No one in baseball over the last decade was more revered than Carlos Beltran. Wherever he went — St. Louis, the Yankees, Texas, Houston — his teams landed in the playoffs. When Beltran reached his first World Series, in 2013, he was given Major League Baseball’s highest honor for character.

“I truly believe that Roberto Clemente would be enormously proud of you,” Bud Selig, then the commissioner, said as he presented Beltran with an award named for Clemente, the first native of Puerto Rico to be elected to the Hall of Fame. Someday, Beltran may have his own plaque in Cooperstown, N.Y., for a sterling playing career that ended with a World Series title in 2017.

Now we know that Beltran helped the Houston Astros cheat to win that title. Along with Alex Cora, the deposed Boston Red Sox manager who was the Houston bench coach, Beltran was instrumental in devising and implementing a system of electronic sign-stealing. Long respected for his ability to detect pitchers’ tells, Beltran broke the rules in Houston by using technology and not just his eyes.