Freddy Peralta's ALCS MVP Reveals One Glaring Truth: He's Basically the Same Pitcher He Was With the Mets

[N.B. Lindberg]

Image courtesy of Jonathan Dyer-Imagn Images

The Tampa Bay Rays are headed to the World Series in large part thanks to Freddy Peralta’s exceptional pitching. In two starts and a relief appearance against the Cleveland Guardians in the American League Championship Series, totaling 12 innings, he allowed one solitary run. Unsurprisingly, he was named the ALCS MVP, and it has made New York Mets fans sick to their stomach. 

Peralta’s time in Queens was a microcosm of the Mets’ season. Reunited with David Stearns from their days in Milwaukee, it took a pair of top-100 prospects to pry him from the Brewers, but that’s the cost of landing an ace. The expectations were rightly through the roof. With Peralta near the top of the rotation, the Mets looked like a complete team, capable of making a deep postseason run, and then, almost instantly, the bed had been crapped.   

Peralta was ineffective. The highly paid stars were injured. The Mets were toast. And the selloff began. While the Mets were able to recoup a solid bit of prospect capital from the Rays for Peralta, it still stings watching him carve up hitters in a different uniform. It's also become impossible not to think, “Why couldn’t we have just gotten this guy?”

The truth is, the Mets did get this version of Peralta.

To explain, I’m going to show you three different pitchers, and I want you to choose which one you’d prefer.

3 Mysterious Pitchers
	IP	K%	BB%	Barrel%
Pitcher 1	113.2	22.10%	9.40%	5.20%
Pitcher 2	55.1	19.70%	6.90%	7.00%
Pitcher 3	16.2	17.40%	10.10%	8.10%

Unless you’re a madman, you’re definitely not taking Pitcher 3, and while you could argue for Pitcher 2 thanks to that lower walk rate, I think most people would reasonably land on Pitcher 1. Okay, now for the big reveal. They’re all Freddy Peralta. Pitcher 1 was Peralta with the Mets. Pitcher 2 was Peralta with the Rays in the regular season. And Pitcher 3 is Peralta in the postseason. 

I’m sure you’re wondering how this is possible, and the answer is quite simple. Preventing runs is largely out of your control. The only things pitchers really control are their strikeouts, walks, and batted ball quality. This is why Fielder Independent Pitching (FIP) is such a useful tool for analysis. And of those three indicators, home run suppression (batted ball quality) is the least stable. So, let’s take a look at how Peralta’s fortunes changed in the areas out of his control upon joining the Rays.

Freddy Peralta and the Things You Can't Control
	ERA	BABIP	LOB%	HR/FB%	xFIP
Mets Peralta	4.99	0.313	68.4%	13.0%	4.25
Rays Peralta	3.25	0.232	77.1%	7.8%	4.62
Playoff Peralta	1.08	0.229	96.8%	3.4%	5.73

*xFIP assumes a league-average HR/FB%, usually around 12%*

There’s a compelling case that Peralta has actually pitched worse since leaving the Mets. When you throw in the fact that his fly-ball rate skyrocketed from 38.3% to 49.7% upon joining the Rays, and is at 59.2% in the playoffs, that 1.08 ERA looks like divine intervention akin to Angels in the Outfield. 

I’ve seen them, you’ve seen them, but it's all just noise. The Rays did this for Freddy Peralta; the Rays did that which the Mets could not. Did the Rays also tell him to strike out fewer batters and give up more barrels? Because that’d be a pretty bad plan. 

I’m not suggesting that the Rays asking him to raise his arm angle, as we pointed out on July 30, having him pitch out of the stretch, and everything else weren’t good ideas, but it didn’t fix him. If it had fixed him, he would have recaptured his 28.2% K% from last season, not seen it drop. 

The Rays didn’t fix much of anything for Freddy Peralta from an underlying performance standpoint; they just got the regression to the mean. I’m glad for him as he is set to enter free agency, but no organization worth its salt will look at his time with the Rays and offer him a $200 million contract. It’s easy to punch down at the Mets, but this narrative crumbles under the most basic level of scrutiny. Most of pitching is down to things you can’t control, which is why the greats are control freaks.

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[whippoorwill]

Very good article. I wish him well