Chicago Cubs News & Rumors

2:29pm: Levine quickly walked back his report, citing a Cubs source in adding that while the team has indeed been exploring the rotation market at large, they’ve yet to have specific discussions with the Mets regarding Peralta.

2:10pm: The Cubs, with starters Cade Horton, Matthew Boyd and Justin Steele all on the injured list (and Horton done for the season), have inquired with the struggling Mets about the potential availability of right-hander Freddy Peralta, reports Bruce Levine of 670 The Score.

The Mets have not yet shown a willingness to seriously entertain offers on Peralta, per the report, but the early interest is nonetheless somewhat notable. It shows that the Cubs are taking a proactive approach to seeking rotation help and points to some interest in Peralta, specifically, if the Mets can’t turn their season around and eventually concede to selling off some pieces. Granted, that much could more or less have been assumed; any contending team would have interest in Peralta if the Mets made him available, and Cubs skipper Craig Counsell knows Peralta especially well from the pair’s time together in Milwaukee.

Early interest on the Cubs’ behalf speaks to the current positions of both clubs. The Cubs (26-12) are in a three-way tie with the Yankees and Braves for the game’s best record. However, they lost Horton to Tommy John surgery last month. More recently, ace Justin Steele had a setback while rehabbing from his own UCL procedure, performed last April. He’s now expected to be sidelined beyond the All-Star break. Earlier this week, the Cubs announced that Boyd had suffered a partial meniscus tear that required surgery. He’s expected to be down around six weeks, but that’s only a rough timeframe. A more concrete timetable will be established as he progresses through rehab.

The Cubs’ rotation is currently being led by a resurgent Shota Imanaga, who looks much more like the 2024 version of himself than the 2025 version. Righties Edward Cabrera, Jameson Taillon, Ben Brown and Colin Rea round out the group. It’s still a serviceable quintet, but the Cubs have lost several of their top arms and would be in dire straits with another prominent injury. Depth options include Javier Assad and recent waiver pickup Doug Nikhazy. Prospects Jordan Wicks, Jaxon Wiggins, Brody McCullough and Brandon Birdsell are all on the injured list as well (Wicks in the majors, the others in the minors).

Given those injuries, it’s only natural for the Cubs to be poking around, even if the trade market isn’t likely to really gain momentum for two and a half months or so. Similarly, it’s natural for contending clubs to be taking the Mets’ temperature as they stare up from not just the NL East cellar but the MLB cellar with a 14-23 record. They’re currently tied with the Giants for the worst record in baseball, and only five clubs have a worse run differential than the Mets’ -28.

Though the Mets’ season is on life support before we’re even into mid-May, it’s not especially surprising to hear that they’re not willing to begin considering making aggressive sell-side trades at this time. Poor as their play has been, the Mets are “only” six and a half games back of a Wild Card spot. The National League standings (all of baseball so far, really) are quite top-heavy. The 21-17 Pirates hold the final Wild Card spot at present. Even an 18-20 Nationals club is only three games back. The Mets’ odds of reaching the postseason have obviously plummeted, but there’s still 77% of the season left to play. It’s sensible to wait until at least next month to see if they can turn their fortunes around.

The Mets don’t necessarily need to surge back above .500 or even close that entire 6.5-game gap in the interim. If they’ve moved closer to .500 and picked up a few games in the standings a month from now, they’ll likely wait until July to make any decisions on their deadline approach. Conversely, if they slide further and find themselves 10 to 12 games back, they might consider jumping the market to try to get a strong return for some of their more marketable trade assets — Peralta standing as the most obvious among them.

The 29-year-old Peralta (30 next month) was acquired from the Brewers in an offseason deal sending righty Brandon Sproat and infield/outfield prospect Jett Williams back to Milwaukee. His connection to Counsell is of some anecdotal note but probably shouldn’t be overemphasized. Counsell isn’t the one making the call on any trade scenarios, and his familiarity with Peralta is a nice silver lining but probably doesn’t substantially intensify any interest from the Cubs.

Peralta has gotten out to a fine start, tossing 43 1/3 innings with a 3.12 ERA, a 23.2% strikeout rate and a 9.7% walk rate. His average fastball is down about a mile per hour. He’s lost five percentage points on his strikeout rate but only a half percentage point on his swinging-strike rate. Peralta is inducing grounders at a career-high 43.7% rate and doing a nice job avoiding hard contact (87.6 mph average exit velocity, 4.1% barrel rate). He was tagged for four runs in five innings during his Mets debut but hasn’t allowed more than three runs in a start since, compiling a 2.58 ERA in that time.

Peralta is earning $8MM this season after the Brewers picked up the second club option on an early-career extension (and subsequently traded him to New York). He’ll be a free agent for the first time at season’s end. The Mets reportedly had interest in extending him this spring, but he’s said to have preferred a seven- or eight-year, long-term deal — rather than the shorter-term but higher-annual-value deal formats on which the Mets tend to focus for pitchers.

With regard to rental players of this nature, the general thinking is that a team doesn’t have to move the player at the trade deadline if he’s a clear candidate to receive and reject a qualifying offer. Peralta is a slam dunk to do so. However, while a lower-payroll team might stand to gain a compensatory pick after the first round of the draft (i.e. in the 30 to 35 range), the Mets are in a different boat as a luxury tax payor. Their compensatory pick for Peralta turning down a QO and signing elsewhere would come after the fourth round. It’s a much lower bar to clear in trade talks, and the paltry nature of that compensation might prompt the team to more actively seek a trade in a couple months, given that any return should vastly outpace a pick in the low 130s.

Of course, all of this hinges on whether the Mets can go on a run that bolsters their playoff hopes. If they can do so, there’s a good chance Peralta won’t be available at all and that the Mets will instead look to add to the roster. That increasingly feels like a long shot, but we clearly have yet to reach the point of the season where they’re making such big-picture decisions. For now, the primary takeaways should be that the Cubs are actively looking around for arms and that the Mets, brutal as their start has been, will continue to exercise patience in the near term.