Royals prospect Erick Pena made the most of an unusual first pro season amid COVID-19

The Kansas City Royals waited three years to see highly regarded teenage prospect Erick Pena play his first full season in their farm system. They scouted him since he was 14. He attended clinics at their Dominican Academy. The Royals presented their recruiting pitch to Pena and his family, and they ultimately signed him as an international free agent in 2019.

Baseball America and MLBPipeline.com each ranked Pena among the top six Royals prospects. In terms of ability at a young age, personality and enthusiasm for the game, Pena in a lot of ways mirrors top prospects and former No. 2 overall draft pick Bobby Witt Jr. The two have become good friends and roomed together last fall in Arizona for Instructional League.

Pena, who will turn 18 in February, is younger than Witt, but each has the potential to grow into a franchise player.

This year should’ve been the start of Pena’s professional career in the minor leagues, but the COVID-19 coronavirus derailed those plans.

Instead of making his professional debut, Pena spent the spring and summer hitting into a net and doing small group workouts in the Dominican Republic.

Minor league players like Pena had no choice but to play the hand they’d been dealt.

Then in September, the Royals tossed Pena a curveball. The exuberant, bilingual, left-handed hitting outfielder with an athletic build jumped into daily competition against the organization’s top pitching prospects in the Royals’ Fall Camp at Kauffman Stadium.

Pena spoke to The Star via video conference from his hotel room in Arizona about his first “season” in the minors. He’d been in Arizona for the Royals second Fall Camp at their facility in Surprise. He returned to his native Dominican Republic this past weekend.

“It was pretty sad to me in March,” Pena said of having his first season in professional baseball canceled. “But at the end of the day, it’s good to be here and be playing a game with my teammates. Thank God we’re here.”

A rare find

Royals scout Edis Perez first spotted Pena playing out of Academia La Javilla in Santo Domingo Este in the Dominican Republic. It’s the same academy where the Royals found shortstop prospect Jeison Guzman, under the direction of trainer John Carmona.

For two years, they kept tabs on Pena. Carmona regularly brings teams with his top players to Perfect Game Showcases in Florida, where Royals assistant general manager/major league and international operations Rene Francisco laid eyes on Pena.

Royals Dominican Academy Field coordinator Victor Baez made note of how intently Pena listened and Pena’s mother asked a lot of questions when Carmona brought a group to the Royals’ facility for a clinic.

The Royals did their homework on Pena, getting an understanding of his character, personality and what makes him tick.

“Besides the ability, you have to have the right makeup when you’re investing money,” Francisco said. “You’ve got to have the work ethic and a solid foundation when it comes to family. This kid had those three qualities besides the baseball talent. The baseball talent is easy to see at a young age, but the other three qualities — he had.”

The Royals signed Pena for reportedly just shy of $3.9 million in July 2019.

Other organizations showed a lot of interest in Pena and made big offers, including the New York Mets. However, Pena and his mother apparently were believers in the Royals organization and their pitch about being a family-oriented organization that focuses on players on and off the field.

“It’s amazing that we end up signing him,” Francisco said. “I just remember Victor Baez talked about (him being at our clinic).”

Listed as 6-foot-3, 180-pounds when he signed, Pena drew comparisons at a similar age to former nine-time All-Star Carlos Beltran in terms of potential and skill set according to MLB.com. He was viewed as one of the top signings in the international class and a potential franchise player.

Francisco doesn’t like to put lofty projections or expectations on such a young player, but he repeatedly came back to Pena’s character as a reason the Royals have incredible confidence in Pena.

“We wanted to make sure the makeup was right, the work ethic was right,” Francisco said. “Honestly, this kid is excellent when it comes to that. I know that he’s going to give us everything that he’s got. He’s going to reach his ceiling. Whatever that ceiling is, he’s going to reach it.”

A holding pattern

Pena went to Instructional League in both Arizona and in the Dominican Republic in the late summer and early fall of 2019.

It remained to be determined where Pena would start this season. Most international players of his age start off in the Dominican Summer League, but there was at least some thought because of his maturity and being bilingual that he could’ve spent an abbreviated stint there if not bypassed the level.

Minor-league spring training games were days from starting when MLB shut down camps because of the COVID-19 virus.

For the first week after MLB suspended camps, international players like Pena sat in limbo and waited to learn if they were going back home or staying in Arizona until camps resumed.

During that time, he attended meetings at the Royals’ facility in Surprise, but there were no workouts or practices. The daily routine consisted of going from the hotel to the facility for meetings and then right back, Pena said.

Pena initially thought he’d ultimately stay in Arizona to ride out the virus, but that changed quickly for the 17-year-old.

“Things happened so fast,” Pena said, snapping fingers rapidly. “It was like, ‘Oh my God, we need to go home because the world is going crazy about that (COVID-19), and we need to go and take care of ourselves.’”

Just three weeks after he’d arrived in Surprise, Arizona, Pena got on a five-hour flight to Miami and then another two-to-three hour flight home to the Dominican Republic with no idea how his year would unfold.

Staying ready

Upon arrival in Santo Domingo, Pena hunkered down at home.

The Royals held Zoom webinars on various topics, including hitting and developing a plan and approach at the plate as well as what to expect when they did start camp again.

“(I was) real careful, not trying to go out too much, just go to the market, buy food and then stay home. No going to gyms, no going to fields, no going to malls because there’s a lot of people out there. So just stay at home, do some push-ups,” Pena said, mimicking the push-up motion in the air. “That’s it.”

And for two months, that was it. The closest he came to hitting was taking swings indoors off of a tee or having his sister lob soft toss so he could hit into a net.

Then after months inside, he shifted his workouts outdoors to Academia La Javilla.

“Then I started practice with all my gear, my mask on, my sanitizer, just waiting for a call from the Royals to get to the complex here (Arizona) or in the Dominican Republic,” Pena said.

While he didn’t face live pitching, he hit batting practice, got on a throwing program, started doing speed and agility drills as well as strength training.

Once Pena heard an initial date as a possible restart for camp, it became his primary focus.

“I need to be ready for September 10th. I need to be ready because it’s like a year lost, but you need to take advantage of the year,” Pena explained. “It doesn’t matter if we were going to play maybe two games. You need to be ready for that two games, 10 games, 15. You need to be ready for the opportunity.”

Back to the states

In September, when he should have been wrapping up his first season in the minors and likely headed for another stint in Instructional League in Arizona, Pena instead headed to Kansas City for the club’s Fall Camp.

He was the youngest player at the camp. The group included top prospects from the upper levels of the Royals system, such as pitching prospects Daniel Lynch and Jackson Kowar and this year’s top draft picks left-handed pitcher Asa Lacy and infielder/outfielder Nick Loftin, as well as Pena’s former Instructional League roommate Witt.

They held morning workouts, and in the afternoon the 50 players were divided into two teams and played games.

Pena hadn’t played in a game of any sort since Instructional League in the Dominican the previous year, but the Royals felt it was important for Pena to get hands-on coaching in the outfield from Rusty Kuntz and Mitch Maier. Plus, they felt Pena had the maturity to handle the situation.

“He has been a lot of fun to get to know even better,” Royals director of hitting performance Alec Zumwalt said during camp in Kansas City. “He’s making adjustments. He’s facing elite competition that he would not have faced for maybe two years under normal circumstances. Knowing the person made that decision really easy.”

By all accounts Pena held his own in that environment. Assistant GM J.J. Picollo said Pena wasn’t fazed by the level of competition.

“Of course those guys are ahead of him, but we are proud of the way he handled it,” Francisco said.

Pena described the experience as “awesome.” He finished the fall in Arizona where they alternated between “camp days” and games against clubs from other organizations.

His first full year in the minors wasn’t a “season” in any traditional sense, but he trained for most of the year. He faced high-level competition in a game-like setting. He also got bigger and stronger. He reported to spring training weighing 200 pounds, and he left Arizona for the winter at 210 pounds.

So what does he expect from his minor-league experience going forward?

“I really don’t know, but I hope it’s going to go well,” Pena said with that ever-present smile. “Just keep working and take advantage of the opportunities the team gives to you. That’s all for now.”