How Beltrán's historic '04 run with Houston propelled his Hall of Fame career

A version of this story appears in Memories and Dreams, the official magazine of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. To read more stories, please click here.

Any list containing the best Trade Deadline deals in history would have to include the one that brought Carlos Beltrán to Houston in 2004, although, technically, that wasn’t a Deadline deal at all.

The Astros nabbed Beltran on June 24 that year, with 105 games remaining in the regular season. They were four games over .500 when they got him, 22 games over when October hit, and their incredible postseason run that year -- stretching all the way to Game 7 of the National League Championship Series -- was largely due to Beltrán outperforming the lofty expectations the Astros had when they completed the blockbuster three-team trade five weeks ahead of the Deadline.

The Royals got catcher John Buck. The A’s got reliever Octavio Dotel. And the Astros received a 27-year-old switching-hitting, five-tool, All-Star Gold Glove center fielder who, amazingly, was still relatively unknown at the time of the trade.

Beltrán, an impending free agent, was new to playoff baseball, yet the lack of experience did not faze him. He didn’t just look comfortable playing in October. He made it look easy.

Beltrán attributes a lot of his success to a brief pep talk he received from two of his Astros teammates, both of whom were at the tail end of their own Hall of Fame careers: Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio.

“It was my first year experiencing playoff baseball,” Beltrán said. “I had a little conversation with Bagwell and Biggio before the playoff games, and both of them reached out to me saying, ‘Hey, man, keep doing what you're doing, you don't have to do anything special. We're all here, we have a good team, do your part, let us do ours.’

“So it was that little conversation, which could be very casual, but also could be very meaningful. When you're a young player and you haven't been able to experience playing October baseball ... that conversation right there for me was huge. It allowed me to very basically focus on just going out, playing the game. And it was a good series for me.”

Even with all of his gifts, Beltrán was somewhat of a lesser-known player when the Astros made the trade. The smaller-market Royals were not a nationally recognized team, and their superstar outfielder had mostly made his mark on the game out of the spotlight.

That changed a little bit when Beltrán first arrived to the Astros. By the time October ended, he was viewed as one of the most celebrated players in the game.

“It was a made-for-TV story for him, for sure,” said former Astros general manager Gerry Hunsicker, who brokered the Beltrán trade. “I don't know that there's anyone that had that kind of a postseason stretch in history and just showed the world what a dynamic player he was. If playing in smaller markets like Kansas City and Houston kept him under the radar, it certainly wasn't under the radar anymore.”

Those 2004 Astros were loaded with talent, but they were also an aging group, and they were lacking stability in center -- especially at Minute Maid Park, where playing center field required navigating a grassy hill and flagpole, both of which were in play, in front of a 436-foot wall, the deepest in the Majors.

Beltrán needed very little time to get acclimated to his new surroundings, gliding around the vast center field with an ease not felt by most of his predecessors.

Beltrán performed well in his three months with the Astros during the regular season, slashing .258/.368/.559 with a .927 OPS and 135 OPS+, 23 homers and 53 RBIs. He stole bases. He threw out baserunners. He leaped over walls and robbed home runs.

Beltrán quickly became a favorite among Astros fans, who lobbied hard for him to re-sign with the hometown nine. One sign popped up late in September 2004, an election year: “Beltrán: Four more years.”

Unquestionably, Beltrán played at an All-Star level to finish the regular season. But once the playoffs arrived, he was otherworldly.

The Astros played 12 games that October, and Beltrán started, and starred in, all of them. He had 20 hits in 46 at-bats. He homered eight times, drove in 14, walked nine times and was 6-for-6 in stolen-base attempts.

“During the regular season, a lot of times you spend some moments where you get extremely hot, and everything that you hit is hard, or you get lucky, you find holes,” Beltrán said. “In that particular moment, I felt relaxed. I felt like I was looking for my pitch. If they wanted to pitch to me, I was OK with that. If they wanted to pitch around me, I was OK with that.

“I was not trying to force anything, where a lot of times, when you get hot, and you know that those hot moments don't last forever, sometimes you try to force certain things, to help the team. I didn’t feel like I had to pull the team on my back. I felt like, 'OK, let me do my part, let me put together a good at-bat, let me focus on a quality at-bat, and let's see what happens.'”

Late manager Phil Garner, who took over for Jimy Williams the day after the All-Star Game in 2004, mentioned during the NLCS that he was excited for Beltrán to get on the national stage and “strut his stuff.”

“He is a guy that can beat you with his bat, beat you with his power, do it from both sides of the plate. He can beat you with his legs and he can beat you with his arm,” Garner said at the time. “In big ballgames, he was making great throws and throwing people out in key ballgames that were keeping the other team from either tying the score or going ahead of us in late-inning situations. There's really nothing this guy can't do.

“I'm glad that the whole country has been able to see it now.”

The postseason run ended without the Astros reaching their goal to win the pennant, and Beltrán, several weeks after it ended, departed Houston to sign a lucrative deal with the New York Mets. Beltrán would go on to play in six more postseasons with the Mets, Cardinals, Yankees and Rangers, eventually winning the World Series with Houston in 2017, his final year as a Major League player.

Beltrán had many unforgettable moments over his 20-year career, but it was that short stint with the Astros, 22 years ago, that will stand out forever.

“One of the great things about Beltrán is he was a very, very humble person, he was a man of great faith back then, and he played with a great calm about him,” Hunsicker said. “And I think those things all contributed to his ability to be able to function in a high-pressure situation like that and allow him to go on such an extraordinary run.”