Carlos Beltran joining the Met legends in the rafters.

[Marshmallowmilkshake]

I like Carlos Beltran, and I'm thrilled the Mets are retiring his No. 15. I think he's worthy, especially as a Hall-of-Famer wearing an interlocking NY - the good kind -- on his Cooperstown plaque.

 

Beltran, who was elected to the MLB Hall of Fame in January, will wear a Mets cap on his Hall of Fame plaque, becoming just the third player to have that distinction -- joining Tom Seaver and Mike Piazza.

"I didn’t do this alone," said Beltran in a statement that was released by the Hall. "Every team I played for shaped my journey, and I’m grateful to all of them. With the Mets, I experienced my greatest individual growth and success. I’m honored that my Hall of Fame plaque will feature the Mets logo, and I’m proud that every team I played for will be listed on the plaque."

 

I like when the Mets salute their past. They always seemed to lag in there. We can be loud and proud. I have no problem with retiring numbers of folks like Beltran.

[A Boy Named Seo]

I know for a baseball forum, I yap about soccer more than I should. That said, I love what LAFC did recently for a retired legend, Carlos Vela. They created something called the Ring of Honor and created a giant plaque in the stadium that looks like a 50-foot shirsey featuring his last name and #10, but they didn't formally retire the number.

I like that. Honor the player, but keep the number in circulation.

[Frayed Knot]

I like Carlos Beltran,

-- I like him too

and I'm thrilled the Mets are retiring his No. 15 -- not so thrilled

I think he's worthy, especially as a Hall-of-Famer wearing an interlocking NY on his Cooperstown plaque -- He also had less than 1/3 of his plate appearances as a Met. And if he had chosen/been assigned a different logo would he be less worthy?

I like when the Mets salute their past. -- Fine, but there's not just one way to do it.

They always seemed to lag in there -- and now the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction. The NYM HoF was non-existent and/or ignored for a long time, except that once they finally got around to creating one the flood of retired numbers since (hmmmm, who can we do next year?) has put it on the verge of irrelevancy

I have no problem with retiring numbers of folks like Beltran -- Steve seems to have no problem retiring lots of numbers.

He thinks it's the more the better. I don't.

Looking up George Brett a few days ago I noticed that the KC Royals have retired the numbers of

- George Brett: 21 year HoF career all w/KCR. Nearly double the career WAR of any other KCR player

- Dick Howser: Managed the team to their first pennant and WS, then was forced to retire for health reasons and died a year later at age 51

- Frank White: 18 year multiple A-S and GG career ALL with the Royals

And NO ONE else!!

Now THAT's more like it IMO.

[Centerfield]

I think I'm closer to FK than what the Mets have done. And although I agree that "HOF with Mets Hat" is too strict, it's closer than whatever they're doing now.

I think it has to be something along the lines of:

1. Elite performance for a significant portion of time.

2. Long tenure as a Met

3. Must be associated with the Mets more than any other team (at the very least, can't be more associated with another club than the Mets)

So going through the retired numbers:

1. Casey Stengel. #37. No. I mean, why are we retiring a manager's number. This is dumb.

2. Gil Hodges. #14. No. See above.

3. Tom Seaver. #41. Yes. Duh.

4. Jackie Robinson. #42. Find another way to honor him. Making all clubs retire his number is dumb. And seems forced.

5. Mike Piazza. #31. Yes. It's a close call on criteria 3. The Dodgers are close, but I say he's more Met than Dodger.

6. Jerry Koosman. #36. No. I never saw him play, but I don't think you can really say he was elite, and not for a significant portion of the time.

7. Keith Hernandez. #17. No. Spent more years with the Cardinals, won his MVP with the Cardinals, better overall numbers with the Cardinals. I mean, we love him. But as a player, he's more St. Louis than NY.

8. Willie Mays. #24. I mean, come on.

9. Dwight Gooden. #16. Yes. He didn't stay elite as long as we would have liked, but has earned it.

10. Darryl Strawberry. #18. Yes.

11. David Wright. #5. Yes.

My wall:

41

31

16

18

5

15

Including 24 basically makes this honor meaningless.

[Gwreck]

41, 31, 5, 15

1. You have to be a hall-of-fame caliber player to have your number retired. It’s supposed to be for the elite only. Koosman, Strawberry, Gooden, Hernandez? All should have their numbers un-retired. Big mistakes all around. Cheapens the honor for who deserves it.

2. You have to be readily associated with the Mets. Mays? Stengel? Laughable. Hodges isn’t laughable…but still no. I’d listen to arguments about Beltran here, but the majority of his best years were with the Mets, and the Mets were his primary team.

3. David Wright. Special exception to the HOF since he played his entire career with the team and is already borderline HOF/would have gotten there but for some fluky injuries/has multiple major team records.

[stevejrogers]

FYI, his Metly HOF induction will take place in the same ceremony. Ala Seaver and Wright.

So Maz and Bobby V will be inducted in one ceremony on May 30th, and Beltran when the number is retired.

[Cowtipper]

Now let him be manager again.

*Depending on how 2026 goes.

[Chad ochoseis]

16 hours ago, Gwreck said:

41, 31, 5, 15

 

1. You have to be a hall-of-fame caliber player to have your number retired. It’s supposed to be for the elite only. Koosman, Strawberry, Gooden, Hernandez? All should have their numbers un-retired. Big mistakes all around. Cheapens the honor for who deserves it.

 

2. You have to be readily associated with the Mets. Mays? Stengel? Laughable. Hodges isn’t laughable…but still no. I’d listen to arguments about Beltran here, but the majority of his best years were with the Mets, and the Mets were his primary team.

 

3. David Wright. Special exception to the HOF since he played his entire career with the team and is already borderline HOF/would have gotten there but for some fluky injuries/has multiple major team records.

I think of retiring numbers as:

 

- an event that should be extremely rare. You can always build a bigger HoF, but it's much more difficult to create new one and two digit numbers. And it's a huge honor to say "player X was so great that we can't imagine anyone even wearing his number ever again"

- as much about the player's value to the city and the fan base as to his on-field abilities. Sentimentality has a place here.

- Basically, Gwreck's #2. A player doesn't have to have spent his whole career with the Mets, but baseball fans should associate the player with the Mets first.

 

That means 41, of course. And 5 is almost as much of a no-brainer, as one of the best position players of his time, the team captain, and a Met through and through, HoF or not.

 

I'd retire 14. You get at least partial Metly credit for having been a Brooklyn Dodger. And 1969 was a major achievement. That wasn't a great team on paper, and Gil Hodges led them to a championship over the Orioles, who really were a great team. The deck was stacked against those 60s expansion teams, and Hodges was one of the main reasons why the Mets overcame that. And then he died on the job, way too young. It's enough.

 

Mays is a possible exception. Not very Metly, but has a case for being the best player who ever lived, played most of his career for one of the Mets' NY precursors, did actually play for the Mets, and was promised not to have the number reassigned during his very long lifetime. It would be unseemly at this point to shrug shoulders, say "he's dead, so it's OK", and hand 24 to the next prospect who gets called up from Syracuse.

31, I guess. Has quite a bit of Los Angeles Dodger in him, but one of the game's greats, and is part of some important Met moments.

Keef gets some points for the added goodwill generated from decades in the booth, but he was a Cardinal as much as a Met.

The others? Mainly good, but not good enough. Strawberry particularly annoys me. This was someone who readily admitted to not giving his best efforts as a Met. Rehabilitate his image? Sure. Retire his number? Not so fast.

Beltran? Great, but not Metly enough. Played for five other teams that I can think of. Would fans of other teams think of him as a Met first, or as a Royal?

And it's time to take 8 out of mothballs.

[Centerfield]

I think 14, 24 and 37 are so woefully undeserving  it strips the honor of any meaning. 

[Chad ochoseis]

Kind of harsh for Gil. This is where sentimentality comes in a bit. His death was a shocker, and he was as important as Seaver in turning the Mets from a national joke into champions. The players on the 1969 team have been consistent in talking about how much Gil mattered. I can see the argument for insufficient Metliness, but he's not woefully undeserving.

Couldn't agree more on 37, though. The early Mets weren't a joke because of Casey, but he didn't help matters at all, and his glory days were with the Yankees.

I admit to going back and forth on 24, myself.

[Marshmallowmilkshake]

I don't have a problem with Hodges, Stengel or Mays.

It might be a "You had to be there" kind of thing. But each have special significance to the team and the city.

[metsmarathon]

i don't think we need to emulate the yankees on having so many retired numbers.   

[Frayed Knot]

5 hours ago, Marshmallowmilkshake said:

I don't have a problem with Hodges, Stengel or Mays.

It might be a "You had to be there" kind of thing. But each have special significance to the team and the city.

But, again, acknowledging their contributions to the Mets (however brief) and to NY baseball in general doesn't have to boil down to a choice between number retirement vs ignoring them. 

[A Boy Named Seo]

Per SNY, Tyrone Taylor has been evicted from the #15 and will move to #28. 

[Edgy MD]

Amazing to declare a number retired when it never even occurred to anybody to just unofficially stop using it in the 15 years since he left the team.

FIFTEENS SINCE CARLOS BELTRAN

1. 2012: Fred Lewis
2. 2013: Travis d'Arnaud
3. 2014: Travis d'Arnaud
4. 2015: unassigned
5. 2016: Matt Reynolds
6. 2017: Matt Reynolds
7. 2018: Luis Guillorme
8. 2019: unassigned
9. 2020:
   • Brian Dozier
   • Guillermo Heredia
   • Juan Lagares
10. 2021: Cameron Maybin
11. 2022:
    • Deven Marrero
    • Matt Reynolds 2
12. 2023: Danny Mendick
13. 2024: Tyrone Taylor
14. 2025: Tyrone Taylor
15. 2026: Tyrone Taylor to start the season, even though it had previously been announced as designated for retirement, and then stripped from him ten games into the season.

Those digits have had a rather strange path to suddenly becoming untouchably sacred.

Danny Mendick!

[Frayed Knot]

Not that many, but Keith's #17 made the rounds following his retirement as well. This included at least one David Cone who jumped into the number not long after the body was cold  to honor his former teammate. Cone also donned Gooden's #16 in his second stint with the Mets.

Teams should think about honoring a past player in just this way. Don't put the number permanently in mothballs but dole it out only to those who you think might do it justice, particularly someone playing the same position.

[Gwreck]

2 hours ago, Edgy MD said:

Amazing to declare a number retired when it never even occurred to anybody to just unofficially stop using it in the 15 years since he left the team.
 

This might be better answered by JCL but I believe the only numbers that were never reissued after a player left the Mets are 5, 41, and 48.

[Edgy MD]

Well, 20 hasn't been used in the 10 games since Alonso left the Mets.  Nimmo's 9, McNibben's 1, and Diaz' 39 are also vacant so far in 2026, but your point is taken.

[Fman99]

I'm good with every retired number.  Straw and Doc and Mex were my childhood heroes.  Beltran and Wright were my son's childhood heroes (he's 21 now!).  

If 60 years from now all of the current Mets are wearing numbers over 60, who gives a shit?

[Ceetar]

Carlos Beltran was amazing, was amazing as a Met, was maybe the best CFer in the game at the time, etc etc. no brainer.

[Edgy MD]

3 hours ago, Fman99 said:

  If 60 years from now all of the current Mets are wearing numbers over 60, who gives a shit?

 

FREE SHIT:  If you have a need for shit, I have a shit to give!  Will deliver free!

 

[A Boy Named Seo]

5 hours ago, Fman99 said:

I'm good with every retired number.  Straw and Doc and Mex were my childhood heroes.  Beltran and Wright were my son's childhood heroes (he's 21 now!).  

If 60 years from now all of the current Mets are wearing numbers over 60, who gives a shit?

I do. Just keep putting the numbers up on the wall like they do now, but leave them in circulation and don't call it a number retirement. Call it something else -- the Kings of Queens, the Diamond Club (that's probably already some bar in Citi), the Ring of Honor, something. Retiring numbers is such an unnecessary, largely American tradition with no set standard, so clubs do it just because other clubs are doing it. Retire all the Joneses to keep up with the Joneses.

Plus, we're depriving ourselves of some cool shit. What if we ended up with a bunch of great left-handed starters who all wore #36? What if they had issued Doc #41? What if Olerud wore #17 cause he loved Keith? Number lineages are waaaaayyyy cooler than retired numbers. 

Leave 42 retired (I'm good with that) and put 'em all back in the rotation.

 

[metirish]

At many soccer clubs it is seen as an honor to be chosen to wear a former greats number , often given to a new signing or a young lad from the youth system coming through, many times though that honor can weigh on the player , think #7 for Manchester United , George Best, Bryan Robson , Eric Cantona , David Beckham, Ronaldo , many players have worn that number though

[A Boy Named Seo]

17 minutes ago, metirish said:

At many soccer clubs it is seen as an honor to be chosen to wear a former greats number , often given to a new signing or a young lad from the youth system coming through, many times though that honor can weigh on the player , think #7 for Manchester United , George Best, Bryan Robson , Eric Cantona , David Beckham, Ronaldo , many players have worn that number though

Absolutely. I remember when Theo Wolcott got Thierry Henry's #14. The honor, no doubt, comes with the weight of expectation, but it's still cooler than Henry's #14 collecting dust on a wall. 

[Marshmallowmilkshake]

14 hours ago, Gwreck said:

This might be better answered by JCL but I believe the only numbers that were never reissued after a player left the Mets are 5, 41, and 48.

Did they reissue 8? I thought that was in mothballs but never retired. Could be wrong. 

[Benjamin Grimm]

From the MBTN data:

 

1	Chris Cannizzaro	04/14/1962	10/02/1964
2	Yogi Berra	05/01/1965	05/11/1965
3	Yogi Berra	04/15/1972	08/05/1975
4	Dan Norman	07/13/1979	10/05/1980
5	Rick Sweet	04/09/1982	05/21/1982
6	Phil Mankowski	06/29/1982	07/22/1982
7	Ronn Reynolds	09/29/1982	06/15/1983
8	John Gibbons	04/11/1984	09/30/1984
9	Gary Carter	04/09/1985	09/30/1989
10	Dave Gallagher	04/06/1992	10/03/1993
11	Steve Swisher	04/04/1994	09/29/1996
12	Carlos Baerga	04/01/1997	09/27/1998
13	Cookie Rojas	04/05/1999	10/26/2000
14	Desi Relaford	04/04/2001	10/07/2001
15	Matt Galante	04/01/2002	09/29/2002

[seawolf17]

I thought they should have done that with 42 rather than retiring it sport-wide. Players should be honored with it as a tribute for their work.

[Edgy MD]

15 minutes ago, seawolf17 said:

I thought they should have done that with 42 rather than retiring it sport-wide. Players should be honored with it as a tribute for their work.

My plan was to have the players on each team elect one fitting teammate to wear it on Jackie Robinson Day every year.

The compel-everyone-to wear-it plan is falling flat.

Rachel Robinson, by the way, is 103, going on 104 in July.

A hunnert and three!

Maybe she should have a plaque in The Baseball Hall of Fame.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

20 hours ago, A Boy Named Seo said:

Per SNY, Tyrone Taylor has been evicted from the #15 and will move to #28. 

ffs

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

There's absolutely no reason the team couldn't "raise numbers to the rafters" without retiring them.