ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Fastball Freddy came out firing.
Coming off a frustrating Game 1 loss to the Cleveland Guardians, Rays right-hander Freddy Peralta was tasked with getting top-seeded Tampa Bay back on track in the American League Championship Series. When the Rays acquired Peralta from the New York Mets ahead of the trade deadline, these were the starts they had in mind.
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But such visions were also predicated on Peralta rediscovering his best self after posting a 4.99 ERA across 22 starts as a Met. Little about his brief stint in Queens resembled the frontline starter whose fantastic four-seam fastball made him a two-time All-Star with Milwaukee.
It took some time. Peralta allowed seven runs in his first outing as a Ray at Coors Field, and he posted a 5.09 ERA over his three starts after that. But down the stretch, the impact version of Peralta resurfaced. Thanks to some key tweaks involving his delivery — raising his arm angle and restoring his elite extension down the mound — plus an uptick in changeup usage, things started to click again. Most importantly, these adjustments enabled the rejuvenation of his signature four-seamer. Across his final six regular-season starts, Peralta allowed just three runs in 34 innings (0.79 ERA), and he pitched well last round against the Yankees (4 ⅔ IP, 1 ER).
On Tuesday at Tropicana Field, with the Rays needing an ace-like performance against a Guardians lineup suddenly brimming with confidence, Peralta delivered the headlining effort in Tampa Bay’s 3-1 victory to even the series. The stat line — 6 scoreless innings, 4 hits, 2 walks, 6 strikeouts — speaks for itself. And the style in which the pending free agent blitzed Cleveland’s batters was reminiscent of the live-armed 21-year-old who burst on the scene with the Brewers back in 2018. It was the kind of performance that reminded everyone why he earned the “Fastball Freddy” moniker in the first place.
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Peralta made all kinds of history in his major-league debut eight years ago, allowing just one hit across 5 ⅔ scoreless innings while striking out 13 Rockies. But the most notable element of his debut was found not in the box score but in the data: Of Peralta’s 98 pitches, 90 were labeled four-seam fastballs by Statcast. It was an absurd breakdown, and it was reflective of Peralta’s most special trait. Remarkably, it wasn’t until he arrived in the majors that the righty fully grasped what that singular offering was capable of.
“I started learning about it when I got to the big leagues … and I started seeing the Trackman and all that,” Peralta said. “When I started thinking about it, I knew that I had [gotten] a lot of pop-ups my whole career in the minors, a lot of swing-and-miss. But I had no idea about how special it was going to be.”
Although he never replicated that level of lopsided usage, Peralta leaned on his four-seamer nearly 80% of the time during his first two big-league seasons. As he blossomed into a fully-formed frontline starter for Milwaukee, the fastball usage dipped closer to 50%, with his changeup and curveball emerging as dependable secondary offerings.
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But on Tuesday in Game 2, Peralta went back to his roots. Twenty-six of his first 30 tosses were four-seam fastballs. The changeup emerged as a valuable weapon later in the outing, and the curveball made a handful of cameos, but by the end of the night, 71 of Peralta’s 99 pitches were four-seamers — his highest usage (72%) in a start since 2019.
“Probably from pitch one,” catcher Liam Hicks said afterward of when he knew Peralta could lean on his heater in Game 2. “It was unreal tonight. We definitely could tell by some of the swings early on, and the command he had with it today was pretty unbelievable.”
In the first inning, Peralta rushed three fastballs past Chase DeLauter to give the standout Guardians rookie his first strikeout of the postseason. Three more punchouts followed in the second. A 95.9-mph fastball zipped past Nathaniel Lowe at the top of the zone before Peralta made Petey Halpin and Brayan Rocchio look foolish with a pair of changeups low and away as they tried to gear up for the high-90s heat.
Cleveland starter Parker Messick matched Peralta’s zeroes through three innings but endured a series of unfortunate events that put the Rays on the board in the fourth. After Junior Caminero drew a leadoff walk, Victor Mesa Jr. appeared to ground into a double play but was ruled safe at first upon review. Messick struck out Jonny DeLuca for the second out, but then the speedy Chandler Simpson reached on an infield single to put runners on the corners for Ben Williamson.
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Williamson tapped a seemingly harmless grounder toward third baseman José Ramírez, but the ball hit the lip of the infield grass and skipped under Ramirez’s glove and through his legs to allow Mesa to score, Simpson to advance to third and Williamson to reach second. Then the lefty-swinging Hicks — moved down to eighth in the batting order against a tough southpaw in Messick — jumped on a first-pitch slider to drive in two more and make it 3-0 Rays. Paired with his single to lead off the third, it marked just the second game this season in which Hicks notched multiple hits against a lefty.
In the fifth, the Guardians started to pressure Peralta. With two outs, Ramirez singled and stole second, then DeLauter walked. That brought the powerful Jo Adell to the plate as the tying run. But after a mound visit from pitching coach Kyle Snyder, Peralta found a new gear to escape the trouble.
Before Adell stepped into the box, Peralta had thrown 11,350 four-seam fastballs as a major-leaguer. His 11,351st was his fastest yet: 99.4 mph right down the middle, which Adell fouled off for strike one. Peralta reared back and attacked again with 99 mph — a mark he had reached only five times in his career prior to Tuesday — and got Adell to fly out to center field to end the frame.
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“It plays a big role, the adrenaline,” Peralta said postgame when asked about his personal best against Adell. “And also, I define myself as a competitor — and I like these kinds of games.”
To punctuate his outing and finish his sixth frame, Peralta won a nine-pitch battle with Halpin by coaxing another chase on the changeup for his sixth strikeout. With that, he completed six innings for the first time in his postseason career.
A DeLauter RBI double in the seventh spoiled Tampa Bay’s shutout, but the bullpen held on from there, and All-Star closer Bryan Baker nailed down his fourth save of the postseason to seal the Rays’ Game 2 victory and tie the ALCS.
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“I think his fastball-changeup combo is one of the best in the game,” Baker said of Peralta. “Whatever tweaks they worked on, it’s paying off big-time. I think the fastball was even livelier today — he was probably pretty amped up in this scenario.
“That was really fun to watch.”
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