How Not to Have Your Heart Broken By Freddy Peralta in 2025

Last season, I (and many others) fell into the trap of seeing a Freddy Peralta fastball average over 18 inches of induced vertical break with his low release slot and an average velocity of over 95 miles per hour. Combining these three traits would create one of the best heaters in baseball. It's the type of fastball that makes one an ace.

Fast-forward a few months, though, and Peralta’s fastball had declined to a more typical range for him—if not slightly below his normal metrics, when you account for a change in his arm angle. Let’s take a look at his TJStuff+ (courtesy of Thomas Nestico) during the 2024 season:

The pink line represents his fastball. His slider is the green line; his changeup is in orange; and the curveball is in blue. With his slider and four-seam fastball as the dominant offerings, especially to right-handed batters, note the drop-offs from a 117/118 grade to start the season, a slow decline (with occasional rebounds), and an eventual settling into a 100-105 range in the second half of the year. The difference between these two marks is the difference between Mason Miller (119 TJstuff+ fastball) and Max Scherzer (102 TJstuff+) in 2024.

The same happened with his slider as the year progressed: a sharp decline in the early months, and grading out below average in the second half. The volatility on display is part of what makes Peralta an infuriatingly talented arm, hinting at his capabilities but never maintaining the peaks of his success.

If Peralta was able to find some way of retaining that early-season shape, he would be one of the best pitchers in all of baseball, but alas: this appears to be a common trend for him (albeit not quite to the same extent as we saw in 2024).

2023

Again, the four seam fastball starts out above 110 and drops to around 105 by the midpoint of the season. It’s a more consistent look than he found in 2024, for sure, but there is still that decline. The slider still dropped off really sharply as the season went on.

2021

This season comes with a bit of a caveat, given that the sticky stuff ban came in partway through the year. This was Peralta’s best season with the Brewers in terms of ERA, as he finished with a 2.81 mark in 144 ⅓ innings, but you can still see that fastball declining as the season went on. Interestingly, the slider retained its grading for the bulk of the season, which may be something to watch in 2025 as a marker for his success.

Plainly, Peralta has a habit of starting out strong with his “stuff”, before fading as the season goes on. It’s a common trend that we need to be alert for as we start getting Statcast data in spring training, moving into the start of the season.