What happened to Freddy Peralta?

Also - notes on the offense, Tobias Myers and more as the Mets took it on the chin again on Saturday against Boston

What’s Up with the Mets? ⚾️

• The Mets suffered their ninth shutout of the season, falling to the Red Sox 4-0 at home (box)

• The Mets’ lineup mustered just three hits all day, two of them courtesy of C Francisco Álvarez, who also had a good ABS challenge day; DH Jorge Polanco provided their only other hit

• Despite walking seven times against eight strikeouts as a group, the Mets were once again fruitless with runners in scoring position, going 0-for-8

• It was another up-and-down outing for RHP Freddy Peralta, who allowed just two runs on three hits but issued five walks and lasted only 4.1 innings, throwing 92 pitches in the process

• RHP Huascar Brazobán, LHP A.J. Minter, and LHP Brooks Raley combined for 2.2 scoreless innings, but Tobias Myers gave up another two runs over his two frames, bumping his ERA to 6.26 on the season

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• The Mets selected RHP Carson Wiggins (Round 1, Pick 27, Arkansas), OF Aiden Robbins (Round 3, Pick 92, Texas), and LHP Shane Sdao (Round 4, Pick 120, Texas A&M) with their Day 1 draft picks.

• Carson Wiggins has an 80-grade fastball and 70-grade slider, but historically hasn’t been able to throw them for strikes consistently (45-grade control). He got Tommy John surgery in May 2025 and didn’t make an appearance for the Razorbacks in 2026 despite a clean bill of health, but his fastball averaged roughly 98 mph and touched 102 as a freshman. His slider is a strikeout machine when paired effectively with his heater (1-for-16, 14 K in 2025), so if he can learn to locate both with regularity and still has the same stuff he did pre-surgery, he could be a quick riser through the system. (MLB Draft Profile)

• Aiden Robbins was the 29th-ranked prospect entering the draft, offering a well-rounded offensive profile and solid tools with 50+ grades across the board. Robbins has hit well everywhere he’s gone, leading the Big East in average and on-base before leading the Cape Cod League in average, slug, and OPS. He’s continued to tap deeper into his power potential, too, jumping from six homers apiece in 2024-25 to a 24-homer output in 2026. That pursuit of power has come at a swing-and-miss price (23% K rate in 2026, up from 13% at Seton Hall), but his raw hitting ability helped mitigate too many issues there. And on top of his plus bat, Robbins is a steady double-digit steal threat and has a glove that can play in all three fields. Keep an eye on this guy. (MLB Draft Profile)

• Shane Sdao is another Tommy John surgery recipient who profiles to be more of a project than Wiggins, but still offers upside under the hood. Pre-surgery, Sdao’s fastball sat low-to-mid 90s, and his slider was effective when deployed to hitters on either side of the plate. The Mets are betting on his upside, as he posted a 7.01 ERA with a ~1.65 WHIP in 71.2 innings for the Aggies in 2026. Sdao posted a 25% K rate against a sub-6% walk rate, but he had a very hard time missing bats, so it’ll be interesting to see if the Mets can rework his post-TJ mechanics to rediscover some of the effectiveness he flashed in 2024-25. (MLB Draft Profile)

Day 2 kicks off today at 11:30 am EDT with Round 5.

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Roster Moves 📰

• RHP Matt Seelinger outrighted to Triple-A Syracuse

• CF Jared Oliva released

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Injury Updates 🏥

• 3B Bo Bichette (general leg and right ankle soreness) is day-to-day and could wait until after the All-Star break to return

• RHP Clay Holmes (fractured right fibula) threw a 40-pitch bullpen without issue on July 10th; he’ll need to ramp up a bit more before starting a rehab assignment

• 2B Marcus Semien (left hip flexor strain) took live BP against Clay Holmes on July 10th and is nearing a rehab assignment, but it may need to wait until post-break

• 1B Mark Vientos (fractured right hand) will miss six to eight weeks but will not require surgery

• CF Luis Robert Jr. (lumbar spine disc herniation) could be activated immediately after the All-Star break

• RHP Dedniel Nuñez (Tommy John surgery) started a rehab assignment on June 25th and was promoted to Triple-A Syracuse on July 8th

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Play of the Game 🙃

After striking out the side to start the game, it looked like a new day had dawned for Freddy Peralta. He got into a jam in the second after allowing the first two batters to reach, but escaped the inning unscathed before issuing a 1-2-3 third.

Then the fourth inning came.

Peralta walked Caleb Durbin to open the frame, his third walk of the day and the second time he’d allowed Durbin to reach safely as the inning’s leadoff man. Peralta promptly got Masataka Yoshida to fly out to Juan Soto, but five pitches later, Andrew Monasterio hammered a dead-center fastball over the left field wall to put the Red Sox up 2-0.

With how the Mets were hitting yesterday, it was all Boston would need…until Yoshida took Tobias Myers deep in the top of the ninth.

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The Just Mets Podcast 🎙️

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Down on the Farm 🌾

• 3B Christopher Morel (Triple-A): 2-for-4, 2B, RBI, K

• RHP Dedniel Núñez (Triple-A, rehab): 2.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 0 K

• LHP Jonathan Santucci (No. 7, Double-A): 6.0 IP, 4 H, 2 R (1 ER), 1 BB, 8 K

• 2B Trey Snyder (Single-A): 2-for-4, HR, 1 R, 2 RBI, 1 K

BOX SCORES

Single-A SLU | High-A BRK | Double-A BNG | Triple-A SYR

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Today’s Game 🗓

Match-up: Mets (40-56) vs. Red Sox (45-48)

Where: Citi Field - Flushing, NY

Starters: LHP Zach Thornton (0-1, 4.35 ERA) vs. LHP Payton Tolle (5-6, 3.14 ERA)

When: 1:40 PM EDT

Where to Watch: WPIX

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More (and more, and more) of the same with Freddy Peralta and the offense ✍️

Newsday

After scoring 48 total runs against the Braves and Royals, the Mets have managed just two runs in their last two games against the Red Sox. That’s not exactly a surprise — Boston’s staff is no joke. Their 11.8 group fWAR ranks sixth in MLB, as does their collective 3.65 ERA and 7.8% walk rate; they rank solidly in the top 10 as a unit among multiple key metrics.

And yet, the Mets managed to make consistent contact yesterday while eliciting seven walks. The problem, as usual, isn’t that they weren’t able to make contact and get on base, but that they weren’t able to do anything of substance when it actually mattered. And while the Mets have ranked as the league’s unluckiest offense this season, there’s only so much of this repeated failure to execute that can be chalked up to repeated instances of bad luck.

No, the offense hasn’t been at full strength all season, really until recently. Yes, this team has suffered a litany of injuries in rapid succession that helped keep an already-derailed season barely clinging to the tracks. But any honest observer knows that those are ultimately just excuses, or story aids, rather than they are sufficient explanations of collapse.

Ultimately, this group just isn’t good — how many times have you heard that one this year?

Yesterday’s loss was archetypal for this team in a particularly painful way: lots of swings, not a lot to show for them. Mets hitters swung at 43% of pitches they saw yesterday, chasing at a 25% clip as a group. Though they weren’t massive whiff victims, the at-bats being put together weren’t terribly competitive, in large part because they didn’t see a lot of great stuff. Boston’s five arms combined for a mere 60% strike rate, a number that was helped demonstrably by the Mets falling back into the “swing hard and often” approach that has consistently gotten them into trouble so often this season.

Swinging at nearly half of the stuff you’re offered regardless of its quality is a gamble that’s almost destined not to pay off — either because you make increasingly poor contact, or because pitchers know they can exploit your perceived (and maybe very real) desperation and throw you literally anything. Looking at the team’s offensive rankings, it seems like that’s possibly being picked up on. Mets hitters have swung at just under 48% of pitches thrown to them this season, the 11th-highest rate in MLB, and they’ve seen pitches in the zone at a 41% rate, a bottom-11 rate. They rank firmly in the middle of the pack in chase contact rate, so it’s not like there’s any data justifying their proclivity for swinging at pitches out of the zone.

For an offense that’s never established much footing, they’ve certainly established an identity. It’s one every Mets fan (and player) would surely like to forget.

And as bad as the hitting has been, the pitching has been almost equally unreliable. Injuries, of course, have played a role here too, but they’ve impacted the rotation far less than they have the offense — naturally, the guy who was performing most reliably, Clay Holmes, is the one who landed the season’s most serious injury to date. What’s really bitten the Mets’ staff this season is the underperformance bug, mostly among the starters.

For all the excitement around Freddy Peralta’s acquisition, very little of that enthusiasm seems to remain amongst this fanbase. Peralta has not been the ace that was promised, and though yesterday wasn’t his worst start of the season, it was his second-shortest. Peralta needed 92 pitches and didn’t finish the fifth inning; that’s definitely not going to do much of anything to reassure anyone that brighter days are on the horizon.

Last week, Baseball Prospectus published a very detailed piece analyzing Peralta’s struggles this year, and their findings were a bit inconclusive: there’s been some bad defense, he’s gotten a little unlucky, there are some mechanical changes of note (decreased extension, lower arm slot, plummeting fastball whiff rate), but there isn’t one sole explanation for what’s ailing him this season. The article was unconvinced of any significant health issues, but suggested that perhaps the lower arm slot, in an attempt to rediscover some fastball effectiveness, has impacted how his offspeed stuff is perceived. Peralta’s also struggling against lefties in a way he never has before…it could simply be that the league has figured him out after all this time.

Whatever the root cause of Peralta’s problems, none of it bodes particularly well for the trade deadline. While the Mets would certainly be able to flip him for some value still, their leverage is undeniably lower than it could be.

And then there’s Tobias Myers, who was seen as a steal in the Peralta trade for his ability to work effectively both as a starter and out of the bullpen. After getting off to a strong start in spring training and finishing April with a 2.33 ERA, Myers’s productivity has fallen off a cliff. He pitched to a 7.00 ERA by the end of May, prompting a demotion and a routine change in Syracuse, where he was allegedly going to be stretched out as a starter. Those plans were almost immediately changed again when Myers was called back up to the big league club just two weeks later, before he was sent back down again. He’s rejoining the team today for another fresh stint.

While my concerns with Peralta are more mechanical than mental, with Myers it’s the opposite. Though I don’t doubt something is happening under the hood that’s making him so hittable these last couple of months, I can’t help but wonder if Myers’ struggles are a microcosm of the broader ‘new face’ struggles that have plagued this team since day one. A demotion after starting the season on the Opening Day roster, ever-shifting expectations and development plans, sudden significant underperformance, the ‘New York’ of it all, etc. — it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to learn that such a lack of stability took a toll. Any lack of confidence for a pitcher is a killer; a solid development foundation is crucial to tapping back into someone’s stuff, and Myers hasn’t really gotten that.

Time will tell how his latest MLB stint looks, but if his role remains in flux, his performance likely will too.

As this team approaches the All-Star break, no shortage of questions and critiques surround them, most of them likely well-earned. They’re questions that have been asked in perpetuity for weeks, months, with no clearer answers now than when they were first asked.

This team is capable of stringing together a few good games every couple of weeks, sometimes even consecutively — but at its core, this team has essentially put on the same performance week after week since Opening Day. And until the roster looks decidedly different (again), that’s probably not going to change.

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Around the League 🚩

• The MLB Draft was a family affair on Day 1, as the White Sox drafted Jim Thome’s son, Landon Thome, and the Giants drafted Barry Bonds’ nephew, Peyton Bonds

• National League aces Jacob Misiorowski (arm fatigue) and Chase Burns (tight right groin) are both going to miss the All-Star Game

• Alex Bregman hit a go-ahead two-run homer to help power the Cubs’ 5-3 win over the Reds; it was their 26th comeback win this season

• Yordan Álvarez hit his 31st homer of the season as the Astros flattened the Rangers 9-3 in Arlington

• Kyle Bradish took a no-hit bid into the seventh inning, leading the way in a win for the Orioles over the Royals, 6-1