Freddy Peralta’s start on Opening Day is exactly what the Brewers needed from him

Make no mistake, it truly stinks that the Milwaukee Brewers lost their Opening Day matchup to the Yankees. The Brewers' offense was not great (especially Jackson Chourio) and Jared Koenig laid an egg in his first relief appearance of 2025 to give New York the two runs that proved to be the margin of victory.

Not all the news was bad. Coming into the game, it was clear that Milwaukee was going to need to lean heavily on starter Freddy Peralta especially early in the season with Brandon Woodruff and Tobias Myers out. When Peralta gave up homers to Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe in the first and second innings respectively, things began to look quite grim.

A funny thing happened after that, though. Not only did Peralta settle down, but he was downright excellent the rest of the way and gave hope that the Brewers' pitching plans could work out.

Freddly Peralta strong Opening Day performance could give Brewers critical early season boost

Given that the Brewers only have three "real" starters on their roster at the moment, it would definitely not be ideal if Peralta had struggled. Milwaukee's bullpen is already going to be pretty taxed having to throw some bullpen games early in the season, so Peralta giving the Brewers real and quality innings was truly necessary.

Fortunately, that is exactly what he did. Despite giving up the two early solo home runs, Peralta still went on to give Milwaukee five innings with eight strikeouts against just one walk. It would have been awesome if he had been able to go a bit longer than that, but no one is going to complain about five innings of two-run ball (or at least they shouldn't).

Just like that, optimism that the Brewers can weather this early season stretch with Woodruff and Myers still working their way back and Jose Quintana building his innings up should be higher. It will still be tricky especially if the Brewers have to dip into their relief corps more than they would prefer. However, having Peralta in good form early should make this a lot more doable.

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