David Peterson’s last act with the Mets ended the way the season around him did: with frustration, not closure.
He opened 2026 as the club’s longest-tenured Met, the final link to the previous ownership group after an offseason that saw so many familiar faces shipped out or signed elsewhere. Peterson was trying to reset after a rough second half in 2025, even though the first half of that same season had earned him an All-Star nod. With free agency waiting at the end of the year, he needed a strong season to put himself in position for his first trip to the open market.
Instead, the bottom dropped out.
Peterson’s first outing was a promising one - 5.1 scoreless innings against the Pittsburgh Pirates - but it didn’t hold. From there, the results unraveled.
In 16 appearances for the Mets in 2026, with half of them starts, he posted a 6.09 ERA over 68 innings. He struck out 63 and walked 30, but the rest of the line told the story: a 1.647 WHIP, a 10.9 H9 and a 67 ERA+, all career worsts.
His -1.0 bWAR was also a career low, a steep fall from the previous two seasons.
The Mets kept trying to find something that worked. They bounced him between the rotation and the bullpen, hoping a different role or a mechanical tweak might unlock the version of Peterson they had seen before. But as the team spiraled deeper into its own collapse, the pressure only grew to patch holes however possible.
Eventually, the Mets moved on. On June 25th, Peterson was traded to the Chicago Cubs for minor league first baseman Cole Mathis, ending his run as the longest tenured Met and kicking off what became a larger sell-off before the trade deadline.
The change of scenery helped. Peterson made 16 appearances for Chicago, 15 of them starts, and put together a 3.70 ERA with a 1.369 WHIP and a 114 ERA+. He added 0.9 bWAR with the Cubs, which lifted him to -0.1 bWAR for the full season.
Peterson’s Mets career closed after a little more than six seasons with a 4.31 ERA, 677 strikeouts, a 94 ERA+ and 5.9 bWAR. The numbers only tell part of the story, though.
He made an All-Star team and was a Gold Glove finalist in 2025. He played a major role in the Mets’ 2024 playoff run, recording a save in Game 3 of the Wild Card series to send the team to the NLDS and earning the win in Game 4 of the NLDS against the Phillies.
He also became the first lefty to throw a complete game shutout for the Mets since Steven Matz, doing it against the Nationals in June 2025.
There were rough stretches, but there were also real high points.
Now Peterson heads into free agency for the first time, after a stronger second half with the Cubs. The market could move fast, with most of the action likely coming before the expected lockout during December’s CBA negotiations. That could mean fewer suitors or less money, and a reunion with the Mets looks highly unlikely.
So the final image of Peterson in a Mets uniform is tied to a season that went sideways, and to a team that had too many problems to solve.
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