Texas Rangers: The 4 first basemen and 1,053 HR that could’ve been

Texas Rangers: The Four 1B and 1,053 HR That Could’ve Been

Carlos Pena

Four years after drafting Carlos Pena 10th overall, the Texas Rangers traded the first base prospect to the Oakland Athletics for four players: Jason Hart, Gerald Laird, Ryan Ludwick, and Mario Ramos.

After 40 games with Oakland, Pena rerouted to the Detroit Tigers, where he sojourned for four seasons. He took a while to get rolling in Detroit but impressed with 27 home runs and a .810 OPS in 2004, his third year with the team.

The Tigers released Pena during the spring of 2006. The Boston Red Sox signed him to a minor league contract that year, but Pena finally settled with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2007.

Pena, at 28 years old, took off in Tampa. He bashed 46 home runs, drove in 121 runs, and recorded a sensational 1.037 OPS in ’07. He went on to hit 31 homers in ’08, 39 in ’09, and 28 in ’10. He became one of the premier sluggers in baseball over that span, a span in which the Devil Rays/Rays were making a ton of noise in the American League.

At the end of a 14-year career, Pena hit 286 home runs, 191 of which left the yard throughout 2007-2012. He returned to the Rangers on his last leg in 2014, then signed a one-year contract to retire a Ray.

It took five teams for Pena to finally spread his wings. Despite him having a stellar career, you can’t assume he would’ve become a middle-of-the-order thumper with the Rangers like he eventually did with the Rays. Still, it’s intriguing to think about what could have been.