3 Reasons To Be Excited About Freddy Peralta In 2021

The Brewers could have an embarrassment of riches in the bullpen this coming season.

They have the reigning NL Reliever of the Year and Rookie of the Year in Devin Williams, who possesses one of the most gravity-defying pitches in all of baseball. Then there’s Josh Hader who’s been one of, if not the best reliever in baseball for the better portion of the last half decade with a fastball that can still reach 95 mph.

Steady performers in the bullpen also include soft-tossers Eric Yardley and Brent Suter who went a combined 4-0 in 40 appearances with ERAs of 1.54 and 3.13 respectively. Lastly, there’s the up-and-coming guys like Justin Topa and Drew Rasmussen who may not start the year in the majors, but will more than likely prove to be vital pieces sooner than later with velocity numbers near triple digits.

But there’s one guy that people tend to forget about: Freddy Peralta. Peralta is a prime candidate to make a significant jump in his fourth season at the major league level and here’s three reasons why.

1. Freddy Peralta’s 2020 numbers are deceiving on the surface

3-1 record. 3.99 ERA. 13 earned runs in 15 games. 22 hits given up. While these weren’t poor numbers by any stretch of the imagination, his performance was well above average according to Baseball Savant. Clink on the link and check out how Peralta ranked among the rest of the MLB:

The first couple things that jump out are the elite strikeout and whiff percentages. Being in the 96th percentile of strikeout percentage Peralta finds himself right there with the best punch out recorders in the game and even above the likes of reigning NL Cy Young Trevor Bauer who is three spots behind Peralta in the category. In terms of whiff percentage, he was above teammate Josh Hader and even had a firm lead over 2020 All-MLB First Team Reliever Liam Hendriks.

Some other stats to take note of are an xBA (expected batting average) of .179, an xERA (expected ERA) of 3.11, a hard hit percentage of 31.7% (which is down about seven percentage points from 2019) and lastly a K/9 ratio of 14.4. Peralta excelled in a number of different areas on the rubber last season.

Areas of improvement for the 24 year old include less barrels (38th percentile) at 7.9% of the time and less walks (39th percentile) at 9.6% of the time. But based on last year’s success, Freddy Peralta has to be in the conversation for the reliever to make the biggest jump if he can keep improving upon some of these numbers from last year.

2. Peralta’s added a KEY wrinkle to one of his pitches

Will Sammon, a writer for The Athletic who covers the Milwaukee Brewers, took a deep dive into a grip change for Freddy Peralta’s slider. Entering the season last year, Peralta was excited to try out a slider that he had been working hard on during the offseason. He expected his version of the slider to be that ever so important third pitch in a pitcher’s repertoire. This one was deemed a “bullet slider” with more of a downward motion to it thanks to the intense index-finger pressure.

But he wasn’t seeing the results that he wanted with the new pitch. He struggled in his first and only start of the year on July 26th, going three innings and giving up four runs, three hits and two walks. And his new pitch was barely moving.

Rewind about a month before that game and there was a video circulating via Trevor Bauer’s YouTube channel. This video gave the ins and outs and everything in between in the conversation of gravity and magnus force, which help contribute to the dance party that Bauer’s pitches take part in on the way to the plate. Peralta saw this video and was intrigued but opted to stay with the slider he had been working so hard on.

After a couple months, Peralta had seen enough. He was ready to try Bauer’s slider…and it was one of the best choices he could’ve made. The new and improved slider had more horizontal movement and he changed the grip by putting his index and middle fingers together rather than separated like he had done before. The results were nothing short of amazing.

The Brewers see Peralta’s slider as an established part of his pitch mix now, not an experimental addition.

He went three scoreless innings, striking out six and producing two whiffs in his first game with the revamped pitch against the Chicago White Sox. And from there he never looked back. In the 26 ⅓ innings that followed that appearance, Peralta had a 3.08 ERA with 44 strikeouts with an average horizontal movement never lower than seven inches, compared to the 3.48 inches on average that he was logging before.

Pair this reconstructed slider with a well-above average fastball and 12-6 curveball that has good break and you’ve got an impressive trio of options at your disposal. Look for Freddy Peralta to utilize this pitch more and more and get as comfortable as he can with it.

Oh and he mentioned another pitch potentially being added to the mix. “I don’t know if it’s going to be soon or this season, but I’ve been working on the change-up really hard. It’s important for me to have multiple pitches. I just need to wait until the spring games, keep working on the change-up, see how it is, how confident I feel, how confident the catchers are. Then we’ll have a decision.”

Hitters beware of Freddy Peralta in 2021.