DALLAS — It's official: Adrian Beltre will enter the National Baseball Hall of Fame as a Texas Ranger.
Beltre will be only the third player in history to don a Rangers cap on his Hall of Fame plaque, joining Nolan Ryan and Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez.
Beltre's induction into the Hall of Fame was announced last week, but neither Beltre nor the Hall of Fame confirmed which team he'd be inducted with, although it's long been assumed he'd be a Ranger.
At his press conference after the Hall of Fame vote was announced, Beltre jokingly played coy when asked about wearing a Rangers cap in the Hall.
He said he couldn't say, deferring instead to the Hall officials. On Friday, though, the Hall made it official, announcing that Beltre's plaque will have a Rangers cap.
Beltre played for four teams in his career -- the Dodgers, Mariners, Red Sox and Rangers -- but he had his best stretch with Texas, from 2011 to 2018.
In eight seasons with Texas, he batted .305, hit 199 homers and drove in 699 runs. He also surpassed the career milestone of 3,000 hits in 2017.
Beltre ultimately finished his entire career with 3,166 hits, the 18th-most all-time.
Beltre was a near-unanimous selection on the ballots, garnering 95.1% of the votes cast. Just 19 of the 385 ballots submitted by voters this year did not include Beltre's name.
For all of his traditional statistical prowess, Beltre's career looked just as good through an analytics lens: He racked up 93.5 wins above replacement (WAR), according to Baseball Reference -- good enough to place him 27th all-time among position players.
Beltre amassed all that WAR, in part, from playing his entire career at an elite defensive level. As a young player for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Beltre showed flashes of being a top hitter at the plate. But he was also inconsistent early on: He played at a near-MVP level in 2004 before struggling off-and-on at the plate through the 2000s prior to coming to Arlington.