White Sox Acquire Pena from Diamondbacks
Posted by Zach Sanders on Tuesday, July 7, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Earlier today, the Chicago White Sox acquired relief pitcher Tony Pena from the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for minor league infielder Brandon Allen.
Pena is a solid righty out of the pen, but is nothing truly special. His K/9 is 6.88, and his BB/9 is 2.91 this season. He also gets ground balls 46% of the time, not bad for a reliever. His fastball clocks in at around 95 MPH, and he also throws a slider and the occasional change up. His slide piece has solid movement on it, as does his change.
Allen is a first baseman who has spent time in Double and Triple-A this year. In Double-A, he hit .290/.372/.452 with 7 homers in 62 games. He has struggled in Triple-A, hitting .226/.226/.358 in 53 AB’s. Allen hits far to many ground balls when at the plate, and I can’t see the former 5th round pick doing much in his career. Maybe a platoon first baseman or a solid starter, but he is no star and has some way to go to make it to the majors.
Pena’s been pretty decent as a reliever, with setup potential, mostly because of his heater.
The more interesting part is what they got back. The D-backs have more 1B than they know what to do with right now, between Tony Clark, Chad Tracy, Mark Reynolds (when they need him there) and Josh Whitesell in the minors.
Could mean a trade for Tracy and/or Clark is in the works, more likely Tracy.
Allen was ranked the Sox #6 overall prospect for 2009 by BA–he’s got tons of power, even if he’s not showing it yet (and the plate discipline clearly needs more work). Could be in MLB in the next year or two.
Some random add-on comments:
1. I still think of Conor Jackson as their primary 1b. Interesting to see how things go. I didn’t foresee him improving much, but he was already pretty useful as a “base clogger”, before getting hurt. Obviously, he may play the outfield now (again)… or get traded… who knows?
2. My MLP’s for Allen’s 2006-2008 minor-league stats (projection of his eventual “prime” performance) come out to: .226/.292/.463, with a strikeout rate just barely tolerable. While not great, the + side of that is a lot like Brandon Jacobs, and the way these work, he should have a 50/50 chance of being better or worse. That’s based on a very robust total of 1383 minor-league AB (before 2009), so it’s a pretty good sample size.
I think they see Jackson as a all-around contributor for them. They can play him at either corner spot in the inflied and left field, so they can build around that and pick up pieces where they can.
Allen hasn’t always shown great numbers, but one thing did stand out to me: He’s always getting better. Once he adjusts to the league he excels and shows his stuff. If he gets enough time in Triple-A this year, and next, he should prove his worth.