Freddy Peralta's Inefficiency Has Cost Brewers Innings from Their Ace. Can He Fix It?

There are 131 pitchers who have made at least 15 starts in MLB this season. Among them, Freddy Peralta has the seventh-highest average number of pitches per batter faced, at 4.19. At the end of his first trip through the Giants batting order Wednesday night in Milwaukee, he had already thrown 47 pitches. He would finish with 105 in six scoreless innings.

That start was encouraging, and undoubtedly, Peralta's ability to dominate hitters remains. He strikes out nearly 28% of the batters he faces, and even in a bit of a down year, he's allowing just a .678 OPS. Yet, his walk rate is inflated, and he's struggled the third time through opposing lineups throughout the season. Part of the problem, surely, is that he shows opponents too many offerings the first time through. Why does he throw so many pitches per at-bat?

To answer that, we need to identify the key factors that determine how many pitches a pitcher throws per at-bat, in general. There are lots of numbers you can choose, these days, with some significant correlation factors overlapping, but four things feel like unavoidable factors in determining this: how often you throw the ball in the zone; how often hitters swing against you; their whiff rate when they do swing; and what percentage of swings result in foul balls. Here's the correlation factor for each of those stats with pitches per batter faced this year, and Peralta's standing in each, among the 147 pitchers who have faced at least 300 batters this season.

Peralta isn't remarkable in terms of how often hitters swing against him, within or outside the zone. Nor do opponents spoil an exceptionally high or low number of pitches against him. In his case, it's fairly simple: Peralta is too nasty for his own good. He doesn't fill up the zone enough to force contact or rack up quick strikeouts. However, his stuff is so good that opponents can't put the ball in play when they try.

Peralta works a lot of deep counts. Of 166 pitchers who have at least 250 non-walk batters faced this year, only five have a higher share of their pitches within those plate appearances end up as balls than Peralta, at 34.8%. There are 39 pitchers who throw a ball on less than 30% of their pitches in plate appearances that don't end up as a walk, but Peralta is close to 35. He nibbles. He battles himself to generate the command needed to rack up outs. He does an admirable job, too, in that many pitchers who spend as much time at the edges of the strike zone (or beyond it) as he does walk more hitters than he does.

Still, a price is paid. Working the edges and chasing strikeouts means that Peralta gives opponents early looks at all of his offerings. By the third time through the order, often, they're more familiar with him than they would be with other starters. There's not an especially predictable relationship here, but Peralta's habit of piling up pitches per plate appearance and cracking more than an average starter the third time through the order is one he shares with a noteworthy pitcher to whom he makes a natural comparator.

Over the last few years, having Peralta as some version of Blake Snell was perfect for the Brewers. That was everything they needed him to be, and more, because they were really more dependent on their other two workhorses, Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff. Now, however, Peralta is the should-be ace of this staff, and they need more volume from him. They need to be able to trust him even the third time through an opposing lineup. To get to that threshold of trust and come up with key outs later in games come October, Peralta has to find a way to attack hitters more and force shorter early at-bats. Whether he's capable of that adjustment or not remains to be seen.