The Freddy Peralta Deal Has Been a Dud for the Mets

Fireworks season came early to Citizens Bank Park, where on Saturday evening the Phillies collected 17 hits — 10 for extra bases, including four home runs — in a 15-3 win over the Mets. Kyle Schwarber launched three of those homers, with two traveling more than 450 feet in the third inning, and by the time the fifth inning ended, Bryce Harper had hit for the cycle for the first time in his major league career. At the wrong end of that onslaught was Freddy Peralta, who was tagged for 10 runs in 2 2/3 innings. It was the worst start of his nine-year career, as well as a reminder of just how poorly the team’s offseason acquisitions have panned out.

Saturday’s start began inauspiciously enough, with Peralta allowing a two-out solo shot to Harper in the first inning. After falling behind 2-0, he threw a 93.9-mph four-seamer inside, but Harper was nonetheless able to extend his arms and lift a 37-degree blast. In the second inning, Peralta surrendered two more runs via the combination of an Alec Bohm single, a one-out J.T. Realmuto double, and a two-out Justin Crawford double.

At that point, the Mets were down 3-0, not a good start but hardly catastrophic, but Peralta began the third inning by serving up a 456-foot solo homer to Schwarber on a changeup at the bottom of the zone, and from there the floodgates opened. Harper doubled, Brandon Marsh singled and took second on a Marcus Semien throwing error, and after the first out, Bryson Stott and Realmuto hit back-to-back doubles. A strikeout, a Crawford walk, and a Trea Turner single later, and the Mets were down 7-0. Peralta was done for the evening, but the official scorer wasn’t quite done with him. Crawford and Turner scored when reliever Cionel Pérez left a middle-middle sinker for Schwarber to demolish, a 457-footer for his second home run of the inning, putting the Mets into an 11-0 hole.

All told, Peralta matched his career highs for both runs and hits allowed (10 apiece). By the Bill James version of Game Score, his start tied an April 3 start by the Rockies’ Michael Lorenzen — also against the Phillies — for the majors’ second worst of the season, behind only the April 13 dud by Red Sox left-hander Garrett Crochet against the Twins. By Game Score v2, which incorporates home runs, it was merely the eighth-worst start, but still sub-zero:

By either measure, it was the worst start out of the 178 that Peralta has made since reaching the majors in 2018, and the last thing that the Mets — who have been trying to dig their way out of a 10-21 start — needed from the 30-year-old righty whom they expected to head their rotation.

On January 21, the Mets acquired Peralta and righty swingman Tobias Myers from the Brewers — president of baseball operations David Stearns’ former team — in exchange for a pair of Top 100 prospects, Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat. Here and elsewhere, the deal was touted as providing the team with the no. 1 starter it had lacked; last year’s Mets had just one starter reach 2.0 WAR (David Peterson), and only two who threw at least 120 innings (Peterson and Clay Holmes.) Peralta was coming off a big season with the Brewers, one in which he made his second All-Star team and placed fifth in the NL Cy Young voting while setting career bests in innings (176 2/3) and ERA (2.70). He ranked fourth in the NL in the latter category, fifth in strikeout rate (28.2%), eighth in WAR (3.6), and 10th in FIP (3.64).

That 3.64 FIP, while certainly respectable, was 0.94 runs per nine higher than his ERA, the majors’ third-largest difference in that direction among qualifiers, with the gap owing plenty to a .243 BABIP, second lowest among qualifiers. Peralta’s FIP was right in line with his 3.67 FIP from 2018–24, and not far off his 3.42 xERA from 2025. In other words, it was probably a better indicator of his abilities than that career-best ERA. Not that the Mets didn’t need quality starting pitching, but the notion that he was an ace was oversold. His Depth Charts projection for 2.6 WAR (with a 3.83 ERA and a 3.92 FIP) ranked just 37th among pitchers.

Including Saturday’s shellacking, Peralta is now carrying a 4.83 ERA and a 4.31 FIP; the former is his highest mark since 2019, the latter a career high. Though he’s had a couple of recent turns in which he’s allowed just one run, over his past six starts he’s in Boeing territory: a 7.47 ERA in 31 2/3 innings. During that span, he’s struck out just 20.3% of hitters, and for the season, he’s punched out just 22.1%. Among pitchers with at least 120 innings last season and 50 in this one, his 6.1-point drop from 2025 is the majors’ sixth largest:

That’s not a great place to be, even if there are some fine pitchers on the list. Skubal, Wheeler, and Gilbert all had high enough strikeout rates in 2025 that even with sizable drops, they’re still well above the major league average for starters (21.8%), but Peralta is now barely above average. Meanwhile, his current 9.0% walk rate is an eyelash below last year’s mark, while his home run rate has increased from 1.07 per nine to 1.26.

A loss of velocity isn’t the primary culprit for Peralta’s decline, but it’s a good place to start, as his four-seam fastball has fallen from an average of 94.8 mph in 2025 to 93.9 mph this season; on a percentile basis, that’s a drop from the 58th percentile to the 38th. He’s also lowered his arm angle by an average of six degrees, from 38 to 32, and so the shapes of his pitches have changed. He’s getting more arm-side run on his four-seamer, but less drop on his curveball, and less movement in either plane on his slider:

Despite the changes in the velocity, angle, and movement of Peralta’s four-seamer, batters are doing about as well against it this year as they did last year. It’s an effective pitch, as Lance Brozdowski explained at the time of the trade:

Peralta has one of the better righty four-seam fastballs in MLB. He extends nearly 7 feet down the mound despite standing just 6 feet in height. He has an average arm angle (40°), but a release height that is nearly 6” lower than average for pitchers with comparable arm angles. This results in a very flat approach of his four-seam fastball into the strike zone. It’s a tough pitch to generate damage on in the zone.

With his lower arm angle in 2026, Peralta’s release point is even lower (5.27 feet, down from 5.42 in 2025), so the approach is still quite flat, and the damage done by batters fairly limited. Their slugging percentage against the pitch has only increased from .381 to .386, while their expected slugging percentage against the pitch has fallen from .460 to .390. Peralta was nine runs above average on the pitch according to Statcast in 2025, and he’s four runs above average with it now.

Batters are doing much better against Peralta’s breaking pitches, with their slugging percentages nearly doubling from 2025 to ’26: from .300 to .571 against his curveball and from .235 to .462 against his slider. They’ve also improved from .271 to .427 in terms of slugging percentage against his changeup. The run values of those three pitches have fallen into the red, with the curveball dropping from +4 runs to -4, the slider from +3 to -1, and the changeup from +9 (sixth in the majors) to -3. Ugh, ugh, and ugh.

Looking at Peralta’s pitches in the Statcast 3D Pitch Visualizer, it appears that last year, he was particularly effective at tunneling his slider and changeup, and that his four-seamer also tunneled similarly (see the inset below) before spreading out across the strike zone.

This year, Peralta’s slider and four-seamer are still tunneling similarly, but the other pitches not so much, and the slider, curve, and sweeper are all ending up at similar spots in the lower middle of the zone. All of which would suggest that he’s not fooling hitters to the same degree as he did last year. He’s certainly not getting first-pitch strikes as often, with his drop from 63.3% to 59.6% representing a fall from the 47th percentile to the 27th.

That said, I do see some glimmers of hope. With the exception of his rarely used sweeper, Peralta’s whiff rates on his pitches haven’t changed by much since last year, with the rate against his curve actually increasing (see the table above). His overall chase rate has increased from 28.3% to 29.8%, fueled by increased chase rates against all of his secondaries: the changeup from 15.8% to 19.7%; the curve from 25.4% to 32.3%; and the slider from 20.7% to 22.2%. What’s more, Peralta’s groundball rate is up (from 37.5% to 43.1%), and his pulled-air rate of 16.9% is the second lowest of his career, even if it is ahead of last year’s 15.8%.

It’s also worth noting that some bad luck and regression have somewhat distorted Peralta’s performance. He’s cut his barrel rate substantially relative to last year — the 3.7-point drop is the seventh largest using the cutoff rates above — and his expected slugging percentage allowed has only increased by 10 points, but his actual slugging percentage allowed has increased by 100 points:

Peralta’s xwOBA on contact is the lowest it’s been since 2022 (.305), and his xERA is in line with his 2024 mark; he put up a 3.83 ERA and 4.16 FIP that season in 173 2/3 innings while striking out 27.6% of all hitters.

All of which is to say that Saturday aside, Peralta hasn’t been as bad as he’s looked. We can return to the simplicity of ERA and FIP comparisons for one last reminder: His ERA is up 2.13 runs per nine from last season, but his FIP has only increased by 0.63 per nine. Still, even in a rotation where the likes of Peterson and Kodai Senga have been less effective, it’s not hard to understand how Peralta has become a symbol of the Mets’ disappointing season and fans’ ire toward Stearns. Stearns was less than two full months into his tenure as the general manager of the Brewers when they plucked Peralta away from the Mariners in the December 2015 Adam Lind trade. Peralta went on to contribute to six Brewers squads that made the postseason, but what played in Milwaukee doesn’t necessarily play in New York, and for Stearns, the January Peralta deal is just one of several offseason acquisitions that have already soured. Semien has hit for a 77 wRC+ and netted zero WAR. Bo Bichette has managed just an 85 wRC+ while producing 0.8 WAR, with his value mainly coming as a solid third baseman and fill-in at shortstop for the injured Francisco Lindor. Luis Robert Jr. has been limited to 24 games with a 93 wRC+ and 0.1 WAR due to a lumbar spine disc herniation, and his return is being talked about in terms of “before the end of the season.” Devin Williams — another Stearns-era Brewer — has a 4.81 ERA, and Myers a 5.48 ERA, though at least the Luke Weaver addition has worked out.

With losses on Saturday and Sunday, the Mets are now 34-43, six games behind the Cubs, Padres, and Nationals, the three teams currently tied for the third Wild Card spot, as well as three other teams. New York’s Playoff Odds are still 14.9%, but even that feels like a stretch given the size of that crowd. Barring a big winning streak sometime in the next month to rocket the team back into the orbit of .500, Stearns should be selling ahead of the August 3 trade deadline. Peralta hasn’t been what the Mets needed, but he’s ostensibly healthy, and as a pending free agent making just $8 million this season, he’ll still have some appeal to contenders for whom a Skubal trade is too pricey, so long as he doesn’t make 10-run starts a regular thing. The Mets aren’t likely to recoup the January deal by adding a couple of Top-100 prospects to replace Williams and Sproat, but perhaps they can salvage something from this unhappy chapter.