Is It Legit? Jeremy Peña 2025 Performance Breakdown

As I work on my team-by-team top 30 prospect reports, I will start a new mini-series in between. As the team reports take some time to knock out, there is a need for some content in between. So, I figured a good solution would be breaking down MLB players that may be hard to rank.

These players might be recently graduated prospects who struggled. A former star or a random breakout. Are the performances legit, and what can we expect moving forward for 2026 and for dynasty leagues?

Check out Geraldo Perdomo’s Breakdown Here:

A rib injury caused Jeremy Peña to miss all of July, and his season ended a week early due to an oblique issue. Still, Peña was able to put up a career-best season, having a 5.7 fWAR, which was nearly double his previous career-best mark. Across 543 plate appearances, Peña hit 17 home runs and stole 20 bases while hitting over .300. Is it legit? Let’s break it down.

Jeremy Peña Breakdown: Was The Performance Legit?

The Numbers: Jeremy Peña Edition

In 2022, Peña put together a career-best season. That was his rookie year, and the same year he won the ALCS and World Series MVP awards. The expectations were relatively high after that, but Peña took a significant step back in 2023, hitting just ten home runs in 634 at-bats, and the 2024 season marked the second consecutive year of a drop in OPS and performance.

Entering the 2025 season with lower expectations, Peña easily put together his best season despite only playing in 125 games and getting 543 plate appearances. Peña blasted 17 home runs while stealing 20 bases and adding 30 doubles and two triples. Not only was it a career-best season at the plate, but Peña was also elite in the field.

Running elite sprint speeds, Peña stole 20 bases and was caught just twice. While you may look and see just 68 runs and 62 RBI, you may walk away a little disappointed. However, if we extrapolate the numbers to 650 plate appearances, then 82 runs and 74 RBI look much more favorable.

The 6.4 percent walk rate is still much lower than we would like to see, but it was significantly better than the 3.8 percent mark we saw in 2024. For the second straight year, Peña posted a 17 percent strikeout rate, which ranked in the 76th percentile this season.

Perhaps you look at a .345 BABIP and it screams regression to you, but let’s take a closer look at it. We will do that in the under-the-hood section below.

Checkin’ Under the Hood: Jeremy Peña

Let’s start by looking at the high BABIP and what led to it. While Peña did see a slight drop in ground ball rate, the overall batted ball distribution was similar. The pull rate jumped three percentage points, but the biggest factor came from a swing change. Peña’s squared-up rate jumped five percentage points to 30.2 percent and ranked in the 87th percentile.

Using Baseball Savant’s bat tracking metrics, we can see that Peña’s stance was 21 degrees open after being just three degrees open last year. He also widened his stance and was deeper in the box. While being deeper in the box, Peña also improved his point of contact to two inches in front of the plate.

The ideal attack angle improved by seven percentage points to 63 percent, and his attack direction jumped to being five degrees to the pull-side. So when we look a little deeper, we see Peña’s BABIP on line drives and ground balls being higher than league average, but it is mainly due to his spray angle. The chart below shows Peña’s batted ball distribution on line drives and how often he pulled them.

Then we look at some interesting metrics. Peña’s average exit velocity of 89 mph is below average, but it is still a one mph jump from last season. The barrel rate of 8.2 percent is also low, but still a notable jump from the 5.4 percent mark he had last year. The positive is that the 104.8 mph 90th percentile exit velocity is above the MLB average and shows that Peña is capable of getting to higher-end exit velocities consistently. Ultimately, the high air pull rate is a reason that Peña was able to get more power.

From a contact standpoint, Peña’s 73 percent overall contact rate looks a bit low. But that is largely from a low chase contact, as Peña’s zone-contact rate of 87.2 percent is five percentage points above the MLB average. Yes, Peña runs high chase rates. The 35.5 percent mark is high, but Peña has always been a hitter who chases out of the zone often, which leads to lower walk rates. Peña’s chase contact rate is ten percentage points below MLB average, but the good news is that he does enough damage in the zone to counteract it.

Jeremy Peña’s 2025 Season Verdict

If he were fully healthy all season, what kind of numbers would we have seen from Peña? Do we expect the 2025 performance to carry over into 2026? While the oblique injury ended his season early, it did come at a decent time as Peña has plenty of time to rest and recover this offseason.

There were notable improvements in the profile, even if they were small ones. The barrel rate jump and 90th percentile exit velocity gains are both notable. The swing changes could also go a long way. We really saw the swing change pay off when it comes to fastballs in on the hands. Starting more open helped a ton, and we saw Peña’s slugging percentage against fastballs jump from .378 in 2024 to .555 in 2025.

Sure, you could point out some flaws against breaking balls and offspeed. In fact, Peña whiffed on nearly 50 percent of the swings he made against offspeed pitches. Breaking balls were a bit better as Peña made contact on 65 percent of those swings, and he put up a .277 batting average against. A major part of that is his more open stance and getting back to square at contact.

The chase rate is still a concern, and the batting average might not be sustainable north of .300. What I do think we can bank on is 20 stolen bases and, at a minimum, 15 home runs. But if he plays every day, Peña could reach 20 home runs for the first time since 2022.

At just 28 years old, Peña has two years of team control remaining with Houston. There will likely be some regression next season in terms of slash line, but you can expect the home run and stolen base pace to be similar. Something like a .275/.335/.450 slash might be reasonable with 18 home runs and 20 stolen bases over a full season. Draft and value accordingly.