It’s always interesting when anonymous Twitter accounts pop up seemingly just to defend certain often-criticized sports figures, such as one with New York Knicks’ owner James Dolan in December, the whole saga with then-Philadelphia Sixers’ GM Bryan Colangelo in June 2018, and the drama with Kevin Durant’s burner accounts in 2017. The latest story along these lines is centered around new New York Mets (not New New York Mets) manager Carlos Beltrán (seen above at the MLB Winter Meetings in December), under public fire for his role in the Astros’ sign-stealing saga (where he didn’t receive punishment from MLB thanks to being a player at a time rather than an executive).
On Tuesday night, an “Iván B” Twitter account popped up, claiming to be a “baseball lifer” in the account bio, and started replying to people who had criticized Beltran. Here are those replies, from Tuesday night and Wednesday morning:
On Wednesday, that account put out this tweet (its only non-reply so far):
My name is Iván B.
– I don’t feel comfortable putting my last name out there, as for the #15, I currently play in an adult’s softball league, and my current number is 15.— Iván B (@B15Ivan) January 15, 2020
But some sleuthing from @DannyBagsZ found that the account appears to be linked to an “Ivan Beltrán” Hotmail account, which also has a corresponding Google account:
— Danny Bags (@DannyBagsZ) January 15, 2020
It’s notable that Beltrán’s full name is Carlos Iván Beltrán, and that his most recent number was 15 (with the Astros in 2017). So, if this was actually him, he managed to pick an incredibly transparent alias! Of course, this doesn’t prove that it is actually him, and it’s worth keeping in mind that a member of the New York media was recently accused of creating an account that looked like a burner for New York Jets’ coach Adam Gase; it’s quite possible that someone else set up what looked like an obvious Beltrán burner to make Beltrán look bad.
But it’s also possible that this really is Beltrán, or someone close to him. And if that’s the case, they should be a little less obvious with their next burner.
