Better Late Than Never: Carlos Pena Lives Up To The Hype

DEVIL RAYS FIRST BASEMAN FINDS A HOME





Carlos Pena was a has been. Or more appropriately he was a "never was."



The former first round draft pick (#10 overall in 1998 by the Texas Rangers), great things have been expected from the native of the Dominican Republic virtually ever since.



While not a rocket ride, his trip through the Rangers farm system did nothing to diminish those expectations. He was labeled as their "first baseman of the future."



However just prior to Pena's expected rise to the bigs, the Rangers previous crop of rookies began to hit like there was no tomorrow. And while Pena did play in 22 games for Texas in '01, Hank Blalock and Mark Texiera made sure that there was no need for Pena to wear a Rangers uniform.



So the gifted hitter was packaged in a trade to the Oakland A's where he was deemed as the next coming, the best hitter to man the first base sack since Jason Giambi had toiled in Oakland. However Pena kind of stutter-stepped at the start and lost his job in Oakland by batting a dismal .218 with only 7 homers in his first forty games with his new team.



Many were surprised at just how quickly Oakland gave up on the much hyped hitter. However while Oakland chose to move in a different direction, Detroit was more than glad to give their first base job to Pena and traded for him.



Pena's stay in Detroit was a decent trial period. However he did fail to live up to the hype. Carlos finished up the '02 season as the Tigers regular at first base and kept the job through the '04 season. However his best year with Detroit, '04, yielded just a .241 batting average with 27 homers and 82 runs batted in 142 games. Pretty pedestrian numbers by first base standards.



When the first half of the '05 season showed no progress, Pena lost his job and saw his time in Detroit come to an end. After signing with the Red Sox and playing in just 18 major league games in '06, many thought that the super prospect had officially failed to live up to expectations. In fact few thought he'd ever have a regular job in the major leagues again.



Enter the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. A team that has never finished with more than 70 victories in any season tends to sift through other teams garbage hoping to find something worthwhile. They took a flier on Pena, hoping to piece maybe half a season out of him as a stop-gap at first base while their own heralded prospects at first base got some experience at the AAA level.



Suddenly, after a slow start, the Carlos Pena that the world had expected to see for the past five years showed up. At this writing he has a .297 batting average with 22 home runs and 60 runs batted in for his first 78 games at with Tampa. He is, in fact, 2nd in the league in OPS (on base plus slugging) percentage with a nifty 1.029, second only to Alex Rodriguez' 1.054.



I had a chance to catch the D-Rays in a pair of games at Tropicana Field in Tampa this season and Pena looked solid, made a dazzling play in the field and hit a ball that left the park in a hurry.



The Devil Rays have a few guys they have rescued from the trash pile. Guys like Ty Wigginton and Al Reyes who have resurrected their careers under the dome in St. Petersburg (where the Rays actually play their home games.)



Now the team is starting to think that Carlos Pena may indeed be their "first baseman of the future"... and Carlos Pena may have found an unlikely home at "the Trop."