What Can We Expect From Jeremy Pena?
Pena is the "frontrunner" for the shortstop job. A review of his minor league stats, projections, and evaluations leaves reasons for optimism about the rookie.
If there is no crying in baseball, then we Astro fans have to accept the fact that for the first time since early June 2015, Carlos Correa is not our shortstop. Instead, it looks like the job will pass to one of the team’s top prospects—Jeremy Pena.
For those of us who focus primarily on the major league squad, we have never seen Pena. He’s yet to make his major league debut, and we only have videos posted on social media from Sugar Land and Estrellas de Oriente of LIDOM (the Dominican Winter League). What should we expect from Pena if he’s the every day shortstop for the AL West favorite?
One opinion is expressed by Jose Altuve, who was quoted by Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic as saying “He’s going to be a superstar. I can tell by his attitude. He cares. He wants to be the best.”
Of course, Altuve is not the only second baseman who sings Pena’s praises. Robinson Cano, who was Pena’s double play partner for Estrellas this winter said in the Rosenthal article that Pena “He’s an athlete. He can run. He can move, hit for power, too. For me, he has all the tools. He’s going to be a superstar, for sure.”
That’s the high end of expectations. And frankly seems way too strong for Pena. Altuve is an MVP and the personal demon of every Yankee fan, but as a scout, I’m don’t think he an Al Pedrique. Pena, who was only a third round draft pick who went to an obscure place for baseball prospects—the University of Maine—seems unlikely to be a superstar, especially in his first season. It seems to me that most Astros fans are more worried that he’s not even a major leaguer.
So what’s a more reasonable set of expectations for Pena? If asking his teammates is a way to get biased information about him, let’s try an unemotional source—the projections of statistical models.
The tables below show projections for Pena from five different systems listed on Pena’s player page at Fangraphs. There are actually pretty encouraging for us Astros fans. They show Pena should hit around league average in batting average,1 walk very little, and hit with some good power for a shortstop.
The biggest discrepancy in these numbers regards Pena’s power. The Bat X projection system has him at a below league average slugging percentage of .379, while the other numbers have him above .400. When it comes to homers, the low projection has Pena hitting 11, while his highest projection is for 20.
A look at Pena’s walk and strikeout percentages shows a player who will walk very little (which also shows up in his low OBP) and who looks to be vulnerable to strikeouts. He is projected to walk in 5 to 7 percent of his at bats, and strike out around a quarter of the time.
These statistical projections reflect Pena’s breakout offensive 2021 season at AAA Sugar Land. There, Pena posted a slash line of .278/.346/.598 with 10 home runs in 133 plate appearances. His walk rate declined from the last time he played in the minors in 2019 and his strikeout rate increased. So while he found it more difficult to make contact against higher quality pitchers, when Pena did make contact, the ball went a long way.
But projections can only go so far. For one thing, projections for minor leaguers always come with large levels of uncertainty. Sometimes hot prospects turn out to be Jonathan Singleton or Francis Martes. And sometimes unheralded minor leaguers turn out to be Jose Altuve or Luis Garcia. These issues are only exacerbated for someone with Pena’s limited minor league track record. Pena has only 789 minor league plate appearances, in large part due to the cancellation of the 2020 minor league season and a wrist injury that delayed the start of his 2021 season until late August.
One way to get a better sense of how a prospect might do in the majors is to examine what prospect analyst say about the player. A review of these is promising.
First of all, there is consistent praise for Pena’s defense. Baseball Prospectus describes Pena as a “plus plus defender” while Keith Law of The Athletic says he “possibly a 70 [on the 20 to 80 scale used by scouts]” as a fielder. Fangraphs lists Pena as their 30th ranked prospect entering the 2022 season and notes that “Peña is a plus defensive shortstop with above-average instincts, footwork and hands to go with a solid-average arm.” Pena was regarded as “the best defensive shortstop” in the 2018 draft class, and that report has continued as he has developed. The first thing that we Astro fans can expect from Pena is high quality defense at shortstop.
Offensively, Fangraphs notes that he’s “transformed his body as a pro, adding more than 20 pounds of muscle since signing, while also re-engineering his swing in order to tap into his new-found power.” This new swing has led to Pena “producing well above-average exit velocities,” according to Law. Jeffrey Paternostro of Baseball Prospectus says that he’s not sure the power spike is “sustainable, but the idea that he might add that tool to his kit … it’s tantalizing, to say the least.” Much like the projections, the evaluators can see the potential for power from Pena, but are unsure he’ll reach that.
But he might. Because one thing that is notable about evaluations on Pena are his intangibles. Fangraphs says that Pena’s “makeup is off the charts, and he works as hard as he plays, with a quiet intensity to his overall game.” Rosenthal’s piece is filled with notes that demonstrate those characteristics—from praise from his coach at the University of Maine for his coachability to his long commutes from his home in Providence, RI to a training facility near Boston to correct his running form to his massive weight gain from time in the weight room.
Rosenthal notes a quote that Jason Bell, the Astros minor-league field coordinator, told Jake Kaplan in March of 2021 which said ““I don’t know that I’ve ever met anybody who is addicted to effort as much as [Pena]. The article also quotes Astros bench coach Joe Espada praising Pena’s “field awareness [and] baseball IQ.” Pena, the son of former major league infielder Geronimo Pena, seems to impress people with his work habits in a business of people with strong work habits.
And that leads people to start considering the evaluation that Jose Altuve and Robinson Cano made—that Pena could be a superstar.
Law concludes his write-up of Pena by considering the odds of that, writing “he should be a solid/average regular, with maybe a 20-to-30 percent chance he carries all of these offensive gains into the majors and becomes a star.” Paternostro is more optimistic “If he’s even a consistent 20-homer bat, he’s a star with everything else accounted for, and we think that’s at least a 50/50 proposition now.”
So maybe Jose Altuve is Al Pedrique and Pena will become a superstar. That seems far away in 2022, but there are lots of reasons to think that Pena will become a quality major league shortstop and a contributor to the 2022 Astros. It’s a clear downgrade from Carlos Correa, and the uncertainty around that performance is large. But a review of Jeremy Pena’s numbers and history makes me an optimist. I think he’ll be quality defender whose offensive upgrades in the minors could make him an average major leaguer this season.
The slash line for the American League last year was .245/.316/415 for a .731 OPS.