Jeremy Peña Has Quietly Been a Top Shortstop for the Astros

On April 16, 2025, I wrote down an idea for a headline in my iPhone notes app: “This is the new Jeremy Peña. You haven’t met him yet.”

It was three weeks into the season, and Peña was hitting .215 with a .682 OPS and a 91 wRC+. However, his xwOBA was almost 100 points higher than his wOBA. Indeed, his .393 xwOBA put him among the top 20 qualified hitters in the American League.

Powering that xwOBA was a hard-hit rate over 50%. In each of Peña’s first three seasons, that figure sat in the thirties. His 13% barrel rate was also a noticeable improvement upon a 6.2% career average entering the season.

Peña’s average bat speed was actually slightly slower than it had been in 2024, but the distribution was tighter. In other words, his swing was more consistent. Perhaps that consistency was one reason for his much-improved squared-up rate. Peña may not have been swinging particularly hard, but he was getting the most out of his swings.

Or, at least he should have been. Despite his terrific quality of contact, Peña’s surface-level stats were disappointingly mediocre. Hence my headline: “This is the new Jeremy Peña. You haven’t met him yet.”

Forty games later, the new Jeremy Peña has fully emerged. Since April 17, the Houston Astros shortstop is hitting .346 with seven doubles, a triple, and six home runs. His 164 wRC+ puts him among the top 10 qualified hitters in that time.

On the season, Peña is slashing a healthy .308/.372/.476 with a 143 wRC+. He’s outperforming his expected stats now, but his 66th percentile xwOBA would still be a career best, no contest.

His hard-hit and barrel rates have declined, but his squared-up rate on swings still puts him in the top quartile of hitters. So does his “ideal attack angle” rate, which has increased in each of the past two seasons. His bat speed distribution remains nice and tight.

Peña might not ever be a fearsome slugger – although he’s on pace for 24 home runs – but he’s taking better swings, and it’s paying off.

All-Around Improvement

The biggest difference between what Peña is doing right now and what he’s done in the past is what’s happening when he impacts the ball. That said, he’s doing a lot of other things well too.

His strikeout rate, which has declined in each season of his big league tenure, is down to 13.4%. His 6.3% walk rate is also better than his career average, giving him the highest walk-to-strikeout ratio he’s ever had.

Once he reaches base, he’s putting his 97th-percentile sprint speed to good use. With 10 steals in 11 attempts, he’s on pace to surpass his previous career high of 20 stolen bases in 2024.

He’s also on pace for new career-highs in Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), Outs Above Average (OAA), and Deserved Runs Prevented (DRP). If you prefer more traditional metrics, he has only made four errors, and his .979 fielding percentage would be a career best.

Peña already has a Gold Glove in his trophy case, but right now, he’s playing the best defense of his career.

On pace for career-highs in home runs, batting average, stolen bases, walk-to-strikeout ratio, and just about every defensive metric, it’s no surprise that Peña is also on pace to blow past his previous career-high in WAR – no matter which version of WAR you prefer.

In each of his first three seasons, Peña was roughly a three-win player, according to FanGraphs. So far in 2025, he has already produced just under 3.0 fWAR, and the season is barely one-third of the way through. He’s also tracking to far surpass his previous highs in Baseball Reference WAR and Baseball Prospectus WARP.

By all three metrics, he is one of the top two shortstops in the game.

A Top Shortstop

Jeremy Peña had big shoes to fill in Houston. The Astros let Carlos Correa walk in free agency after the 2021 season, in large part because they had Peña to take his place.

With that idea fresh in your mind, I present the following fun fact for your perusal:

• Jeremy Peña career fWAR (2022-present): 11.8
• Carlos Correa fWAR since leaving Astros (2022-present): 11.8

On a per-game basis, Correa has still been the far superior player, he just hasn’t taken the field as often. Moreover, Peña’s career fWAR is well off what Correa accomplished in his first four seasons with the ‘Stros (16.1 fWAR in 32 fewer games).

Regardless, what matters is that Peña has done a commendable job replacing the most important shortstop in Astros franchise history. And if his hot start in 2025 is any indication, he’s only getting better.

Peña has been a godsend for the Astros this season, helping them weather the losses of Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker, a power-sapping injury to Yordan Alvarez, and underperformance from Jose Altuve and Christian Walker. Indeed, despite all that, the Astros sit a half game ahead of the Mariners in their quest for a fifth consecutive AL West title. Peña’s quiet emergence as a top shortstop is one of the biggest reasons why.