For much of 2025, Jeremy Pena appeared to be having a breakout season. Due to injury – and some expected regression – Pena fell off his career-high paces, but his numbers ended up competitive with previous years even with a career low in PA:
| Year | PA | AVG | HR | R | RBI | BB | BB% | K% | SB | AVG |
| 2022 | 558 | 0.253359 | 22 | 72 | 63 | 22 | 3.9 | 24.2 | 11 | 0.253359 |
| 2023 | 634 | 0.263432 | 10 | 81 | 52 | 43 | 6.8 | 20.3 | 13 | 0.263432 |
| 2024 | 650 | 0.265781 | 15 | 78 | 70 | 25 | 3.8 | 17.1 | 20 | 0.265781 |
| 2025 | 543 | 0.30426 | 17 | 68 | 62 | 35 | 6.4 | 17.1 | 20 | 0.30426 |
As Razzball’s 68th- and Fangraph’s 63rd-best hitter, Pena provided great value based on his mid-150s ADP during draft season.
So what did he do differently?
I’m not sure what I expected before diving into Pena’s underlying data, but with a closer look, the reasons for the gains weren’t obvious to see. I’ve tried to make sense of the data below, and ultimately, while it’s possible we’re staring at a bunch of statistical noise, I see enough here to think some real growth may have occurred in Pena’s game.
Why Pena’s gains might not be real:
HR:
With his improved HR production, we might expect changes in power-related metrics, but for the most part, Pena remained fairly consistent with previous years. His career high EV of 88.9 is less than a 1 mph increase from his career low and is only around .7 mph higher than last year. His maxEV is only slightly above that of 2024 (and is under his career high). His Barrel% increased over 2.5 points from 2024, but his rates over his 4-year career are anything but consistent:
| Year | Barrel% |
| 2022 | 9.6 |
| 2023 | 4 |
| 2024 | 5.4 |
| 2025 | 8.2 |
His up-and-down numbers don’t give us much to base predictions on. Maybe the steady increase from 2023-2025 is relevant, but even if it is, this year’s 8.2% is only around league average – nothing special.
His GB%, FB%, and LD% are virtually identical to previous rates, so the HR improvement isn’t to be found there either. His HH% increased just over 4%, making 2 consecutive years of HH% gains – encouraging but not by itself a smoking gun.
SB:
Jeremy Pena can fly; Statcast puts his foot speed at 29.6 ft/s, which is elite. Clearly, if he wants to steal a base, he can, but his success percentage actually hasn’t been that great over his career. He’s had only 2 seasons of 80% or better success rate, 2022 and 2025. His success rate in 2024 was at 77%, at least close to the 80% “green light” level. But 2023’s 59% is gross. Fortunately, that’s 2 years in the past, so it stands to reason that Pena has worked on running and is now up to a level that will allow him the green light (his 91% success this year can’t hurt).
But, surprisingly, Pena doesn’t seem as interested in attempting to run as we might think for someone in the 97th percentile for foot speed. His career high SB Attempt% came in 2024, with a not-so-massive 2.2%. And this year’s SBA% came in at only 1.7%. For context, the 2025 MLB leader was Tyler Tolbert at 8.3%. Now, before you say something to the effect of, “Isn’t Tolbert’s entire job to try to steal bases?” Maybe. That doesn’t change the fact that Pena was 132nd in SBA% – behind noted speedsters like Kyle Tucker (26.5 ft/s) and Augustin Ramirez (26.7), not to mention Josh Naylor’s 30 SB-worthy speed (24.4). To be fair, Pena has reached 20 SB each of the last two seasons and was obviously on pace for more this season. If he wants to steal, he can – I’m just not sure how willing he is.
AVG:
The number that really jumps out to me is his AVG increase of nearly 40 points, which correlates with a BABIP spike of 45 points. His xBA of .280 is an increase from career numbers but doesn’t exactly support him being a .300 hitter moving forward. His increase in HH% and progressive decrease in K% likely help give Pena a better AVG foundation, so I buy that .270 to .280 is reasonable to expect from him most seasons, but I don’t expect to see too many .300 seasons.
Despite my concerns, why some of Pena’s gains might be – and, I think, are – real:
As I noted above, I can’t really make the argument that Pena is a dependable .300 AVG kind of guy, and I’m not going to draft him expecting that. I also am not going to expect him to swipe 40-50 bags anytime soon – though he probably could if he wanted to.
But I do think his power gains are real.
Let’s consider his 2.5% increase in Pull% from 2024 to 2025: The really interesting part of that is the types of balls he’s pulling. He isn’t pulling GBs; in fact, his Pull GB% has dipped each of the last 2 years (from 28.4% in 2023 all the way down to 21.6% in 2025). He has also increased his % of balls hit in the air over that time (45.6% in 2023 to 52.1%). And, of that 52.1 Air%, 47.1% of it comes either in flyballs or line drives. Now I’m interested.
Speaking of balls in the air, Pena’s FB% has been slowly climbing as well (from 18.9% in 2023 to 23.8% in 2025). The FB% may not be anything to get too excited about, but his steady increase in FBs hit in the air might just be: He has jumped from a below-average 13.3% in 2023 to an above-average 21.1% in 2025. The Statcast page tells us that, for 2022-24, balls pulled in the air (17.5%) accounted for 66% of all home runs across the league, as well as a .547 AVG, 1.227 SLG%, and .733 wOBA. So if Pena’s making pulled flyballs a focus, I’m definitely interested.
The verdict:
There is obviously a ton of noise in Pena’s underlying stats, but it looks to me like he’s trying to take advantage of the Crawford Boxes. And that makes me happy to draft him. But after Pena’s strong season, will drafters bump Pena up to R5 or R6 by the time February and March come around? The lack of changes in Pena’s other underlying stats won’t let me pull the trigger at that price. But if he falls to R8 or R9 (as he appears to be doing in NFBC leagues currently), I will have a ridiculous amount of Pena shares this year.
