In the interests of full disclosure, Adrian has been my third baseman the last 2 seasons in my AL keeper league. In that time I've had a love-hate relationship with him. When I drafted him, I already had Hank Blalock at third, and Beltre was the best available talent on the board. Throughout the season I was continually tempted to drop him, before realizing that Hank was even worse, and trading him (Hank). I reluctantly ended up holding onto Beltre all season, and he rewarded me by probably being the MVP of the fantasy finals, hitting 6 HR, to go along with 16 RBI and 18 runs scored during the final two weeks of the season. Since then, I've pretty much loved him, although I did make a serious push to replace him with Alex Gordon this year at draft time.
As pretty much anyone who follows baseball knows, Adrian Beltre put up one of the greatest contract drives in history. In 2004 as a 25 year old third baseman of the LA Dodgers, Beltre hit .334 with 48 HR and 121 RBI. Besides that season, his career high in average, in any season, including subsequent ones, is .290. His career high is HR is 25. His career high in RBI is 89. So he exceeded his career highs by .044 in average, 23 (!) in HR, and 32 in RBI.
Going back in time, Adrian Beltre was born April 7th, 1979. He's younger than most people think, due in part to the fact he was signed illegally as a 15 year old. He progressed through the minors pretty quickly, appearing in the majors at the age of 19. His minor league high in HR was 26 in 123 games at Vero Beach (A+) as a 17 year old.
Discounting his rookie season as a 19 year old, Beltre has been pretty much the same player his entire career in the majors, besides his obscene 2004 season. Here are his HR totals for every season from 1999, his first full time season, to 2007: 15, 20, 13, 21, 23, 48, 19, 25, 20 (so far). Now here are his batting averages for each of those seasons: .275, .290, .265, .257, .240, .334, .255, .268, .283 (so far). So he's about a .270, 20 HR hitter. That's a decent player, especially when you play gold glove caliber defense, which he does.
What to make of 2004? As anyone who has followed Beltre knows, he's an extremely streaky hitter. Hell, just look what he did the last 2 weeks of 2006 (6 HR, 16 RBI). Maybe he just got on a roll all season. However all that being said, 2004 is a huge outlier in an otherwise remarkably consistent career. His career high in HR in non-2004 seasons was 25. He hit nearly twice that many in 2004. As a result he got a 5 year, 64 million dollar deal. The evidence is pretty damning. One thing to look at is his batting average on balls in play. This can help us see how fluky a season Beltre had. His BABIP in 2004 was .335, which is pretty high. That helps explain the .334 average. But what about all the power?
A good way to measure power, of course, is slugging percentage. It's a better way to figure out how much of an outlier 2004 really was. Maybe Beltre just was lucky in that a lot of warning track shots ended up over the fence in 2004. Well, here again the evidence is damning. His slugging percentage in 2004 was an obscene .629. His career high besides that season is .493 (this season). Anyway you slice it, he either had one of the flukiest seasons in history, or he was juicing.
In the end, steroids can't entirely describe what happened to Adrian Beltre in 2004. He did his 44 points higher than in any other season of his career. But, however magical 2004 was for Adrian, and despite his denials, he probably had some chemical help in 2004.
Verdict: (Probably) Guilty
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