Peralta had an up-and-down season in his first year as Milwaukee’s ace
We’re continuing our rankings of the Brewers’ 10 most valuable players in 2024 with starting pitcher Freddy Peralta. Peralta finished the season with 2.6 bWAR and 2.3 fWAR, both good for seventh on the team.
While some of the underlying numbers may not look the greatest for Peralta, he still made a career-high 32 starts and pitched a career-high 173 2⁄3 innings, providing an anchor presence for a rotation that dealt with injuries all season long.
Peralta finished the season with a 3.68 ERA (114 ERA+), a 4.16 FIP, and 200 strikeouts for the second consecutive season after striking out 210 batters in 2023. Unfortunately, he also walked a career-high 68 batters, resulting a 2.94 strikeout/walk ratio, the lowest since his much-smaller-sample-size rookie season in 2018 (2.4 strikeouts/walk across 78 1⁄3 innings).
He also struggled in the postseason, allowing three runs on two hits and a walk with five strikeouts across four innings in game one of the NL Wild Card Series. He made a relief appearance in the winner-take-all game three, pitching a perfect eighth inning in the loss.
Per Baseball Savant, Peralta is still one of the best all-around pitchers in the league. He ranks in the top 25% in pitching run value (78%), offspeed run value (92%), average exit velocity (79%), whiff rate (87%), and strikeout rate (81%). He also ranks in the 70th percentile in fastball run value, the 71st percentile in xBA, and the 66th percentile in hard-hit rate.
While some of those numbers still lag behind his 2021 and 2022 seasons, when he was elite in most Baseball Savant categories, he was still close to his 2023 numbers. Peralta will look to stay consistent — and, ideally, improve — in 2025 as he remains the ace in Milwaukee’s rotation even with the return of Brandon Woodruff.
We’ll continue our rankings of the 10 most valuable Brewers each Monday and Wednesday into early December. Come back on Wednesday to see who we have at No. 5.
- Freddy Peralta (2.6 bWAR, 2.3 fWAR)
- Christian Yelich (2.2 bWAR, 3.0 fWAR)
- Joey Ortiz (2.7 bWAR, 3.1 fWAR)
- Trevor Megill (1.3 bWAR, 1.0 fWAR)
- Sal Frelick (2.1 bWAR, 1.5 fWAR)