The Astros can no longer afford to keep Jeremy Peña

Jeremy Peña is probably a touch overrated.

That’s not to say he isn’t a good player; he is one, occasionally even a great one, but his rookie season happened to see the Houston Astros win the World Series with Peña raking .345 with a 1.005 OPS — he won the ALCS MVP and the World Series MVP awards … as a rookie. Forgive us for thinking he was the next thing.

But baseball is fickle when you think in 13-game sample sizes. Peña has been remarkably consistent but never exactly MVP-level. His production spiked big time in 2025 as he put together his first All-Star campaign, and his 2026 season, while injury-shortened, has also looked pretty good. Peña’s future as an Astro, though, does not.

Jeremy Peña and the Astros appear headed for a breakup

With the trade deadline approaching faster than a pickup truck in the breakdown lane that has somewhere to be, the Astros are going to get religion on Peña sooner rather than later. Last year, Peña hired super agent Scott Boras and completely killed extension talks in a patented Boras manner. It is unclear if the two sides have much interest in coming to a new agreement, and like with George Springer and Alex Bregman, Peña may just walk after next season (if there is a next season) should the Astros hold firm. 

So how valuable is Peña? And should the Astros lose sleep over losing him? 

Is Jeremy Peña actually worth the opportunity cost of keeping him?

Peña is an interesting player. He is always referred to in secondary analysis as an “above-average defensive shortstop” but that hasn’t necessarily been the case recently, at least with how we currently track defensive performance. Both, very disagreement-prone models — Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) and Fielding Run Value (FRV) — have him somewhere between below-average and straight-up bad in 2026, but he is coming off an injury. In 2025, both models said he was good-to-great, and in 2024 they do not agree: DRS had him as solidly above-average, while FRV thought he was just as bad as he is now.

Look: defensive analytics in baseball is a bit of a quagmire, and you can check out my Luis Arraez breakdown if you want to learn more about why that is, but the upshot is this: Peña has been a good defender in his career, but it’s been very up and down. I’ve actually observed that trend with DRS and FRV models with shortstops like Trea Turner and Trevor Story — defensive metrics at that position fluctuate a ton, owing (I think) to the volatility of the spot. In any case, prospective trade suitors won’t quake at the thought of putting Peña at short; he can, at the very least, handle it.

As a hitter, he’s a career .274 hitter who doesn’t walk a lot with great speed. He’s now kept his average and slugging up for a season and a half, and even though projection models do not buy that shift, they never would — models have a hard time projecting a player to be something they’ve never been before. But I think Peña made a real shift with his swing after 2024, and it’s allowed him to lean more into pull-side production. It’s not a big change, but it is a change I can actually see; that’s rarer than you think:

Whether teams believe Peña is actually a 5.0 to 6.0 WAR player or more of the 3.0 to 4.0 guy models see him as will determine his trade value, but whatever the conclusion is, the Astros really need to trade Peña to rebuild their trashed farm system. It’s only marginally better than the San Diego Padres, who have executed a relentless assault on their farm in the past few years in an effort to buy a World Series (it’s not going well). The Astros, conversely, won several World Series in the last decade and will now have to decide if they think they can realistically extend Peña or if he and Boras have already decided the market is sweeter elsewhere.

Now do I buy the Peña production spike? Kind of, I mean the contact quality is up in a real way which I always like … but even with metrics that only count results Peña is still only arguably a top 10 shortstop in Major League Baseball in the last few years. If a shortstop-needy team (there aren’t that many … but surely someone? Red Sox? Eh …) comes calling, the Astros would do well to listen. They could also just wait until the offseason, since Peña has another year of service time before he reaches free agency. 

It’s the kind of trade that will be justifiable for everyone no matter what happens. Those are also usually the trades that are the easiest for both sides to lose. So good luck out there.

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