Houston Astros Recently Injured Slugger Named Team MVP in First Half

Despite some uncertainty heading into the season, it has been a great first half of the year for the Houston Astros.

After what was a wild winter of roster moves, it was easy to be pessimistic about the outlook for the Astros this campaign. For the last decade, Houston has mostly been the team to beat in the American League, but it felt like they might be going into a bit of a retool or rebuild.

While the retool still might be the case, the Astros are winning a lot of games and still are a contender in the AL.

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With a lot of success in the first half of the season, it has been numerous players stepping up. Houston is far from a perfect team, but they have a lot of the right tools in place to succeed.

Brian McTaggart of MLB.com recently wrote about the MVP for the Astros in the first half of the season being former World Series MVP, Jeremy Pena.

“With injured slugger Yordan Alvarez limited to 100 at-bats and Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker playing elsewhere, Peña has blossomed into the leader of a first-place club," he wrote.

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In a year that has seen some much turnover for Houston, it has been great to see Pena step up when the team needed him. With both Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman playing elsewhere, offensive production was going to be needed.

It was to be expected that Yordan Alvarez, Jose Altuve and Christian Walker would have provided a lot more than they have so far, but that has not been the case.

Alvarez has missed a ton of time now with injury, and both Walker and Altuve have really underperformed expectations so far.

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Fortunately, Pena is having a career year so far, slashing .322/.378/.489 with 11 home runs and 40 RBI. The young shortstop has easily been the most productive hitter for the team and is deserving of being the team MVP.

While it is has been Pena carrying the lineup, it would be remise not to recognize the extremely strong starts to the seasons for Hunter Brown and Framber Valdez in the rotation.

Both of these pitchers have been excellent leading a rotation that once again has had to deal with a lot of injuries. Furthermore, Josh Hader has been really good leading one of the best bullpens in the league.

Unfortunately, Pena was recently hit by a pitch and will be out of action on the injured list. With him being their best hitter, someone is going to have to step up in the lineup during his absence.

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