I agree that a little extra rest may be in order for Pena. Dusty has a tendency to wait for get away games to rest the most crucial players. Last season we lost a lot of games we should have won due to this tendency and it worked out, so perhaps it makes some kind of sense. Mostly it just pissed me off.
If Peña continues to impress after 25 games (solid sample size), do you move him up in the batting order? Where do you place him? Lead off?
Dusty has said his line up is set with the players comfort level in mind. Pena Currently leads the team in WAR and he should only get better as he gets more at bats. My guess is that he is moving around in the lineup till he and Dusty can find the spot they both can be comfortable with.
ahem.... https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast?type=batter&year=2022&position=&team=&min=25 https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/lead...22&position=&team=&min=25&sort=6&sortDir=desc
I expected he would hit the ball really hard, but the frequency he's hit the ball hard so far has been well, well above expectation. He's currently 31st in contact rate in the zone. It is still early in his MLB career, but he's doing it all right now.
Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker is considering utilizing second baseman Jose Altuve as the team's No. 2 hitter this year. Last year, Altuve hit leadoff in each of the 144 games he started. However, Baker believes that Altuve's hitting style is better-suited for second in the order. Baker said, that last year, "Altuve led off because everybody asked him to lead off, not because that's where he feels comfortable." Maybe if Peña continues to excel, his place is lead off.
Peña’s chase and whiff rates are still very concerning and must improve. However, he’s shown that he can potentially be an above average bat if he can address his plate discipline issues.
Both Pena and Siri have some insane underlying numbers early on. Basically looking like Yordan from a power perspective (of course with more Ks and less walks but still)
That was fast....Pena batting lead off. Hopefully he excels here and when Altuve comes back he jumps into the 2 spot.
Through 10 games played Pena is 5th in the AL in fWAR. His ISO is .306. His K% is 17%. His xwOBA is .425 and his wRC+ is 194. His xSLG, WOBA, and xWOBA are all top 10 in all of MLB. Oh, he also looks like a stud defensively at SS and his sprint speed is in the 93rd percentile in all of MLB. I voted "yes" to all the polls I saw asking whether we should pay Correa long term. I wanted to keep him badly. If we didn't keep him, I badly wanted us to sign a star-level replacement like Story or Baez. I think I was just dead wrong. The thing about Click that I really, really like so far is something I also liked about Luhnow: I think he's good at identifying star-level talent and he's confident enough in his assessments to actually ride with these guys. Luhnow did it with Tucker and Whitley - just straight up refused to trade them no matter what, and thank god, because Tucker is a star. Click did it the last couple years with the young pitchers (Valdez, Garcia, Urquidy, Javier) and then with the CF position after Springer left in first Straw and then Meyers/Siri/McCormick. Click seems to be able to identify the guys who are going to be good and he isn't afraid to give them a chance to play and so far, pretty tremendous results. If Jeremy Pena is a star SS, do y'all realize how much that extends our championship window?
Just for my own personal amusement, and I thought I would share... Carlos Correa in 2015: Carlos Correa in 2021: Jeremy Pena 10 games into his MLB career:
Word. That chase rate points to Pena being too aggressive to ever be a superstar, but ALL the other metrics say he is very very likely to be a really good player, and a real shot to be a 3-4 fwar/yr all-star level guy. What a good job by the Astros front office to identify and develop him. Amazing.
Yeah, the chase rate is something to watch, for sure. That being said, it's basically impossible to "fake" hitting the ball as hard as he has as consistently as he has so far. I think there's likely to be way more noise in chase rate during a player's first ten games than in metrics like average exit velocity. Purely eye test, and definitely a lot of hopeful bias coming through, but I really like his approach at the plate so far. I think he makes adjustments mid-at bat and mid-game and my guess watching all of his at bats this year is that the current chase % has more to do with nerves/excitement than it does his actual plate discipline profile. My guess is he ends up league average chase rate at the end of the year, with room for even more improvement going forward. His home run last night, for example - that at bat was impressive as hell. They jammed him with fastballs inside that he didn't catch up to, so he made the adjustment, waited for another pitch to come inside, got one, and crushed it. Great stuff.
The most exciting thing in sports to me is seeing a prospect come up to the big leagues and become a great player. First time I experienced it was with Hunter Pence, then there was a long drought until Altuve. Since then we’ve had Springer, Correa, McCullers, Bregman, Tucker, Yordan develop into stars and it has been a treat to watch. You could see the potential early on with all these guys, and I see the same talent in Pena. At the same time I remain cautiously optimistic because I saw the same thing in Jordan Lyles and Jon Singleton, but Pena has been a treat to watch and I hope he keeps it up.
Weird comp, but Singleton's bat is kind of what I expect from Pedro Leon if he came up right now. Minus the weed, but with speed and defensive ability. Hopefully, Leon improves, but utility guys that walk a lot, K a lot with some pop tend to have long enough MLB careers for multiple fan bases to hate them. Not so for a 1B that gets suspended as it is more just one fan base and a short career.
