Carlos Beltrán’s playing career will be cast in bronze on Sunday in Cooperstown, N.Y., when he is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. But in a Zoom call with reporters on Monday, Beltrán said he’s hoping for a second act as manager — and the New York Mets, the team he will represent on his plaque, asked him about the job after firing Carlos Mendoza last month.

“Yes, I had conversations with a few people within the organization, and I don’t know, I just didn’t feel it was the right thing for me to do,” Beltrán said. “And I have to tell you that, having the opportunity to manage, I would say that that’s probably in my bucket list.”

Beltrán added that he loves his current role as special assistant to Mets baseball operations president David Stearns because he works closely with decision-makers who value his perspective. When Stearns hired Andy Green as interim manager, Stearns said Green would return to his role as farm director after the season.

That leaves an opening for Beltrán to possibly fill, which would clearly be easier to do once the Hall of Fame ceremony is behind him. Beltrán, however, stopped just short of saying that the time was right.

“I understand that my name has been mentioned about being a manager and all that, and I’m proud of that,” he said, adding later, “But at the same time, I don’t know, man, I’ve got to think deeply about what my next step is going to be.”

Beltrán, of course, was named manager of the Mets in November 2019, just before The Athletic broke the news of the Houston Astros’ illegal sign-stealing operation during their 2017 championship season.

Beltrán played for that team but had retired by the time of MLB’s investigation. He was the only player named in MLB’s report, and the Mets fired him in January 2020.

“I feel like when you dig deep into the case and you dig deep into who I was as a player and how I behaved as a player throughout my career, I don’t know, it created some red flags on the process,” Beltrán said Monday. “It created red flags on the investigation. I gotta be honest, I gotta tell you how I feel, because sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that I ended up in that position (as) the only player mentioned in the report. There’s no other players mentioned in the report.

“When I went to the interviews with MLB, the first thing that they told all the players was, ‘You know what, guys, we just want to know what happened. We want to know everything that happened with the Astros. We are going to give all the players immunity. So we’re not going to suspend anybody.’ So the fact that I’m the only player mentioned — I don’t know, it’s kind of weird. Sometimes it still gives me a bad taste in my mouth.”

Beltrán said that, as a retired player at the time of the investigation, he was not represented by the union. When he saw that others in leadership positions were suspended — Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch, and former Astros coach Alex Cora, then managing the Boston Red Sox — he knew he was doomed.

“They’re going to allow Carlos Beltrán to manage the Mets?” Beltrán said. “I mean, that’s impossible. So, you know, I feel like mentioning Carlos Beltrán in the report, that was my suspension and that’s how I feel.”

Beltrán was long known for an uncanny ability to tell what pitch was coming by studying pitchers’ subtle movements. In 2017, though, Astros players would watch a video feed in real time and bang on a trash can to signal the type of pitch to the hitter, even after MLB specifically banned the use of electronic sign-stealing late that season.

On Monday, Beltrán emphasized that he was not solely responsible for the scheme and said the Astros considered their system a natural outgrowth of a time-honored tradition.

“I know that as a team we got together to do what we did, but I’ve got to tell you that this was not like one player’s idea,” Beltrán said. “This was a team being together, from top to bottom, to do something that we felt was going to help us win. And we also felt that other organizations, they had their system, and people could say whatever, but the game of baseball has been played for 100 years. How you decipher your opposing team to take advantage, we felt that our system was better than any other system in baseball.”