Oct 13, 2026; St. Petersburg, Florida, USA; Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Freddy Peralta (51) reacts after pitching against the Cleveland Guardians during the sixth inning in game two of the ALCS for the 2026 MLB Playoffs at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images
Freddy Peralta is a good pitcher. In fact, he’s one of the best pitchers in all of baseball.
He proved it during his time with the Milwaukee Brewers, and he’s doing so again in the postseason with the Tampa Bay Rays. The veteran right-hander won ALCS MVP honors by allowing just one run in 12 innings of work against the Cleveland Guardians. In four postseason outings, he has a 1.08 ERA, and he’ll take the mound in Game 3 of the World Series on Monday in hopes of helping Tampa out of an 0-2 series hole against his old club, the Brewers.
It’s almost shocking where Peralta is now, considering where he was just three months ago.
After going 17-6 with a 2.70 ERA last season in Milwaukee, the 30-year-old was traded to the Mets, where he would assume the position of staff ace in front of young, promising arms like Nolan McLean.
Instead, Peralta bombed in Queens. He went 5-9 with a 4.99 ERA in 22 starts — his worst showing since his second year in the majors back in 2019.
Hindsight still is not 20/20. When asked what went wrong during his time with the Mets on Saturday, Peralta still did not have a clue.
“Sometimes I [still] ask the same question myself,” he said. “I don’t try to make excuses and all that. I was feeling really good physically. I was trying to give the best of myself as always, and I prepared how I should be preparing. I don’t know. For some reason, things weren’t going my way. A lot of little things in the game that happen that makes everything look ugly. Sometimes I feel like I would pitch a really good game, and for some reason, you see the score, and it was something crazy like four runs, five runs in an inning. It was one play that was supposed to be made, and we couldn’t make it. Then we looked really bad after it. I think it was a lot of things going on for me and for the team, too. We weren’t playing well in general and we were trying to make adjustments. And we knew, and we spoke about it. We were doing the right thing and preparing in the right way, but we weren’t able to do what we were supposed to do.”
By July, a Mets season that began with postseason aspirations was already over, as they sat in last place in the National League East. Peralta was dealt to Tampa for a trio of prospects: outfielder Aidan Smith, second baseman Emilien Pitre, and right-handed pitcher Gary Gill Hill. All three are currently ranked within the Mets’ top 16 prospects by MLB Pipeline.
“I was feeling bad because I couldn’t do anything for them when they had a lot of big expectations for me,” Peralta said. “The fans, too, of New York, they were waiting for something great from me. I wasn’t able to perform well over there. I was disappointed because I knew what I can do. But then I was feeling a little better when I got traded because they were able to get some good players for me. That way, at least, they got something back, and I was able to go to a new team that probably needed me.”
The change of scenery did Peralta well. He overcame a slow start to life in the American League by going 5-0 with a 0.79 ERA across his final six starts of the regular season. He is regularly setting career-highs in fastball velocity, a pitch that hovered around 94 mph and is now hitting 98 and 99 mph, earning him the nickname “Fastball Freddy.”
Why the fixes have stuck in Tampa and have not in New York still remains a mystery, though. Peralta nor Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns would go into specifics of what they tried to do to get back on track. The only thing Peralta would offer was that the Rays’ tweaks were “a little different.”
For more on Freddy Peralta and the Mets, visit AMNY.com
