The New York Mets have a new ace, and he’s making a big jump. Freddy Peralta is going from a quiet small market team, the Milwaukee Brewer, to the media Petri dish and rabid fan base that’s part and parcel of daily life with the Mets.
Peralta’s ready for the jump, though. He did an interview with Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic during which he discussed the move, his current status with a possible extension, and his relationship with GM David Stearns given that the pair have a shared history in Milwaukee.
First the boring quote, which was probably at the top of his agents’ “say this first” list.
“I would prefer to go long and make sure I’m going to be in the place where I want to finish my career,” Peralta said.
The Mets would love this, too, providing Peralta performs as expected this season. The pitcher is currently represented by ACES, and Peralta also nailed his second answer when he was asked if extension talks have happened this spring: “No comment.”
But Peralta knows Citi Field, and not just from his road trips with the Brewers. Back when he was an 11-year old Little Leaguer, a team he was on from the Dominican Republic spent a summer month in New York, and Citi Field was the park he visited, according to Rosenthal. The writer added that Peralta even threw a no-hitter against a team in the Bronx.
Fast forward to Opening Day of last year, and Peralta ended up reserving 40 tickets for friends and family to watch his start for the Brewers against the New York Yankees. His ballpark entourage was scattered across multiple boroughs, and there were quite a few of them “everywhere.”
“When I say a lot,” Peralta added, “it’s a lot.”
That means he knows what he’s getting into to a large extent, but Peralta doubtless knows it’s different when you’re pitching for the home-town team.
Stearns, meanwhile, has traded for Peralta twice now, according to Rosenthal, first with the Brewers at the 2015 winter meetings when he acquired him from the Seattle Mariners, and now with the Mets. Both Stearns and Peralta know that the pitcher will be seriously underpaid this season at $8 million, but that doesn’t seem to bother Peralta, who says he knew “inside of me” that he wouldn’t be in Milwaukee for the long haul.
“I kind of knew that they wanted to keep me, but probably couldn’t afford my value in the future,” Peralta said. “I knew it was better for them at that moment because they could get players for me, multiple players.”
That didn’t make it any easier. The pitcher was in his offseason home in Miami when he learned about the deal, and he did go through some emotional churn before Stearns called Peralta to inform him of the deal.
“It was crazy,” Peralta said. “I couldn’t sleep, thinking about everything, about Milwaukee, where I was headed to.”
Now Peralta will get to experience a new kind of craziness, which is a pretty good job description of what he’ll almost certainly go through with the Mets.