Statcast Breakdown: Freddy Peralta

I come from Italian heritage, so it’s sacrilege that I haven’t incorporated food into my baseball analysis. That changes here.

I’ve begun to think of an-bat as one of my favorite pastimes: cooking a homegrown meal.

The similarities are plentiful. Pasta, seasonings, and a choice of meat are exchanged for fastballs, curveballs, and sweepers. The aroma of sauce rolling through the kitchen is identical to the musk of dirt rising from feet digging into the batter’s box. Just like an oven timer, a pitch clock ticks away.

And just like a series of ingredients necessary to create a homegrown meal, the sequence of pitches in at-bats must be planned and executed. Pasta can’t be cooked without boiling water first.

At risk of making you hungry, I’m opting to bring it back to baseball.

David Stearns cooked up a brand-new roster this offseason. Out went stalwarts Pete Alonso, Edwin Diaz, Brandon Nimmo, and Jeff McNeil. In came Bo Bichette, Devin Williams, and Luis Robert.

The cherry on top of Stearns’s group of well-rounded acquisitions: a trade for Milwaukee’s Freddy Peralta and Tobias Myers. (Although the addition of Myers was crucial for the trade to be finalized, for the sake of this article, I will focus on only Peralta.)

Throughout the last several seasons, “Fastball Freddy” emerged from a fastball-heavy fireman to a top-shelf starting pitcher. Last season, he posted a 2.70 ERA/3.47 FIP, garnering a fifth-place placement in the Cy Young Award voting. His pitching was worth +26 runs (97th percentile) on the back of an expanded four-pitch arsenal.

He’s no longer a one-trick pony; his fastball, breaking, and off-speed pitches each delivered +8 Runs in 2025.

Each offering in his four-pitch arsenal serves a different purpose.

“Fastball Freddy” and his 80% fastball usage may be a thing of the past, but “Frequent Freddy Four-Seamer” is still plenty alive. His fastball leads the conversation in his repertoire and for good reason; it’s the 16th most valuable fastball since 2008,  benefiting from Peralta’s low release height and elite extension, traits that allow it to excel despite middling velocity and a usage rate north of 50%.

Meanwhile, his trio of non-fastballs is utilized to throw batters off. In 2025, his change-up distinguished itself as his clear secondary choice. It’s a thing of beauty; Baseball Savant’s Run Value deemed it his most effective pitch.

A curveball thrown 16% of the time and a slider thrown 9% of the time complete his repertoire; each of his secondaries notched at least a 35% whiff rate in 2025.

His pitches are already wonderful in a vacuum. They’re all elite pitches delivered from an elite extension, resulting in an elite pitcher. They’re effective, not only due to positive pitch characteristics, but because they’re methodically utilized within an at-bat. They’re the ingredients thrown into a recipe at the right time.

After crunching the numbers, Peralta’s sequencing indicates that he’s using his ingredients at an opportune time.

Sequencing has always been a part of baseball, but it’s taken a backseat to Pitch Design in the last few years.

Portable Trackman units and enhanced player data capture tools have given Pitch Design its moment in the sun over the last half-decade. There’s been a tangible change in pitcher evaluation throughout this movement. No longer are pitches graded as a result of a singular metric, like velocity. Rather, Stuff+ algorithms now grade offerings by quantifying their role in an arsenal. A pitch lives within the context of its peers, not alone and siloed.

Publicly, there’s been no such “a-ha” moment for pitch sequencing. At least not yet.

To bridge the knowledge gap between pitch design and pitch sequencing, I created a website to track frequent pitch sequences. Pitch Pairs is located here, and the introduction article, here.

Pitch sequencing begets pitch tunneling – or, otherwise said, pitchers throw pitches together that follow a similar path until they diverge shortly before home plate. This effect creates confusion on the batter’s side by inducing whiffs and generating soft contact.

In 2025, Peralta paired his fastball with another 689 times – 29% of the time, his most frequent pairing and the most frequent combination in the Majors. Pairing is important, not only in pitching but also as a mantra to take through life. A bowl of pasta isn’t a meal until it’s paired with a nice glass of Chianti.

Pairing the same pitch together is not an uncommon occurrence, but it is unique that Peralta pairs fastballs together as his most frequent pair, as pitchers typically pair sliders together. Peralta paired his change-up and fastball together 261 times (11%) in 2025. This pair was the third-highest rate of a change-up and fastball pair in 2025, trailing only change-up extraordinares Matthew Boyd and Tyler Anderson.

In comparison, David Peterson threw the most change-up and fastball pairs on the Mets in 2025, throwing a stark 180 fewer.

Although pitch sequencing – as presented – is helpful, it lacks context. There’s another variable at play: location of the pitch – and that can properly be accounted for. By flipping the top toggle to include location into pitch sequencing, more insight can be generated into the purpose of Peralta’s sequencing.

Peralta’s frequent paired pitches are often located in Zone 11 and Zone 13, the areas that are located up-and-in and down-and-in against righties. He peppers the area often, earning +44 Runs in Savant’s “Shadow Zone” Last Year, which ranked third in the Majors.

That’s unique in this era of pitch design. Zones 11 and 13 aren’t areas frequently populated, but Peralta targets them aplenty. Peralta even throws the two most frequent sequences located in Zone 11 and Zone 13. Given Peralta’s standing as a top-flight arm, it’s clear this strategy works. Against lefties, Peralta has a set plan. He grabs it and rips his favored sequences to his favored zones. However, against righties, Peralta pairs his fastballs together at a 25% clip.

Peralta’s a man from a previous era. Modern pitchers are Play-Doh molded in labs – Peralta’s the epitome of a grip-it-and-rip-it pitcher, the Chad Inning Eater.

I’m curious to see how – or if – the Mets change his sequencing in the coming year. Early research on sequencing indicates that the most frequent paired pitches correlate to higher whiff rates, but once more, Peralta’s an outlier. His fastball only tallied a 24% whiff rate in 2025.

The Mets acquired Peralta to do one thing in 2025: eat innings at a high-quality rate. When healthy, on the strength of his sequences, there have been few in the game better at doing so.

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