Astros rookie Jeremy Peña keeps his cool. Most of the time.

HOUSTON – Growing up in the Dominican Republic and later in Providence, Rhode Island, Jeremy Peña dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. And when he and his brother played together, his brother handled shortstop while Peña was at second base, the position his father played in the major leagues. Still, Peña wanted to emulate a shortstop he watched on television: José Reyes of the New York Mets.

“He was electric,” Peña said in an interview earlier this year. “I loved that. I tried to make that part of my game, the energy he brought.”

Peña, a rookie, has brought that and more to the Houston Astros this year. Replacing the team’s longtime shortstop, Carlos Correa, who departed to the Minnesota Twins as a free agent, Peña, 25, has provided power at the plate, defensive prowess in the field and poise everywhere he goes. Playing a critical position on a win-now team, he helped the Astros win 106 regular-season games and their fifth AL West title in six years.

In his first postseason, Peña has been just as clutch as Correa, who guided the Astros to a since-tainted 2017 World Series title and had 18 career playoff home runs in his time with Houston.

Peña had the winning home run in the 18th inning in Game 3 of a sweep of the Seattle Mariners in their best-of-five AL division series. And in the best-of-seven AL championship series, against the New York Yankees, Peña was named the MVP for hitting .353 (6 for 17) with two home runs, including a game-tying, three-run homer in Game 4 of the sweep.

“It’s surreal,” Peña said . “You dream about this stuff when you’re a kid, and shout-out to my teammates: We show up every single day. We stayed true to ourselves all year. We’re a step away from the ultimate goal.”

Along the way, Peña has not only earned the respect of his teammates, but has gained many fans. From afar, a new admirer has frequently watched him play.

“He’s super talented,” Reyes, 39, said in Spanish in an interview. “He plays baseball hard and with passion. It’s his first year, and it looks like he’s got 10 years in the league. He’s relaxed and he looks like a veteran, really. He looks like he’s disciplined. I don’t know him personally, but his style of play is admirable.”

Reyes, who retired after the 2018 season, echoed the sentiments of many Astros players and officials about Peña. Unlike Correa, the first overall pick in the 2012 draft, by the Astros, Peña was selected in the third round out of the University of Maine just four years ago. And when Correa signed a three-year, $105.3 million contract with the Twins during spring training, Peña had only 182 minor league games under his belt.

“Jeremy’s on the biggest stage in the world right now in his first season, and he’s not scared,” Astros third baseman Alex Bregman said during the ALCS. He added later, “There’s been ups and downs just like there is for everybody throughout the course of a season, but to be able to handle that in your first year has been extremely impressive. Just super proud of him.”

Peña said he had not always been even-keeled and that he had to work to develop that trait. The beauty of the sport, he said, is its everyday nature, which forces players to learn humility because a good or a bad game can be fleeting. It has helped that he can lean on his father, Gerónimo, who played in parts of seven seasons with St. Louis and Cleveland, his final season coming in 1996.

“It probably comes from his background,” manager Dusty Baker said of Peña’s poise, “from his culture, from his dad who played, from his mom that he’s close to, and the fact that I think he’s the only Dominican dude I know who went to University of Maine.”

Bregman said Peña had the right mentality coming into the season: Be Jeremy Peña, not Carlos Correa, who had become the leader of the Astros on and off the field during his seven years in Houston.

“He understood how good Carlos had been and what he meant to every single person in here,” Bregman said. “But when he came in, his only focus was just to be Jeremy, and he’s stuck with that the whole year. He hasn’t tried to do too much or be anybody he’s not. He’s trying to play his game and leave his legacy.”

Peña has certainly left his mark. Bilingual like Correa and Reyes, Peña has blended seamlessly among the Americans and Latinos in the Astros’ clubhouse. His teammates have been wowed by his range at shortstop. In 136 regular-season games, he hit .253 with a .715 on-base plus slugging percentage and 22 home runs. Only Seattle’s Julio Rodríguez, the front-runner for the AL Rookie of the Year Award, had more home runs among rookies this year.

In the second half of the season, though, Peña struggled, as many rookies do as opposing pitchers adapt to them. From the All-Star break in mid-July to Sept. 10, Peña posted a .591 OPS. But in an at-bat against the Los Angeles Angels’ Shohei Ohtani, Peña eschewed the usual leg kick in his swing in favor of getting his left foot down sooner, and it has paid dividends. From then until the end of the regular season, he posted an .824 OPS with five home runs.

“Before, I was trying to read the pitch as my leg was in the air,” he said. “And then when I told myself to swing, then I had to find the ground and then start to swing. But having the foot down early is just eliminating that step, and now I have more time to make my decision.”

In the playoffs, Peña has made plenty of good ones. Teammate Justin Verlander, the presumptive AL Cy Young Award winner this season, said Peña still managed to deliver throughout the highs and lows of the season.

“He seems to always rise to the challenge, and that’s the type of players that you want in the playoffs,” Verlander said.

Asked if he could have foreseen Peña delivering in such high-pressure moments, Baker said: “You could tell by his brightness in his eyes and his alertness on the field that he wasn’t scared and he wasn’t fazed by this. Boy, he’s been a godsend to us, especially since we lost Carlos, because this could have been a disastrous situation had he not performed the way he has. And he’s only getting better.”

Perhaps the biggest difference between Peña and the player he modeled his game after, Reyes, is their expressiveness on the field. While Peña flipped his bat after his key blast against the Yankees, he has generally been less flashy than Reyes was.

“I was a lot sillier than he was at that time,” Baker, who played 19 seasons in the majors, said of Peña. “A lot of rookies are kind of silly, and sometimes you feed off that silliness, the older players do. You kind of need that. But he’s quiet and he goes about his business.”

Peña did have a rare moment of pizazz after that home run. Normally, he makes a heart sign toward his mother in the stands when he crosses home plate. But as he rounded third base, he did the shrug that basketball player Michael Jordan made famous.

As he was receiving his AL MVP trophy at Yankee Stadium on television after the game, Peña was asked about that moment. “It just came out,” Peña said, smiling sheepishly. Standing next to Peña, Baker asked him to do it again. Peña obliged, and the Astros all laughed.