Carlos Beltran says there's a stain on Astros' 2017 World Series title

Carlos Beltran says the 2017 Astros “did cross the line” in using sign-stealing to help win the 2017 World Series and that there is a stain on that championship.

Beltran discussed the sign-stealing scandal in an interview with Michael Kay during the YES Network’s “CenterStage” program that will premiere at noon on Monday. YES released excerpts of the interview on Sunday morning.

“Well, Michael, looking back now, yes, we did cross the line,” Beltran said. “We all did what we did. Looking back today, we were wrong.

“I wish I would’ve asked more questions about what we were doing. I wish the organization would’ve said to us, ‘Hey man, what you guys are doing, we need to stop this.’

“Nobody really said anything. We’re winning, and some days our system really worked. Some days [it] didn’t really work . . . But we had a good team, Michael. We had such a good team.”

Asked if there is a “stain” on the Astros’ title, Beltran said, “Yeah, there is, because, you know what we did, and we all have taken responsibility, and at some point we all have shown remorse about what we did.”

Beltran, 44, was a nine-time All-Star in a 20-year major- league career from 1998 to 2017, including stints with the Mets and Yankees. He finished with 2,725 regular-season hits and 435 home runs.

He is expected to work 36 Yankees games for YES this season, picking up some of the slack left by the retirement of Ken Singleton as well as David Cone joining ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” booth and reducing his YES schedule.

Beltran worked as a special adviser to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman after the 2017 season.

The Mets hired him to be their manager after the 2019 season, but he was let go early in 2020 without having managed a game because of revelations about his central role in the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal.

Beltran was the only Houston player mentioned in the commissioner’s report on the matter and was portrayed as one of the masterminds of the plan.

The Yankees still have not forgotten or forgiven, evidenced most recently this past week when Cashman recalled with bitterness the Astros’ seven-game win over the Yankees in the 2017 ALCS.

In an interview with The Athletic, Cashman said, “The only thing that stopped [the 2017 Yankees] was something that was so illegal and horrific.”

Aaron Judge was in a more forgiving mood on Sunday in Tampa, Florida, when he was asked if Beltran needs to say anything to him or his Yankees teammates.

“I have a lot of respect for Beltran,” Judge said. “He helped me a lot during his time here as a player. Learned a lot of good lessons. [He] spent a lot of quality time just talking to me about the game, the mental side of the game, his approaches on how to be a good teammate. In my opinion, he doesn’t need to say anything to us.”

Asked about the sign-stealing setup at Minute Maid Park, Beltran said the Astros reacted in part out of concern over other teams using video as an aid. He said unlike most teams, the Astros’ video room was in the clubhouse rather than next to the dugout.

“So we felt, why don’t we have our video room next to our dugout?” he said. “Now, all of a sudden, we’ve got our video room next to our dugout and it’s easy, simple. We had a feed that was good for us, you know?

“We’re seeing the game . . . You get to see the pitchers, you get to see the catchers. And then we felt that we could use that, but we didn’t feel that we were really crossing the line there. We didn’t feel we were really crossing the line.

“We felt in our hearts that we were being more efficient and smarter than any team out there. That’s how we felt.”

Beltran said that if the Astros’ front office received a directive from MLB about the matter, it was not shared with the players.

“I wish somebody would’ve said something,” he said. “A lot of people always ask me: Why didn’t you stop it? And my answer is: I didn’t stop it the same way no one stopped it. This is working for us. Why are you going to stop something that is working for you?

“So if the organization would’ve said something to us, we would’ve stopped it for sure.”

Beltran said he cooperated “100%” with MLB’s investigation and was unhappy that he was the only player named in its report.

“The part that bothered me about that is that, when I sit down to cooperate with them, they said to me, ‘We’re not going against the players. We’re going against field personnel, front office and organization,’ ” he said.

“The fact that I’m the only player named in that report? So how [does] that happen? That’s the part that I don’t understand. Everyone gets immunity except Carlos Beltran? I don’t get it.”

 With Erik Boland

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.