One of the Mets’ biggest moves before the 2026 season was the team’s trade with the Brewers for Freddy Peralta and Tobias Myers. As was the case with nearly all of the most significant moves of the offseason, this one went pretty terribly for the Mets, as Peralta wound up with a 4.99 ERA and a 4.45 FIP while the team lost so many games that it wound up finishing last in the National League East.
The expectation that Peralta would be the Mets’ ace this year was always a bit unfair. Despite his shiny
2.70 ERA with the Brewers in 2025, the underlying metrics that season and his track record over the course of his career showed that his fifth-place finish in Cy Young voting—the first time he’d gotten any votes for the award—was an anomaly. The Mets themselves might not have hyped him up as an ace, but they certainly raved about him in the context of where he’d land in their rotation. And Peralta’s mention of being interested in a seven- or eight-year contract extension with the team certainly set the bar a bit high.
Even if he didn’t end up pitching like an ace, though, Peralta looked the part of a pretty good major league pitcher. Over the three seasons that preceded his arrival in Queens, he had a 3.40 ERA and a 3.88 FIP in 516.0 innings, and he made at least 30 starts in each of those three seasons.
With the Mets, though, he threw 113.0 innings over the course of 22 starts, and just wasn’t good. His strikeout rate, which had been 28.9 percent over those last three years with the Brewers, fell to just 21.4 percent with the Mets. His walk rate was nearly identical to what it was before, but his overall results were obviously much worse. And even on days when he pitched well, he struggled to go deep in games, as he had just one seven-inning start, rarely completed six innings, and often found himself struggling to complete five.
Despite all of that and their position in the standings, the Mets did well to flip Peralta for a solid return of prospect when they traded him to the Rays at the deadline. Gary Gill Hill and Émilien Pitre—a right-handed pitcher and a middle infielder, respectively—are closer to the big leagues and could get a shot sooner rather than later. And in his brief time with the Cyclones following the trade, outfielder Aidan Smith stood out with a .938 OPS.
After the trade, Peralta fared much better with the Rays, of course. He did so with an even lower strikeout rate than he had with the Mets, though his walk and home run rates were lower, too. The Rays play excellent defense, and his BABIP was significantly lower in the 55.1 innings that he threw for them in the regular season. Maybe it was all luck and defense, or maybe it’s just that baseball can do strange things over any particular short period of time.
Whatever the case, it’s quite frankly hilarious that Peralta is thriving in the postseason with the Rays, as he was just named the MVP of the American League Championship Series following the team’s clincher last night. Peralta started and won that game, of course, and now he’ll face the Brewers—the only major league team he had pitched for until this season and the team that David Stearns used to run—in the World Series.
After that, he’ll be a free agent. The Mets will presumably look elsewhere for rotation help.
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