Before he was a World Series champion, before he was Carlos Correa’s heir apparent as Houston Astros shortstop, Jeremy Peña was just like the thousands of other minor leaguers willing to do anything to achieve their dream of reaching the big leagues.
For the Providence, R.I., native and former UMaine baseball star, that dream included an unusual detour.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Peña was left in the lurch when spring training was cut short and the minor league baseball season cancelled. Then a High-A prospect, Peña connected with former college teammates Joe Bramanti, Jake Rainess and Alex McKinney and spent the summer in Maine working out in an old barn.
Bramanti, a North Andover resident, first shared the story last season after Peña initially established himself with the Astros. Now back at Fenway Park for the first time since winning the World Series, Peña reflected on his own memory of that formative experience.
“Everyone cleared the school, facilities got shut down, everyone went home and the only place we had to hit was a barn,” Peña said. “I don’t know how we found the barn, I guess he knew somebody from up there, but the barn had a cage, it had a pitching machine, we had some good baseballs, so we spent all of COVID hitting in a barn.”
For months the group trained, taking batting practice, fielding ground balls, throwing, lifting, you name it. With lingering uncertainty over when the pandemic might subside, Peña worked as if the season might be right around the corner.
“At first it was kind of we didn’t know when we were going to start, so it was like ‘stay ready, we might start in a week, we might start in two weeks,’ so the whole time I was training as if the season was going to start in a week,” Peña said. “Then when two months went by and it’s like the season is cancelled, then we kind of toned it down a little bit from our workload and then I got invited to the taxi squad.”
With campus empty and the whole country essentially locked down, the four didn’t have much else to do outside of baseball. Peña remembers spending most of their downtime crammed in a tiny apartment, which had a squat rack, the kitchen and the couch and TV all in the same room.
“It was quite the scene, you’ve got dudes playing video games, some dudes cooking and other dudes working out, so it was everything in one room,” Peña said. “It was a memory, for sure.”
Strange as the circumstances were, that summer wound up having a sizable impact on Peña’s development. Though Peña suffered an injury setback once the minor leagues resumed, undergoing left wrist surgery in April 2021, he was an absolute monster once he got back on the field in August. Promoted straight to Triple-A, Peña hit 10 home runs in 30 games to end that season.
The Astros knew right away they had something special, so much so that they allowed Correa to walk in free agency and installed Peña as their opening day shortstop. He responded by becoming the first rookie shortstop in MLB history to win a Gold Glove, and come October he was named both ALCS and World Series MVP after leading the Astros to their second World Series title.
Yet as far as he’s come, Peña says that summer in the barn was essential to his development.
“A lot of players didn’t have places to work out at or hit at, so we had to improvise,” Peña said. “But the barn had everything we needed to keep putting the work in and keep getting better, so I’d say it was crucial.”