Astros fans have to pump the brakes after Braden Shewmake’s torrid stretch

In a season mired by injuries and poor performance, it's easy for Houston Astros fans to search high and low for any bright spots to hang on to. For that reason, it's easy for them to grab onto a pleasant surprise that came out of nowhere. Enter Braden Shewmake.

Shewmake has become an overnight phenom, slashing .333/.333/.563 with three homers and stellar defense at shortstop over 17 games. Add in the fact that the 28-year-old scratches the age-old left-handed-hitting itch and has some positional versatility, and it's easy to see him as an out-of-nowhere alternative to a player like Brendan Donovan, who the Astros were rumored to be close to acquiring over the offseason.

The legend of Shemake has grown even more due to the circumstances surrounding his arrival. Jeremy Peña has battled injuries all season, and Carlos Correa slid to shortstop in his absence before suffering a devastating season-ending ankle injury. Even backup shortstop Nick Allen went down with back spasms. The acquisition of Shewmake from the New York Yankees was a desperation heave, but now he looks like a budding star.

That's led a minority of the fan base to believe that Shewmake should supplant Peña as the starting shortstop when the latter returns from the IL. They'll point to his status as a former Atlanta Braves top prospect and dream of this being the moment that the Texas A&M product finally reaches his once-lofty potential.

Braden Shewmake probably isn't a breakout Astros star, but that doesn't mean he can carve out a role

Here's the deal: if Shewmake were to become the next MLB superstar, there likely would have been some sort of warning signs that a breakout was coming. That hasn't happened for him across three previous organizations.

The 2019 first-round pick hit the ground running in A-Ball for the Braves with a .318/.389/.473 over his first 51 pro games. But after the 2020 minor league season was canceled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Shewmake got bumped up to Double-A and struggled. In 82 games, he hit just .228/.271/.402.

He'd struggle again in Triple-A, hitting .234/.298/.407 in 2023. The Braves would then trade him to the Chicago White Sox, a team in desperate need of cost-controlled talent. Except he'd only last one year in Chicago's system as he failed to stick. He'd spend 2025 with the Yankees, again struggling to show anything at Triple-A.

Those minor league struggles are robust, and they hold more weight than the putrid .118/.127/.191 major league line he put up over 71 disjointed big league plate appearances coming into 2026. One could argue that it is meaningless due to the small sample, but a prolonged inability to get it going in the high minors over several years is plenty damning.

Even now, Shemake has yet to draw a walk through his 49 Astros plate appearances, continuing his trend of struggling to get on base if he's not getting hits.

That doesn't mean that Shewmake can't be a useful piece. He can play solid or better defense at second, short, and third. He's also a left-handed hitter. Peña might not be threatened by his presence, but Allen might be. He's also a light-hitting, glove-first utility infielder, but as a right-handed bat, he doesn't do as much to balance the roster.

If Shewmake stays hot, he might steal Allen's spot when Peña returns, and if that happens, we'll get a prolonged look to see what he can do. If he continues to surprise us at that point, we can start the conversation of whether or not Houston found a diamond in the rough. The likely high-end outcome is that he becomes a nice bench piece, and there's nothing wrong with that.

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