{"id":902397,"date":"2026-11-01T18:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T18:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/902397\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T18:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T18:20:12","slug":"padres-wandy-peralta-exercises-player-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/902397\/","title":{"rendered":"Padres’ Wandy Peralta Exercises Player Option"},"content":{"rendered":"

Padres left-hander Wandy Peralta<\/a> has exercised his $4.45MM player option, according to Jon Heyman of The New York Post<\/a>. He will return as a member of San Diego\u2019s bullpen for 2027.<\/p>\n

This is the third straight offseason in which Peralta has chosen to remain with the Padres. His original four-year deal, signed<\/a> in February 2024, included a $4.25MM player option for 2025 and $4.45MM player options for 2026 and \u201927. Compared to teammate Yuki Matsui<\/a>, who is four years younger and just posted a sub-2.00 ERA (albeit with plenty of good luck), Peralta is more likely to have faced a pay cut if he tested the open market this time around. Instead, he\u2019ll play out the final year of his current deal. Matsui has until 4:00pm CT tomorrow to decide whether to stick around for two years and $13.5MM.<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old Peralta has been a solid reliever since the start of 2020. In 376 innings since then, he\u2019s held opponents to a .669 OPS and a 3.26 earned run average. While Peralta typically posts below-average strikeout numbers, he thrives on a sinker-changeup combination and exceptional ground ball rates. From 2021-25, only 11 pitchers with at least 250 innings had a better ground ball rate than Peralta\u2019s 56.8%.<\/p>\n

This year was a bit of a step back. On the one hand, Peralta pitched a career-high 77 1\/3 innings with a decent 3.61 ERA and a career-best 7.2% walk rate. However, he only struck out 15.6% of opponents and benefited from a high 77.7% strand rate. The lefty\u2019s ground ball rate dropped from 59.7% in 2025 to 45.6% this year. That\u2019s still above average, but it\u2019s far from the elite numbers that Peralta usually posts. Both xERA and SIERA had Peralta at a 4.32 figure, a fair bit higher than his actual ERA.<\/p>\n

Even with the fall-off in ground ball rate, Peralta\u2019s durability and decent bottom-line results make him an underrated member of San Diego\u2019s bullpen. He threw the second-most innings of any Padres reliever behind lefty Adrian Morejon<\/a>, who covered 86 frames. Bradgley Rodriguez<\/a> and star closer Mason Miller<\/a> were behind those two at 70 innings apiece.\u00a0Morejon had an excellent season and is a candidate to receive a qualifying offer, and he could be too pricey to bring back when he ultimately rejects the QO.<\/p>\n

With Morejon and Jason Adam<\/a> departing, that leaves Miller, Rodriguez, and Jeremiah Estrada<\/a> as the club\u2019s top three relief arms. Compared to those three, Peralta is nowhere near as flashy, but he\u2019s nonetheless a valuable innings eater for the middle relief spots. The Padres are primarily focusing on rebuilding their rotation since Michael King<\/a>, Nick Pivetta<\/a>, Walker Buehler<\/a>, Robbie Ray<\/a>, and Casey Mize<\/a> are all free agents. In that context, Peralta sticking around on an affordable salary gives the bullpen some continuity and leaves more payroll space to address the rotation.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Denis Poroy, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Padres left-hander Wandy Peralta has exercised his $4.45MM player option, according to Jon Heyman of The New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99,216703],"class_list":["post-902397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-wandy-peralta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}