PORT ST. LUCIE \u2014 Fastball Freddy, as new Met Freddy Peralta is sometimes still called, earned that moniker for coming right at you. What you expected was what you got \u2014 it was 96 fastballs in 98 pitches in his memorable MLB debut by Fastball Freddy\u2019s own unofficial count. And what the Mets got in Peralta appears to be the near-perfect* pickup.\u00a0<\/p>\n
(*Terrible timing is the one issue for both parties. He\u2019s a free agent after 2026, and Fastball Freddy lived up to his nickname, telling The Post he\u2019d like a deal for \u201cseven or eight\u201d years. But while he may well deserve that off his fifth-place Cy Young season of 2025, teams are operating without knowing future rules since the CBA also expires after this season, making long-term deals dicey.)\u00a0<\/p>\n
It certainly would be nice to fulfill his wish and keep him around long term. But for 2026, anyway, Peralta was a Mets necessity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eight years after his first MLB foray, he\u2019s mostly outgrown that sobriquet, adding deception and forming a full repertoire. He arrives here not quite 30 but in his prime, bringing maturity and ace-level performance to a team that desperately needed a boost following its disastrous 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORT ST. LUCIE \u2014 Fastball Freddy, as new Met Freddy Peralta is sometimes still called, earned that moniker…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[5,160,753,4,61,185,430,428,151,673,67,4311,4310],"class_list":{"0":"post-611153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-louis-cardinals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cardinals","10":"tag-freddy-peralta","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-new-york-mets","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-sports-columnists","15":"tag-sports-plus","16":"tag-spring-training","17":"tag-st-louis","18":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","19":"tag-stlouis","20":"tag-stlouiscardinals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116186241211567639","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}