can assume you are content with the outfielders we have already in Ichiro, Alfonso Soriano, Brett Gardner and Vernon Wells.

You might be content with the minor league youth that's coming up in Zoilo Almonte or the like. Combine that with the fact that you just don't think Carlos is cut out for being a Yankee... am I right? Maybe some of you just want a "big name" and are willing to roll the dice and spend alittle money on Carlos.  Others may have figured in his age and that besides the post-season, what else has Beltran really been clutch in?  All of it reminds me of a post I saw from YESNetwork.com last week.  Let’s just say, it surprised me.

I found it alittle strange that a post on Yesnetwork.com titled,Yankees would be wise to pursue Beltran gave me absolutely no big reason for why the Yankees should sign Beltran, other than he'd make a great outfielder and could DH on his "outfield rest days." Seriously, that's all I took from it...opinion.  I have to tell you, the title was deceiving, and after reading it, I felt like I got ripped off… my opinion of course.

This was their only argument to why Beltran needed to be a New York Yankee, “Beltran is 36, but is also very productive and hit .296/.339/.491 with 24 home runs last season. He's a switch hitter and a good defensive outfielder, but with his age, he could benefit from the DH spot a few times a week. For that reason, it's smart for Beltran to consider ANY American League team"

Now, besides the .296 average, we have the power already, and we have good defense and we have 4 outfielders... one of which could be a DH, OR, rotate our guys.  The point is, there really isn't an outstanding reason the Yankees SHOULD get Beltran, unless we want to roll the dice and just see what we get.  Granted, we could be pleasantly surprised, but let's face it, no one liked the idea of Lyle Overbay when we picked him up and he turned out to be one of the best pick-ups on 2013 for the Yanks.

(In Photo: Jack Clark)
Look, we’ve seen plenty of big named players that were sold to us as “sure things” over the years. It goes back to Jack Clark and is as recent as Rondell White.  No one truly knows if 36 year old Carlos Beltran will be a good fit on the Yankees until he’s here, not even Doug Williams on Yesnetwork.com.  And yes, while Beltran's reputation in the post-season is outstanding, his season numbers have never jumped out at me. 

Look, I’m willing to take a chance on Beltran, but don’t replace my Ichiro Suzuki.  I wrote this about Suzuki on Twitter the other day:

@NYFanRant Ichiro has never been a problem for me. Be sure to vote on http://t.co/LkjiAGYT9p
— Bleeding Yankee Blue (@BleednYankeeBlu) October 17, 2013

I mean it! Ichiro needs to be our rightfielder and sure, Beltran could platoon with him some days if he was ever to come to the Bronx, but I wasn’t exactly “wowed” by Doug Williams' “anaylsis” of why Beltran should be in pinstripes.  I'm not so sure he does, you lost me there….

Anyway... I'm rambling now... thanks for voting in our poll... we'll have more soon!

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