What Happened to Freddy Peralta?

It seemed to get somewhat lost in the dumpster fire that is the 2026 New York Mets, but in the offseason, they traded for Freddy Peralta. Peralta was coming off a 2025 season where he was the unquestioned ace of a 97-win Milwaukee Brewers team. He finished fifth in NL Cy Young voting and made the All-Star team with an ERA of just 2.70. Now, as he was traded to Tampa Bay and free agency looms, we ask: What happened to Freddy Peralta?

New York was seen as a place that Peralta could go and have another good season before free agency in 2027, as the Mets looked to compete in the National League. Neither turned out as expected, as the Mets currently sit 11 games back of a wild-card spot at 53-68, and Peralta’s ERA for the team was almost five.

While the Mets have been a bit of a comedy of errors the past several years, they really aren’t known (in comparison to other teams) for ruining pitchers. Recently, guys like Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, and Nolan McLean have come up with the team and thrived.

Background in Milwaukee

As someone who has watched nearly every Brewers game for the past few years, I have watched a lot of Peralta starts. In his time with Milwaukee from 2018 to 2025, he started 162 games, making it a full season’s worth of starts in seven years. Perhaps the best part of having Peralta on the club was his reliability. He got to that number of starts by being durable, rarely having injury issues.

Peralta came up in 2018 and burst onto the scene. In his first appearance, he recorded 13 strikeouts over six scoreless innings on Mother’s Day. That appearance came at Coors Field in Denver, a notoriously difficult place to pitch.

He mainly came out of the bullpen for his first few seasons in the big leagues. He slotted into Milwaukee’s starting rotation permanently in 2021, where he became part of a three-headed monster that included Brandon Woodruff and Cy Young-winner Corbin Burnes. With Burnes’ departure in 2024 and Woodruff battling injury, Peralta became the ace of the staff for the Brewers.

Peralta has always relied heavily on his fastball, earning him the nickname “Fastball Freddy”. When he came up, he threw the fastball 78% of the time, being basically a two-pitch pitcher between that and a curve. He has mixed in more pitches as he has progressed, filling out his arsenal and bringing his fastball percentage down to a more reasonable 53%.

Underlying Stats

Peralta’s issue, since his Brewers days, has been his inefficiency. Over the last four years, he has been among the highest in the league in pitches per plate appearance. Now, that doesn’t always lead to poor performance, as during his phenomenal 2025 campaign, he was dead last in the league in that stat. What it does mean, as a lot of Brewers fans can tell you, is that it limits a pitcher’s ability to go deep into games.

A less flattering nickname some coined for Peralta was “Full-Count Freddy”. He has a penchant for running the count full with uncompetitive misses, especially after getting ahead. Due to this, a lot of Brewers fans had trouble being comfortable with Peralta as a true ace. To back it up, the underlying stats were usually worse than the ones on the surface, even when Peralta had a Cy Young-caliber season in 2025.

Even with a 2.70 ERA in 2025, his xERA, according to Statcast, was 3.43. Peralta has always had low opponent batting averages, but when he got hit, he got hit hard, as his max exit velocity was in the bottom 1% of the league.

These underlying stats caught up to Peralta in 2026. He regressed to an ERA over five and has had several rough outings for both the Mets and the Rays.

Mechanical Changes

A big reason that the 2026 season hasn’t been kind to Peralta looks to be some mechanical changes. I am not privy to the conversations among the Mets pitching coaches, but these sorts of mechanical changes don’t look like an accident.

The biggest change I saw was in Peralta’s arm angle during his pitch delivery. It dropped from a 38% angle in 2025 to a 33% angle in 2026. This means that Peralta is dropping his arm further towards the ground when he throws. The effect that this has on Peralta’s pitches mostly affects his fastball.

Freddy Peralta arm angle comparison via Baseball Savant

When he was with Milwaukee, Peralta was notorious for having what hitters described as a “rising fastball”. The fastball didn’t actually rise, but due to Peralta getting on top of the ball and back-spinning it so much, the effects of gravity on the drop of the ball would be nearly negated. This would result in lots of swing-and-misses under his fastball or fly balls. It also helped with his perceived velocity.

Pros and Cons

The goal of these mechanical changes, from what I can gather, is to miss more barrels and get more ground balls. As he has dropped his arm angle, his fastball has less vertical movement and significantly more tail than it did last season. It acts slightly more like a two-seam fastball designed to get ground balls.

These changes seem to have worked somewhat as intended. Peralta’s ground ball rate is up 3.4%, and his barrel rate is down 3.8%. Unfortunately for him, opponent batting average is up too. Peralta’s career BAA is .212, and this season it is up to .273.

In past seasons, Peralta has gotten away with his elevated pitch count and some walks due to his low batting average against and lots of strikeouts, but this increase in BAA has only exacerbated his control issues. His strikeout rate is down, and his walk rate is up, leading to more runners on base and more balls in play. All that, with a shaky Mets defense, has led to big trouble for Peralta.

Can it be Fixed?

I have trouble believing that Peralta can become a dominant pitcher in the Major Leagues again. He is simply too inconsistent to produce like one of the elite-level talents in the sport. I’m not sure if it’s a mechanical issue or a mental one that leads to his high pitch counts and uncompetitive misses. Either way, that has been his problem for years.

That said, I think that with some adjustments, Peralta can be a good pitcher for the Rays, or for a lot of teams, come next season. He has shown in the past that he can get the job done on the mound, and his durability and reliability cannot be understated.

He has had a couple of rough starts so far after being traded to Tampa Bay. If any team can get the best out of Peralta, I trust the Rays to be able to help him put his best foot forward as they surge towards the playoffs.

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