NEW YORK — During a media availability session Monday in advance of the 2013 MLB All-Star Game on Tuesday night, Cardinals outfielder Carlos Beltran answered a question about his relationship with Mets fans. As the National League’s starting right fielder and No. 2 hitter, Beltran will play his first game as a member of the home team in New York since the Mets traded him to San Francisco for pitching prospect Zack Wheeler in late July of 2011.

Beltran made five All-Star teams with the Mets and occupies too many spots on the franchise leaderboards to bother listing. He is, at this point, a borderline Hall of Famer who spent the bulk of his prime in center field at Shea Stadium. But every time he returns to play in New York, someone asks him about why fans didn’t seem to enjoy his tenure as much as they should have. Mets captain and starting All-Star third baseman David Wright even called Beltran “underappreciated” by Mets fans at the same press session on Monday.

Here’s the thing: Survey a cross-section of Mets fans, and you’ll find very few who don’t think Beltran served the Mets well in his six and a half year stint with the team. It’s only a stubborn few who believe otherwise, but like boos in a stadium crowd, a handful of negative voices can sometimes outshout a legion of appreciative ones.

“I don’t know what else I could have done,” Beltran said Monday.

Common criticisms of Beltran seem to focus on four perceived negatives: His performance in pressure situations, his contract, his attitude, and his motivation.

He’s unclutch: The first is the silliest. Beltran struck out looking on a devastating curveball from Adam Wainwright to end the 2006 NLCS, a failure that even Mets owner Fred Wilpon harped on for years. But beyond the fact that there’s little to no evidence that any one player actually outperforms his peers in so-called “clutch” situations, Beltran should never, ever be knocked for his performance under pressure. By OPS, he is the best offensive player in MLB postseason history, beating out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

“Honestly, I feel that just one pitch, or one at-bat, doesn’t dictate a career,” Beltran said.

He’s overpaid: The seven-year, $119 million deal Beltran signed with the Mets before the 2005 season looks perfectly reasonable when compared to other big free-agent contracts. Though Beltran missed time with knee injuries in 2009 and 2010, he played well enough whenever he was on the field to justify the salary. By Fangraphs’ dollar per win calculation, Beltran was worth roughly $118 million to the Mets in his time with the club — almost exactly what he was paid. And any slim difference is more than accounted for in the fact that Beltran, upon his exit, brought back the Mets one of their brightest young pitching hopefuls in Wheeler.

“When I look at my years here, 2005 wasn’t a real good year,” Beltran said. “’06 was a good one, ’07 — good one, ’08 — good one, ’09 and ’10 I was hurt with my knee issue, and ’11 — good one. So I’m good with that.”

He’s joyless: A more frustrating jab against Beltran comes from body-language experts everywhere and suggests that he never appeared to love playing. Beltran has a way of making everything on a baseball field look easy, a subtle type of grace that was likely misconstrued as joylessness from those wondering why he wasn’t showing up more pitchers on his long home runs or smiling more after incredible running catches in center field. Without knowing any more of Beltran than he chooses to reveal to the public, it’s impossible to say how much fun he had playing baseball. But for a guy who supposedly doesn’t enjoy baseball, he sure is good at it.

He’s selfish: Funny thing about selfishness: It’s impossible to define. Assuming there’s such a thing as free will, all the choices we make in this world are for our own ends. So one could argue that every single thing we do is selfish, in that in that all our decisions are in some way intended to satisfy ourselves. After the perception of Beltran’s selfishness caught hold among a few Mets fans, confirmation bias kicked in.

So when news came out about Beltran mentoring young teammates like Lucas Duda and Angel Pagan, or even about Beltran opening his own baseball academy in his native Puerto Rico, the outfielder was accused of acting generous for his own good press. When he volunteered to move to right field for the first time in his career in 2011 to accommodate the emergence of Pagan and take a difficult decision out of new manager Terry Collins’ hands, some argued that Beltran was only trying to improve his reputation to get a better free-agent contract after the season.

The only evidence that exists of Beltran being anything but a great teammate and a good soldier is his role in an odd he-said, they-said drama over his decision to endure knee surgery without the apparent consent of the team before the 2010 season. But for those unwilling to chalk up the miscommunication to mere humanity on all sides, they might consider that the Mets’ front office triumphantly bungled a series of injuries during the 2009 season. By that point, Beltran and his camp were likely better and more trustworthy judges of handling player injuries than the club, and without the surgery it’s eminently possible Beltran never would have performed well enough to reap Wheeler in return.

Beltran won three gold gloves in center field in his Mets career. In parts of seven seasons with the team, he hit .280 with a .369 on-base percentage and .500 slugging. He is a great player who played great for the bulk of his time in New York.

“Hopefully they can find another center fielder like me that can put up those types of numbers,” said Beltran.