2009 White Sox player review: Tony Pena

Tony Pena's string of bad luck continued after coming to the Sox. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images North America)

The White Sox gave up a lot for Tony Pena when they traded for him July 7. While Brandon Allen wasn't a sure thing, he was one of the better prospects in the Sox' farm system and had a chance to succeed Paul Konerko at first base after 2010.

Maybe the Sox knew something about Allen, or maybe they knew something about Pena. It's far too early to call this trade a win for either team, but on the outset, it sure looked like the Sox gave up too much for a struggling middle reliever.

Key stats (with White Sox)
G: 35
IP: 36.0
W: 1
L: 2
ERA: 3.75
ERA+: 125
FIP: 3.77
BB: 9
BB/9: 2.25
SO: 29
K/9: 7/25
K/BB: 3/22
HR/9: 1.00
WHIP: 1.36
OPS: .731
GB/FB: 1.54
BABIP: .332
WAR: 0.5

When the Sox traded for Pena, he was in the middle of one of the worst stretches of his career. In his 15 appearances with Arizona prior to being dealt, he allowed hitters to have a .999 OPS while having a K/BB ratio of just 9/5, leading to a 9.24 ERA over those 12.2 innings.

Pena didn't completely fix those problems after coming to the White Sox. In 22 appearances in July and August, Pena allowed a .767 OPS, 18/6 K/BB, and 4.71 ERA over 21.0 innings pitched. However, you could see that Pena really wasn't throwing the ball all that badly, especially in August.

Unfortunately for Pena, the impression he left in the minds of Sox fans was bad because he didn't completely hold his own in July and August. By the time September rolled around, the Sox were out of it and nobody was paying much attention.

And it was in September that Pena really started to pitch well. In 15 innings over 13 appearances in September and October, Pena held batters to a .679 OPS with a 11/3 K/BB and 2.40 ERA. He also didn't allow a home run in the month. It's just one month, but at least Pena ended 2009 on a positive note.

The changes Pena made—or was told to make—after coming to the White Sox are obvious. With Arizona, 56.8 percent of Pena's pitches were fastballs. With the Sox, it was 43.8 percent. He threw far more sliders and changeups with the Sox (43.9 percent sliders, 12.3 percent changeups) than with the D-Backs (35.2 sliders, 8.0 changeups).

The numbers say these were good changes to make. On the year, FanGraphs rated Pena's fastball as a negative pitch (-2.02 runs/100 pitches) while his slider (2.39/100) and changeup (1.65) were positive. As a result of Pena capitalizing on his better pitches with the Sox, his K/9 went up and his BB/9 and WHIP went down.

Despite these changes, Pena was far from perfect with the Sox. However, a lot of Pena's overall struggles might be able to be explained by a high BABIP. With the Diamondbacks, his BABIP was .352 over 34.0 innings—and while that went down after he came to the White Sox, it only went down to .332.

While that's very high, it might actually be in line with Pena's career. We only have three full seasons of data to look at with Pena, and in two of those seasons he's had a very high BABIP (.329 in '08, .342 in '09). In the other season—2007—Pena had a very low BABIP (.236). So he hasn't really established a career BABIP baseline yet, but most likely, it's somewhere in between the two extremes.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Pena heading into 2010. I really liked the way he progressed and improved with the Sox, and while I don't expect him to be a lock-down setup man in 2010, the Sox could certainly do worse. He's cheap and under control through 2013, so like the Jake Peavy trade, the Pena-for-Allen trade should help the Sox long into the future. 

Links for the day:

• Jim, like most other Sox fans, enjoyed Nick Punto's gaffe yesterday.
• Larry posted his top 10 Sox prospects.
• Andrew talks Dewayne Wise.
• Steve has an all-decade White Sox team.
• Beyond the Box Score has a graph of blown saves vs. fielding independent pitching.