On Wednesday, Harrison gave us a round-up of the recent noise around Freddy Peralta’s trade market. He notes that the Brewers general manager Matt Arnold has said that he “anticipates” that they’ll hold onto him into next season and, presumably, the trade deadline. But there is, without a doubt, a lot of smoke around this situation, one that has been smoldering basically since the World Series ended.
Not that this is news to anyone, but to put it simply, the Brewers really appear to have two options:
First, they keep Peralta with the expectation that they will contend all season, they’ll keep him past the trade deadline, and they’ll let him walk as a free agent after the season, collecting a compensatory draft pick in the process.
Second, they trade Peralta before the season.
There are pros and cons to each approach. Let’s check them out.
The case for keeping Peralta
If the Brewers trade Peralta before the season, they are weakening their rotation, without question. While we have no way of knowing for sure, there seem to be a couple of types of trade packages that the Brewers might be interested in:
*on Saturday morning, The Athletic published a note that said that the Brewers are looking for young, controllable starting pitching in any potential Peralta trade.
In either situation, you are going to be making your rotation worse. While it could be argued that it wouldn’t necessarily make the team worse (we’ll get to that), trading Peralta would subtract what is essentially the only sure thing in a starting rotation that is rich in talent but lacking in experience. If the hypothetical young, controllable player is a pitcher, you would be taking a major risk, as a team that is interested in trading for Peralta is obviously not going to give up a pitcher who they think has a chance of being as good as Peralta next season.
Peralta has far more on-field experience than any of the Brewers’ other starting options, but he’s also tied with Christian Yelich as the longest-tenured Brewer, and he seems to command the respect of the team’s younger players, especially those from Latin America. The Brewers let Willy Adames walk, and concerns about the loss of his clubhouse presence did not seem to come to fruition. But could the loss of two popular clubhouse leaders in two years negatively affect the Brewers’ young players?
I don’t buy a ton of the “clubhouse leader” thing — I think the Brewers have other players (namely, William Contreras) who can step into that role. But the lack of experience in the starting rotation is a real concern. Were the Brewers to just subtract Peralta from the starting rotation or replace him with another inexperienced starting pitcher, you’re looking at a rotation that is led by Brandon Woodruff, a great veteran presence who has not topped 70 innings since 2022, followed by the immensely talented but definitely-a-wildcard Jacob Misiorowski (and his 14 career regular season starts) and Quinn Priester (39 career starts, one above-average season).
Could the Brewers get good production from a Woodruff-Miz-Priester-Chad Patrick-Robert Gasser-Logan Henderson group in 2026? Absolutely, and it’s even possible they could put together the best overall season for a Brewer starting rotation since Corbin Burnes was around and Woodruff was fully healthy. Could Miz lose the strike zone completely? Could Patrick and Gasser (and Logan Henderson) fail to live up to the promise we’ve seen from them early in their careers? Could Priester turn back into the guy who couldn’t keep a big league job?
All of those questions are valid. Peralta, at this point in his career, does not have those kinds of questions. While it’s always possible that he could get hurt or return to being the player he was from 2022-24 (which is to say a pretty good, mildly disappointing pitcher), there’s basically no question that a healthy Peralta is going to give you 170 innings of solidly above-average baseball.
The number one reason a Peralta trade would happen now is if the Brewers’ front office sets a very high asking price and somebody meets it.
The number two reason would be a situation in which you might find a good fit with another team that wants Peralta, the rare swap of good players on good teams.
The third reason is to protect yourself in case Peralta gets injured.
The Brewers, we have all had to come to accept, are a team that will not spend very much money. Extending Peralta does not appear to be an option, and I’d agree with the front office that for this team, and the financial constraints within which they have to work (whether valid or not), spending $25 million or more a year for a starting pitcher moving firmly into his 30s (and, at the back end, his late 30s) is not the best use of resources.
With that knowledge, the Brewers shrewdly understand that they need to get something for Peralta. That something could be in the form of a postseason run and a compensatory draft pick (if he stays). But that something could also be a trade package, and the market has told us that the cost for a pitcher like Peralta is high.
See two examples from this offseason. The Rays sent Shane Baz to the Orioles for four prospects (ranked 6, 10, 11, and 30 in the O’s system) plus the No. 33 overall pick in the 2026 draft. Just this week, the Cubs traded Owen Caissie (their top prospect, No. 47 in the MLB Pipeline Top 100), Cristian Hernandez (Cubs No. 11), and a third minor leaguer to the Marlins for Edward Cabrera.
Cabrera and Baz both have more team control remaining than Peralta, but make no mistake: Peralta is a clearly better pitcher, at this point, than either. Baz, a former top prospect, could still blossom, but he wasn’t very good in 2025. Cabrera was, but that coincided with a major drop in walks, which he will need to prove is sustainable.
The point: Peralta should be more valuable than either. In my estimation, he should hold about as much value as Burnes did after the 2023 season: both had a year remaining before free agency, Burnes had a better track record and was a year younger, but Peralta’s 2025 was better than Burnes’ 2023, and Peralta comes quite a bit cheaper ($8 million versus $15.6 million for Burnes in 2024).
Another reason trading him might make sense is if the Brewers feel like there’s a trade for a good major league player who can help address a different part of the team. The obvious example here would be the possible trades with the Boston Red Sox that have been much discussed here and elsewhere, in which the Brewers would send Peralta to Boston for one of what appear to be excess outfielders, probably either Duran or Abreu. Both of those players are good (and have more team control than Peralta), but the Red Sox seem to think they need pitching more than an extra outfielder right now, while the Brewers have a question mark in their outfield after trading Isaac Collins. If the Brewers have confidence in Woodruff’s health and their young pitchers, they might feel they can improve next year’s team by taking Peralta’s value and moving it to a different part of the roster.
The last factor at play here is health. Burnes, another Brewer pitcher with no history of arm trouble, was fortunate to get his big free agent contract before he needed Tommy John surgery just 11 starts into it. Peralta likewise has no history of arm trouble, but in 2026, he’ll be the same age that Burnes was when he suffered his injury in 2025. It’s obviously not a given that Peralta will have a major injury before his prime is over, and his health has been one of his best traits. But we know the deal with pitchers in the 21st century: they get hurt, and it’s very difficult to predict when.
Trading Peralta now ensures that the worst-case scenario for the Brewers does not come to pass: that he endures an elbow injury in his last season before free agency, causing him to hold zero value at the trade deadline, rendering him out for the playoffs, and very possibly eliminating potential draft-pick compensation in free agency. This scenario would be bad for Peralta, obviously, no matter what team he’s on next season. But the Brewers are where they are these days because they are shrewd, and trading Peralta now would ensure that they get value for him regardless.
I mentioned it early on: there’s a lot of smoke here. It’s a slow time of year, and pundits are desperate for anything to talk about, but it seems like the major national baseball writers think that there’s enough momentum that a Peralta trade happens.
I’m not so sure. The Brewers held Adames through the final year on his contract (though his trade value was probably not as high as Peralta’s is). Peralta is a fan favorite, a franchise cornerstone, and he’s very affordable. I don’t know if this would move the needle for the front office, but if he sticks around and stays healthy, Peralta will set a new career franchise record in strikeouts. The Brewers right now have excellent depth in their starting rotation, but if you take away the top piece, things could suddenly start looking very thin very fast.
But it’s also possible that the price for Peralta has reached a place that Arnold just can’t ignore. I’m not sure what that price would be, but say the Brewers could get another promising but unproven starter with five or more years of control, and a top-100 prospect, and a draft pick. Would you say no to that, knowing that Peralta is almost certainly gone at the end of the season?
The Brewers succeed because they’re constantly replenishing the system. They did it when they traded Burnes, and later when they traded Devin Williams. We often clamor for a big, splashy, headline-making move, and it’s true that the Brewers are in a position of strength with their minor league system at the moment, but the team is where it is because they’re cautious with their assets. It’s not a lack of aggressiveness as much as it is a thoughtful, long-term approach, and it has undeniably worked.
I do not know if Peralta will be traded or not. It’s beginning to become a cliché, but we should probably trust the front office to do the right thing here. They’ve earned that trust. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t turn a critical eye toward the moves that they make, but the overall track record is strong, even if the Burnes trade wasn’t quite a home run.
