Rangers & Beltre Agree On 2-Year Contract Through 2018
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ARLINGTON (AP) — It looks as if Adrian Beltre might be able to finish his career with the Texas Rangers.
The Rangers announced a two-year contract with the All-Star third baseman on Friday night that runs through the 2018 season. The team also scheduled a news conference for Saturday with Beltre, general manager Jon Daniels and manager Jeff Banister.
Banister's postgame press conference after an 11-5 loss to Baltimore was over by the time the team announced the deal, and Beltre wasn't available in the clubhouse when it was open to reporters.
A person familiar with the deal told The Associated Press it is worth $36 million. The person spoke on condition of anonymity before the deal was finalized.
Beltre is in the final season of the $96 million, six-year deal he signed with the Rangers as a free agent before the 2011 season. He is making $16 million this year.
Beltre and the Rangers had talked since the end of last season about wanting to get a new contract done. Beltre, who turned 37 last week, had said he didn't want to negotiate after the season started.
Before the 2015 season, the Rangers reworked the final two seasons of the original deal to eliminate the team's conditional right to void the final year — which was this season.
Beltre played his 2,495th game at third base Friday night against the Orioles, second in major league history behind Brooks Robinson's 2,870 games at third.
A four-time Gold Glove winner, Beltre is still a standout defender. He started a pair of double plays against the Orioles, including one when he fielded a short-hopper coming in and then threw against this body to second base to start the play. He went to his knee to catch a hard liner for the third out of the seventh, after Baltimore homered four times and scored nine runs in that inning.
He went 0 for 4 on Friday night, but is hitting .283 with two homers and nine RBIs in 12 games this season.
Beltre is in his 19th major league season. He made his debut at age 19 with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1998, having signed with that organization three years earlier out of the Dominican Republic.
After playing with the Dodgers through 2004, Beltre signed a free-agent deal with Seattle and played five seasons with the Mariners before going to Boston in 2010 and then to the Rangers.
STARTING WITH MARTIN
Rangers starter Martin Perez struck out six while working into the seventh inning, and Texas still led 5-3 after he gave up a two-run homer to Mark Trumbo. Jonathan Schoop and Nolan Reimold then hit back-to-back homers off Tom Wilhelmsen, before Trumbo capped the big inning with a three-run homer off Andrew Faulkner.
"We sent Martin back out there. Martin was still in good shape. We felt Martin was one good sinker away from getting a ground-ball double play," Banister said. "They didn't miss much in that inning. It was a rough inning all the way around. When you miss pitches, this is a club we know that has enough guys that can hit the ball the ball out of the ballpark. We just didn't make pitches that inning."
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