On July 26, Carlos Beltrán will become just the third player — Mike Piazza and the late Tom Seaver — in the more than 60-year history of the franchise to wear a New York Mets cap on his National Baseball Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown, New York.

Avid readers of this column know full well that I’m a devout Mets fan. However, I hate to admit that I’m not excited about this induction at all.

Don’t get me wrong: I was a huge supporter of Beltrán, a Catholic ballplayer featured in the 2007 documentary “Champions of Faith: Baseball Edition” produced by Catholic Athletes for Christ. I will always argue that he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame among baseball’s immortals. Yet, there was just always something about him that left me — and I’m sure many fellow fans — wanting more.

Talk about being greedy. How could we want more from a five-tool player who perhaps has been the greatest all-around player in Mets history?

Well, to help answer this question, I polled my go-to Mets fan priests.

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“Beltrán was a great ballplayer for the Mets; there’s no doubt about it,” said Father Jim Devlin, pastor emeritus at Good Shepherd, Marine Park. “He played a very important position in center field. He had a great arm, he ran well, and he hit with power. In my opinion, he has to be in the top five or even top three of the greatest position players the Mets have ever had.”

Normally, watching baseball and following the Mets are two of Father Devlin’s most spirited summer pastimes. This summer, though, has been different, given the lackluster performance by this year’s far-from-Amazin’ Mets.

“I’ll be honest, I forgot all about the Hall of Fame induction, because for the first time in my memory, the Mets are just not watchable,” Father Devlin said.

Father Bill Sweeney, pastor of St. Francis de Sales, Belle Harbor, said that Beltrán’s enshrinement is at least something good that’s happening this summer for the club.

“This season has been very disappointing,” he said. “They need anything that gets them some good press.”

For Father Pat West, pastor of St. Sebastian, Woodside, he acknowledged that Beltrán had a number of terrific seasons in orange and blue and that it’s always an honor when a player wears your team’s logo in Cooperstown.

“If a guy has played for a number of teams and he wears a Mets cap as opposed to the other teams, I think that’s good for the organization,” Father West said. “It speaks highly that the player feels good enough about the organization that he wants to be memorialized as a Met.”

The numbers don’t lie. In parts of seven seasons as a Met, Beltrán batted .280 with 149 home runs, 559 RBIs, and 100 stolen bases. He played in five All-Star Games as a Met and won three straight Gold Gloves in center field.

What’s not to love? Unfortunately, in what has unfairly become a defining moment of his Mets career, Beltrán struck out looking with the tying runs on base in Game 7 of the 2006 National League Championship Series against the St. Louis Cardinals — which ended one of the best-ever Mets seasons in utter disappointment.

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“As far as I’m concerned, the only image I have of him is him standing there taking that third strike in the playoffs,” said Father Ed Kachurka, pastor of St. Gregory the Great, Bellerose. “That so disappointed me, just to stand there and take it. That haunted me for months.”

Beltrán’s Mets tenure was so much more than that one moment, as frustrating as it was. So as I reflect more, perhaps the fact that Beltrán went on to play for five other teams across seven more seasons and wound up winning his only career World Series with the Houston Astros has created a bit of a disconnect.

Not to mention, the 2017 Astros World Series was shrouded in controversy over an elaborate sign-stealing scandal, in which Beltrán was allegedly the mastermind. All of that led to him resigning as Mets manager in 2020 before he ever managed a single game.

It’s sad that Beltrán is not celebrated like Piazza, Seaver, David Wright, and some of the other Mets greats of the past. Indeed, it’s a curious case.

I want to be excited, but there’s something holding me back — either the disgust at the state of the current franchise or that Beltrán and those talented teams of the mid-2000s could not bring home a championship.

Frankly, it would have been better if Beltrán’s plaque had a Kansas City Royals cap. I probably wouldn’t have felt so weird about this.