Shortly after they were swept out of the NLCS by the dominant Los Angeles Dodgers, it came out that the Milwaukee Brewers were going to listen to trade offers regarding their ace, Freddy Peralta.
Draw up the immediate links to the Mets.
The 29-year-old right-hander’s value could not be much higher ahead of a 2026 season in which he has a club option worth $8 million before hitting free agency the following winter.
Peralta had a career year, going 17-6 with a 2.70 ERA with 204 strikeouts in 176.2 innings pitched.
The Mets are desperate for starting pitching help this offseason—it’s the worst-kept secret in baseball. They currently have two serviceable arms in Nolan McLean and Clay Holmes, while the rest — Kodai Senga, David Peterson, Sean Manaea — are enormous question marks.
The Mets will understandably be linked to every big pitcher potentially on the market this winter. It has already begun with Detroit Tigers superstar southpaw Tarik Skubal, with contract-extension troubles brewing.
Peralta, however, is a far more realistic and inexpensive option compared to the likely American League Cy Young Award winner, and president of baseball operations David Stearns already has an established relationship with the Brewers.
Stearns spent nearly a decade molding the Brewers into a small-market powerhouse, with his fingerprints still very much all over the team that won an MLB-best 97 games in 2025. That included acquiring Peralta from the Seattle Mariners in 2015.
The Brewers’ asking price will be on the higher side, given Peralta’s big year, but it will be nowhere near what the Tigers are asking for Skubal. The Mets have the prospects to play right into Milwaukee’s M.O. of developing talent on the cheap; it will be up to Stearns to come to terms with parting with some of those prospects.
