I added the emphasis there, but how cool is it that this guy is playing baseball with all his senses? Sure, Carlos isn’t the only guy who does this, but I’ll bet there aren’t all that many who do it better. Think about it — this guy looks at the pitch (as well as predicting what kind of pitch his pitcher is going to throw), combines that with what he knows of the batter and where he tends to hit things, combines that with the trajectory of the ball off the bat and the sound it makes, and putting all that together, he’s able to run to exactly the right place and catch the damned thing, more often than not.

I believe that Carlos Beltran, like other great defensive outfielders before him, seems to have an innate understanding of both the psychology and physics of this game; he collects all this data, does some computations in his brain in a split second, and then uses his great athletic skills to run, jump, dive, or do whatever it takes to pull the ball out of the sky. His gold glove awards are richly deserved. I don’t think there’s anybody else playing today that’s quite like him.

Offensively, I guess he’s not quite as consistent as he could be… but he’s still quite good in that department, and when you add his defensive abilities and his baserunning abilities into the mix and you’ve got an outstanding center fielder.