Peña’s baseball pedigree is unmistakable. In 1997, he was born in Santo Domingo, the capital of the baseball-crazy Dominican Republic. His father, Gerónimo, performed in elements of seven seasons with St. Louis and Cleveland, his ultimate season coming in 1996. Though Jeremy by no means noticed his father play, he grew up eager to know the whole lot about that life.
“Each time after we had been consuming breakfast or dinner or lunch, we’d at all times keep on the desk for like an additional 45 minutes simply speaking about him or what he needed to undergo or my mother as nicely,” Peña mentioned. “Them simply making it out of no matter they needed to get via to supply for us.”
When Jeremy was 12, the Peñas moved to Windfall, R.I., following an aunt who was already there. Peña didn’t communicate any English. He mentioned that it was robust at first however that there was a big Dominican inhabitants and he had lecturers who additionally spoke Spanish.
“I discovered loads on the baseball subject,” he mentioned. “My teammates had been bilingual, and they might educate me the fundamentals, and I might apply that in class. And we’d shuttle for a 12 months, 12 months and a half, and I used to be already having full conversations.”
Admittedly skinny and small then, Peña wasn’t a extremely touted prospect out of Classical Excessive College when the Atlanta Braves chosen him within the thirty ninth spherical of the 2015 draft. He didn’t signal and as a substitute attended the College of Maine. He mentioned the chilly local weather and shoveling snow off the sector constructed character whereas permitting him to develop. (He additionally ate extra and began lifting weights.) Three years later, the Astros took him with the 102nd choose of the draft.
After coping with shin splints and an underwhelming first season within the minors, Peña went to a personal coaching facility outdoors Boston that was frequented by some main league gamers to, in his phrases, get his physique proper. Peña is listed now at 6 ft and 202 kilos, displaying the added energy and pace that helped him shoot via the minors. He has tried to mannequin his model of play, he mentioned, after the previous Mets shortstop José Reyes.
