Steve Phillips, the MLB Network analyst and former Mets general manager, said Monday on the New York Post’s baseball podcast “The Show” that the Mets are likely to trade Freddy Peralta before the August 3 deadline. The report fits the direction the front office has already set: David Peterson is a Cub, and relievers Brooks Raley and A.J. Minter are expected to follow him out the door.
Peralta’s first season in Queens has not matched the winter trade that brought him from Milwaukee. In the final year of his contract, he reached the break 5-8 with a 4.66 ERA and a 1.44 WHIP over 20 starts, with 104 strikeouts in 104.1 innings. The Mets tabled extension talks until after the season back in June; a trade would make that decision permanent.
A clear eye on the return is warranted. A rental starter carrying a 4.66 ERA does not command a premium, and any buyer would be paying for the strikeout arm and the pre-2026 track record rather than this year’s results. That is still a trade worth making from New York’s side: at 40-57 and 16 games out in the NL East at the break, the club gains more from prospect capital and open rotation innings than from ten more Peralta starts in a lost season.
This franchise has managed deadlines badly before, usually by waiting for a market that never improved. The low-drama version — sell the rental, bank the return, give the innings to someone who might be here in 2028 — is the defensible one, and Phillips’s read suggests the front office sees it the same way.
The second half opens this weekend, and every Peralta start before August 3 now doubles as a showcase. For fantasy managers, treat him as matchup-dependent: the strikeouts are real at exactly one per inning, but the 1.44 WHIP makes him a streamer, not a lock. A trade to a contender would restore some win support without fixing the ratios, so temper expectations accordingly.
