2006 Topps, Brayan Pena

#318 Brayan Pena

Here is another card that Brayan Pena signed for me before my first Royals game in 2009. If you would like to read about the encounter, go here to see my first Brayan Pena post.

Brayan started this past season as the Royals back-up catcher and he remained in that role until Matt Treanor suffered a concussion half-way through the season. Brayan took over the catcher duties until the Royals called up Salvador Perez in August.

As a result of Treanor's concussion, Brayan did see the most playing time in his career. He played in 72 games this year and got 222 at-bats, which beat his 2009 totals of 64 and 165. Unfortunately, though, his numbers didn't rise with the increased playing time. His average dropped to .248, which was the lowest he has batted with at least 100 at-bats. He only had 3 home runs (and all were hit in Arlington), which is half of what he had in '09. And, he only had one more double than he had that year. About the only thing that did go up was his RBI total, and that only rose by 6 despite getting almost 60 more at-bats.

But on a bright note, Royals fans got to see the emergence of Salvador Perez last season. So that means that Brayan should be relegated to back-up duties again this season, though even that is not a lock as the Royals want to take a good look at Manny Pina.

As bad as Brayan's signature appears, I actually have a card signed by him that looks at least twice as worse. It is kind of sad considering that his signature once looked like this.

And no, Brayan does not bat like that. He is a happy-go-lucky guy and he was probably just having fun with the photographer that day.