The Houston Astros bet big on rookie shortstop Jeremy Peña this season. The result is a historic World Series MVP award.
It says something that a rookie was arguably the most important player in a World Series run for a team that has made the ALCS every season since 2017 and all but two World Series. Some big names still remain from that first 2017 team — Justin Verlander, José Altuve, Alex Bregman — but the Astros are once again hoisting their piece of metal thanks to a nearly unmatched ability to develop players ready for the moment.
Correa was a massively important player for the Astros, supplying a middle-of-the-order bat and Gold Glove defense from the shortstop, not to mention clubhouse leadership. Players like that aren't supposed to be easy to replace whenAnd yet here are the Astros, winning another World Series, with another Gold Glove shortstop, who entered this season without a game of MLB experience.
The Astros drafted Peña out of Maine in the third round of the 2018 MLB draft. As often happens in Houston, Peña slowly morphed into a significant prospect, skipping Double-A after the lost 2020 minor league season before breaking out at Triple-A with a .287/.346/.598 season last year. Peña was named the No. 72 overall prospect by Baseball America in January, then the Astros' starting shortstop in March. He had an up-and-down season at the plate, hitting .253/.289/.426 during the regular season, but his glove helped the Astros form the American League's most effective run prevention machine.
Then the switch got flipped in the postseason. Peña hit safely in 12 of 13 playoff games as the Astros tore through the competition. It might be unfair to expect him to swing that kind of bat long term, but you can most definitely expect the Astros to keep finding players like him as long as their machine keeps rolling on.
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