Veteran reliever Wandy Peralta will forgo the opt-out in his contract, reports Annie Heilbrunn of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Peralta’s four-year, $16.5MM contract contained opt-out opportunities after each season. He’s exercising a $4.45MM player option for the 2026 season and will have one final player option for the same amount next offseason.
Peralta effectively has two years and $8.9MM remaining on his contract, with an opt-out at the midway point. He might’ve had a chance to beat that in free agency on the back of a 3.14 ERA in a career-high 71 2/3 innings, but it’s far from a sure thing. The 34-year-old doesn’t exactly have age on his side, and this year’s 20.1% strikeout rate and 9.6% walk rate were both a fair bit worse than the league average.
Peralta still throws hard, sitting 95-96 mph with his sinker, and piles up grounders at a near-60% clip, but he’s worked primarily in low- and medium-leverage spot since signing with San Diego. He’ll stay put and once again be a heavily used piece of the Friars’ bullpen picture.
The Padres boast a deep bullpen, headlined by deadline acquisition Mason Miller. Closer Robert Suarez opted out of the remaining two years on his contract earlier today. Assuming they keep Miller in the ’pen — they’ve reportedly at least considered moving him into the rotation — he’ll be supported by Peralta, Adrian Morejon, Jeremiah Estrada and standout rookie David Morgan. The Padres will have a notable decision to make on excellent setup man Jason Adam, who is projected for a $6.8MM salary in arbitration but suffered a ruptured quadriceps tendon in September, which required season-ending surgery.
Nice bounce back season last year. Welcome back Wandy.
Preller doing a fantastic job with players like him
Only so many favors the Pads could get sent their way today. Suarez did one, Peralta did not.
He had a solid season. Dude’s a 5th/6th inning guy with a low 3 ERA. Can’t ask for much more, and his salary’s about right.
@Ron
I think he is a slight overpay, but I agree he is better than my fellow Padre fans (at least the ones I interact with) give him credit for. They remember the blow-ups, never the come-throughs when the team needed a lefty out of the pen.
Same thing with Matsui, although he is even more of an overpay.
Yeah, plus with relievers on a 4 year deal they are going to get hot then cold numerous times, its gonna be an awesome contract some years and terrible the next. LOL
Sad news for Padres fans. But not unexpected. Preller gave him a contract that was far in excess of what he is worth.
He is a garbage time pitcher. A well paid one. Every team needs garbage time pitchers but you can usually get them cheap. He had a good stretch during this last season, but outside of that this dude gets absolutely shelled. If he comes in with runners on, those runners are scoring.
Seems like an OK deal for the Pads for $4.5M for a useful bullpen piece.
He was part of the White Flag mop up crew. Overpaid in that role. Plenty in AAA who can do that. Need his salary plus more to help get starters.
There really aren’t plenty of guys in AAA who can do what he did. Check the 5+ ERA stat lines on Sean Reynolds and Alek Jacob when they were up. The Padres do have some have legit bullpen arms like Bradgley Rodriguez, Francis Pena, etc… on the way but we don’t actually know if these guys are going to pan out yet and they’re mostly right handed.
This is what having true depth in the position group looks like. Peralta throws 71.2 innings of 3.14 ERA ball and everyone dumps on him because there were 6 absolute beasts who ranked higher than him on the depth chart. If the Padres can get another ~70 innings of an ERA in the 3’s from this guy next year for $4.5M, sign me up for that.
He is a mop up guy. 7-8th guy in the pen. Don’t need to pay $4M+ for a mop up guy you can get for league minimum. Only Matsui deal is worse. Three more years. He is the 8th guy, team captain of the White Flag squad. Preller would love for those guys to opt out so he can use their salary to get starting pitching. They are tight on payroll.
50/50. MAs o menos. Come si come sa.
He’s better than Matsui
Peralta seems like a guy who knows that he wouldn’t top this by much even if he was lucky and it’s guaranteed money vs a gamble. Why risk a virtually *guaranteed* $8.9M for an extra few hundred thousand that you might not actually get and where you might even wind up taking a pay cut?