The Blue Jays have bigger questions to answer this winter than one ugly October start, and Freddy Peralta’s World Series stumble shouldn’t be the thing that tips the scales.
Toronto doesn’t need to tear up its rotation and start over. Four spots already look spoken for with Dylan Cease, Trey Yesavage, José Soriano and Cody Ponce. That leaves the fifth spot, and the real decision is how much the Blue Jays want to pay for it - and whether that money would be better spent on the lineup instead.
That choice gets a lot more interesting because Toronto has just over $100 million coming off the books this offseason. That kind of flexibility gives them room to chase a pitcher in Peralta’s range, especially with Jim Bowden projecting a five-year, $140 million deal that works out to an average annual value of $28 million per season.
It’s a price tag that could make a major bat harder to land, but it shouldn’t push Toronto out of the market for everyone except maybe Tarik Skubal. And if the Blue Jays were to land Peralta, going after Skubal would be overkill anyway.
Peralta is one of the most appealing arms available, even if the final memory of him wasn’t pretty. In Game 3 of the World Series, he lasted 4.2 innings, allowed five runs on seven hits and three walks, and struck out four in the Rays’ 10-1 loss to the Brewers.
The bigger question is whether that outing actually changes anything for Toronto.
Peralta’s 2026 season began in rough shape after the Brewers traded him to the Mets in January with one year left on his contract. In New York, he went 5-9 with a 4.99 ERA and a 1.48 WHIP across 22 starts, and he had trouble putting the Mets coaching staff’s mechanical changes into practice.
Then the Rays took a swing at the deadline, and under pitching coach Kyle Snyder, Peralta turned it around completely. He finished 5-2 with a 3.25 ERA and a 1.01 WHIP in Tampa Bay, closed the regular season with a 0.81 ERA over his final seven starts, and was named AL Pitcher of the Month for September.
He kept rolling in October, putting up a 2.95 ERA over 21.1 innings in the playoffs and earning ALCS MVP honours. Then came the World Series and that lopsided Game 3 loss to the eventual champion Milwaukee Brewers.
Still, Bowden’s rankings suggest the rough finish hasn’t done much damage. He has Peralta second on his top 40 free agents list, behind only Tarik Skubal.
For Toronto, that matters, especially after the club gave 30-year-old Dylan Cease a seven-year, $210 million deal last winter. A projected $140 million pact for Peralta, who turns 31 in June, fits the kind of investment the Blue Jays have already shown they’re willing to make.
The case for Peralta goes well beyond one postseason start. He has made 171 starts over the last six seasons, gone 64-45, and posted a 10.43 K/9 rate, 3.51 ERA and 3.77 FIP. He owns 16.7 fWAR in that span, and his 1,042 strikeouts rank seventh among qualified starters over those six years.
Put him into Toronto’s rotation, and the Blue Jays could be looking at one of the best five-man groups in baseball.
But the front office still has to weigh the alternatives. Was the first half in New York just the product of a Mets pitching environment that hasn’t produced many success stories lately?
Do they trust the second-half surge enough to commit $28 million a year? Or do they believe they already have cheaper internal answers for the fifth spot, with Bowden Francis, Ricky Tiedemann, Jake Bloss, Spencer Miles and Spencer Arrighetti among the names in the mix?
That’s the real decision. Not one bad night in the World Series.
What should matter is whether Toronto believes the Tampa Bay version of Peralta is the real one, and whether that version is worth a commitment in the neighborhood of $140 million. If the Blue Jays buy into the changes, he’s the kind of starter who can lift a good rotation into elite territory.
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For Toronto, the appeal is obvious if the medicals check out. The Jays need innings and upside, and Pivetta could fit as the kind of lower-cost gamble that sometimes pays off in a pitching market where proven arms are rarely cheap. The question now is whether a team looking for value can feel comfortable enough to move quickly. [Read more 🡒]