What could have been if Red Sox kept new Hall of Famer Adrian Beltre?

Former Red Sox third baseman Adrian Beltre was overwhelmingly elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Tuesday night.

When Adrian Beltre came to Boston as a free agent in 2010, his career was shaping up to be something of a disappointment.

After breaking into the big leagues at age 19 with the Los Angeles Dodgers and capping off a solid early run with a monster 2004 season, Beltre signed a five-year, $64 million deal with the Seattle Mariners. But instead of building on his MVP runner-up season, Beltre’s time in Seattle was unremarkable and his last season was marred by injury.

Entering his age-31 season with basically no momentum, Beltre signed a one-year “pillow contract” with the Red Sox, and few could have predicted what came next. Beltre delivered one of the greatest single seasons in club history and parlayed that success into a long-term deal with the Texas Rangers. He kept getting better from there, first becoming a Rangers club legend before earning near-unanimous election to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Now regarded as one of the greatest third baseman in MLB history, it’s natural to wonder what could have been if Beltre had stayed?

It’s no exaggeration to say Beltre’s path to Cooperstown began in Boston. That season in 2010 Beltre delivered MVP caliber production, batting .321 with 28 home runs, 102 RBI, a .919 OPS, an MLB-best 49 doubles and an eye-popping 7.8 Wins Above Replacement. Along the way he received All-Star, Gold Glove and Silver Slugger honors and finished ninth in the AL MVP vote.

But rather than re-sign him, the Red Sox allowed Beltre to walk, instead trading for first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and moving Kevin Youkilis back to third base for the 2011 season. Beltre signed a six-year, $96 million deal with the Rangers, and over the last eight years of his career he earned three All-Star nods, six top-15 MVP finishes, won three Gold Gloves and finished ranked No. 3 in Rangers franchise history in WAR with 41.1, behind only Ivan Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro.

While Beltre flourished, third base became something of a black hole for Boston for the next half decade.

Youkilis and Gonzalez both had productive seasons in 2011, but that year ended in disaster as the club famously collapsed down the stretch and missed the playoffs on the final day. Gonzalez and Youkilis were both traded midway through the following season, with Gonzalez helping orchestrate a massive salary dump while Youkilis went to clear space for Will Middlebrooks, whose career got off to a promising start but stalled out due to injuries and poor performance.

Then came the ill-fated Pablo Sandoval signing in 2015, with the high-priced former San Francisco Giants star flaming out spectacularly over two and a half seasons. It wasn’t until Rafael Devers made his debut in 2017 that the Red Sox found any semblance of long-term stability at the position.

The Red Sox problems through the 2010s obviously ran much deeper than one position, but with Beltre on board it’s tempting to imagine the club might have avoided some of its most painful lows.

Regardless, Beltre’s lone season in Boston now stands as both a footnote and a launching point in the third baseman’s Hall of Fame career. Over 21 seasons Beltre finished with 3,166 hits, the most of any third baseman in history, along with a career slash line of .286/.339/.480, 477 home runs and five Gold Gloves.

Unlikely as it may have seemed earlier in his career, Beltre wound up becoming one of the biggest no-brainers for Cooperstown we’ve seen in recent memory. Though his bronze plaque will undoubtably feature a Texas Rangers cap, his time in Boston arguably made it all possible, even if it ended far sooner than it should have.