Since arriving with the Mets, David Stearns has had a fairly predictable pattern when it comes to starting pitching acquisitions. He has largely foregone the bigger available names on the open market, believing that committing significant resources to good but not elite starters to be a bad investment—particularly for a team that had little internal starting pitching depth. Instead, he has opted to pursue the middle-ground options, with the hope that the organization’s pitching development could
help these less heralded starters make improvements that result in solid production at a manageable price.
Some of those moves have worked beautifully (2024 Sean Manaea and Luis Severino, 2025 Clay Holmes and Griffin Canning). Some of them have not (2024 Adrian Houser, 2025 Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas). But entering the offseason after the 2025 season, the equation had changed. Thanks to both previous acquisitions and the development of some of their young pitchers, the Mets already had plenty of guys who had the potential to pitch to the level of a back-end starter. They no longer needed depth in the rotation, but rather a proven stopper, someone they could rely on to offer consistent top line production. Given how the starting pitching failed at the end of last season—probably the single biggest reason for the 2026 collapse—the addition of a starter with meaningful upside was arguably the biggest need for the club when winter began.
Enter long-time Brewers ace Freddy Peralta.
Stearns, still not one to offer premium contracts to non-elite starting pitchers, chose to pursue a two-time All-Star with whom he was very familiar from his time with Milwaukee to address the rotation needs. The cost was not cheap, with prospects Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat heading to the Brewers, but it was a manageable one for a team that had a bevy of great prospects and a lack of top line starters. And the Mets have wasted no time in embracing Peralta as the ace of the staff since his acquisition, as he was given the nod as the team’s Opening Day starter very early on in the spring.
Peralta is coming off a season in which he put up the most innings of his career (176.2 in 33 starts) and his lowest ERA (2.70). That shiny ERA admittedly might lead one to over-inflate the kind of starter that the Mets are getting here. Peralta had plenty of other very strong seasons before last year, don’t get us wrong, but his combined ERA from 2022-2024 stood at 3.73. His peripheral numbers were not noticeably different last year, so it’s possible he got a bit lucky and his 2026 ERA could more closely resemble the latter number—which would still be a very good starter, of course, but perhaps not one who finishes fifth in Cy Young voting, as Peralta did last year.
On top of that, Peralta has never been one to reliably pitch deep into games. That career high in innings he achieved last year still amounted to just a little over 5 1/3 innings per appearance, which is pretty much in-line with his career norms. He reached 7+ innings in a game just once last year, twice in 2024, once again in 2023. You get the picture. The point is that any fan who expects Peralta to pitch like a peak Jacob deGrom-level ace for the Mets might be setting themselves up for a bit of disappointment.
If that sounds like a negative outlook on Peralta’s capabilities, it shouldn’t. The fact is that starting pitchers who are significantly better at either run prevention or innings eating are exceedingly rare in today’s game. We shouldn’t expect him to be a true number one starter on the level of Tarik Skubal or Paul Skenes, but he is at least a reliable number two starter for the things he does do well. Namely, he strikes out a lot of batters (his 28.2 K% ranked ninth amongst all eligible starting pitchers in the game last year), and he stays healthy and on the mound (hence his ranking 15th amongst all pitchers in innings pitched over the past three seasons, despite rarely going too deep into games). That consistency is something which was sorely lacking from the 2025 squad, and having it this year will take a ton of pressure off the remainder of the team’s starting rotation.
So yes, there really isn’t all that much of a question about what kind of production the Mets can expect from Peralta this year. What may be more in question is whether 2025 will be the only season they get to enjoy having him on their roster. Since the trade, there has been rampant speculation about whether the front office will aim to lock him up to a long-term extension ahead of his impending free agency at the end of the season. Both parties have been relatively coy about the whole thing; for his part, Peralta has expressed plenty of excitement about being a member of the Mets, and he has seemed open to the idea of an extension (it is also worth noting that he is represented by ACES, an agency which has a history of negotiating long-term extensions for some of its players before they’ve reached free agency).
Peralta has said that his preference is to sign for a deal in the 7-8 year range, a length that might stretch past David Stearns’s comfort level for a non-elite pitcher. We’ll see if both sides are able to find common ground—particularly after the Mets’ NL East counterparts just extended one of their starting pitchers to a deal that may now serve as a benchmark for these negotiations.
Whether or not Peralta extends with the Mets, however, does not change the fact that for 2026, he is likely to be a much-needed presence in the pitching staff. Indeed, he has a very good chance of being the most exciting starting pitcher the Mets have had in their rotation for a full season since deGrom left after 2022. And if he pitches up to his career norms and Nolan McLean continues to look like a budding ace, the Amazins may have themselves a 1-2 combo in their starting rotation that few other teams can match.
