A couple weeks ago, an unexpected name came up connected to the Dodgers: Freddy Peralta. It didn’t make a ton of sense at the time, and it still really doesn’t. But since Katie Woo, Dodger beat writer for The Athletic, wrote about the Dodgers’ interest in Peralta yesterday, it seems there’s more smoke than initially thought.
I, briefly, touched on the initial Peralta rumor earlier this month.
“If (the Dodgers) were to add a starter, I’m not sure how much sense Peralta makes, despite his Statcast profile being littered with numbers the Dodgers like in their pitchers — limits hard contact, whiffs, good expected numbers. First of all, Peralta would be, at best, the fourth-best starter in the current Dodgers’ rotation, and I’d still take Tyler Glasnow over him based on familiarity and ceiling. Second, trading for Skubal would mean strengthening the rotation from the top down. Trading for Peralta slightly strengthens the back-end of the rotation while the top remains the same. Unless the Dodgers are planning to move someone else, it’d be a hard sell considering the cost and the fact that they don’t need another starter, let alone a quality No. 2/3-type. Also, the Brewers would almost assuredly demand Emmet Sheehan in return, which makes sense for them, but I’d hope if the Dodgers trade Sheehan, it’d be for a controllable, younger bat.”
Peralta, 29, is coming off a strong season as the Brewers’ ace. He pitched to a 2.70 ERA (career-best), 3.64 FIP and a 19.1 K-BB%. His 3.42 xERA was 12th-best among qualified starting pitchers, while his .207 xBA was 7th-best. While his 9.1 BB% isn’t great, the Dodgers don’t seem terribly concerned with some of their starters having borderline 10% walk rates. Peralta’s rate would have still have been better than Glasnow’s 11.7 BB%, Snell’s 10.2% and Dustin May‘s 9.3%. What’s wild is that his 28.2 K% would have only been better than May’s 21.3 K% and Clayton Kershaw‘s 18.6%.
Where Peralta thrives is with his breaking and offspeed stuff, even if he made a couple drastic alterations to usage from 2024.
The biggest change was in his slider usage. And that’s coming off a 2024 season that saw him hold hitters to a .203 batting average while recording a 41% whiff rate. The batting average against dropped to .175 while the whiff rate increased to 53.4%. It was the second-best whiff rate among starting pitchers behind Ranger Suarez (55.8%; 4.2% usage). It was a situation in which the reduced usage actually provided better results. FanGraphs valued the pitch at 3, up from -0.6 in ’24. Statcast saw his slider run value increase from -3 to +4 in ’25.
The usage changes helped his other non-fastballs, too from ’24 to ’25.
Curveball
FanGraphs Run Value: +0.8 to +3.1
Statcast Run Value: +2 to +5
Changeup
FanGraphs Run Value: +4.5 to +8.6
Statcast Run Value: +4 to +9
And this is on top of already having one of the best fastballs among starting pitchers in baseball.
The questionable fit isn’t due to Peralta’s skill-set or durability. He has thrown at least 165 2/3 innings every season for the last three seasons, including a career-best 176 2/3 innings in 2025. The questionable fit is due to roster limitations.
This is how the Dodgers’ rotation looks at present:
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Blake Snell
Shohei Ohtani
Tyler Glasnow
Roki Sasaki
Emmet Sheehan
That doesn’t even include the likes of River Ryan, Gavin Stone or swingman-types like Ben Casparius and Justin Wrobleski. If you add Peralta (with the cost likely being anyone listed after Sasaki), it’s still a pretty full rotation. And, as mentioned earlier, strengthening from the top-down makes more sense than strengthening the middle.
Which brings me to Tarik Skubal.
I wrote about Skubal earlier this winter. As of this moment, Skubal is still a Detroit Tiger. With his record-setting ask via arbitration and the Tigers’ offer, it seems like a divorce is more than likely — be it now, at the trade deadline or after the season. What if the Dodgers were to acquire Peralta or involve the Brewers in a 3-team trade with the Tigers which would net the Dodgers Skubal and the Tigers Peralta, as Detroit is coming off a season that saw them one win away from the American League Championship Series and they don’t want to ship Skubal off for A-ball prospects, no matter how much potential said prospects might possess.
While the Dodgers could match the asking price for Skubal on their own, it might make it a little easier if they had a Peralta-type to dangle — especially since he’s making $8 million in the final year of his contract. While Glasnow is probably a more talent pitcher, he isn’t anywhere near as durable, nor is his $27.31 million average annual value as attractive to a team currently unwilling to pay the going rate for the best pitcher in baseball (and the Dodgers told him they aren’t trading him).
——
There’s a reason the Dodgers have been connected to Peralta. Andrew Friedman is always on the hunt for premium talent. While the fit isn’t super obvious, there could be other factors at play. If the Dodgers end up with Peralta or Skubal, there will be a good reason for it. And it’ll piss off baseball, perhaps even more than their signing of Kyle Tucker.
I’m not expecting anything to come of this, but it’s a rumor that just hasn’t gone away.
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