Mets' Freddy Peralta nightmare season continues, lit up early in loss to Blue Jays

Abbey Mastracco, New York Daily News on Jul 1, 2026

Published in Baseball

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TORONTO — New York Mets fans often like to joke that it’s the Mets against the world, but the team couldn’t even take on Canada this week.

A 9-3 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on Canada Day had our neighbors to the north feeling especially patriotic. The reigning American League champs took the series 2-1, with a Long Island-raised rookie hitting the key home run — his first in the big leagues — off Freddy Peralta in the third.

“I’m not gonna lie, I don’t feel good,” Peralta said. “I’m just trying to come back and maybe move on.”

The season hasn’t been very much fun for Freddy, who described these last few months as the roughest stretch of his career.

“I do my best every day; I prepare to have success,” Peralta said. “But sometimes, you know, it’s crazy the way that I can’t describe it right now.”

While the team is adamant that they haven’t lost hope of making a run to jump back into the playoff standings, they remain in last place in the division with a 36-51 record. They’re 15 games under .500, and 10.5 games out of the wild-card standings.

There were good things the Mets did, like throwing out two runners trying to turn singles into doubles in Toronto’s four-run seventh inning and late-game homers by Carson Benge and Francisco Lindor, but as it’s gone for most of the season, there was more bad than good.

The good for Peralta: He touched 99 MPH a few times with his fastball.

The bad: The Blue Jays took five runs off of him, all earned, on seven hits over only four innings. He walked three hitters and struck out four.

“I thought Freddie had velo, everything looked good at the top of the zone, but after some seeing singles, just really struggled with the ball at the top,” said interim manager Andy Green. “He stayed out there, he competed, he came back out for the fourth inning and he threw the ball well. For him, that’s always been the case — top of the strike zone, he wins, he owns it. It’s just getting back there.”

Peralta was visibly frustrated throughout his outing. The frustration had yet to subside after the game.

Peralta has looked like anything but an ace this season, his first with the Mets since being traded from the Milwaukee Brewers in January. He’s 5-7 with a 4.81 ERA over 18 starts, his arm slot has crept lower and lower, he’s made it through seven innings only once this season and his strikeout rate is down.

The worst part is that he can’t figure out why. His mechanics are where he wants them, and he’s healthy, which makes it all the more maddening.

“All of my pitches, they’re really good in shape, and the velocity in the past was really good too,” he said. “You move forward.”

The Blue Jays (41-46) sent seven hitters to the plate in the first inning, scoring one run. It could have been worse, but Peralta mitigated the damage by dialing up a 99 MPH fastball to Ernie Clement for the third out, leaving the bases loaded. He pitched around a two-out single in the second, but couldn’t limit any damage in the third.

Down 2-0 with two out and two on, rookie DH Sean Keys, a Huntington native, teed off for his first career homer, putting the Blue Jays up 5-0.

The Mets managed only five hits off three different pitchers. One was a two-run homer by Benge in the top of the eighth, and another was a solo homer by Lindor in the top of the ninth, and both came off left-hander Patrick Corbin.

“It wasn’t our best run of at-bats today,” Green said. “Had a lot of empty at-bats, a lot of non-competitive at-bats. Thought we took some really good left on left at-bats, guys that haven’t seen a lot of left on left at-bats … So I thought, ironically, like some of our best at-bats today were probably our worst matchups. It’s great to see Lindor step up right-handed and find his rhythm and put a really good swing on the ball, but for us it wasn’t the most productive offensive game.”

They now find themselves with the unenviable task of going into Atlanta for a four-game series against the best team in the NL East over the July 4 weekend.

Speaking on a podcast earlier in the day, owner Steve Cohen said president of baseball operations David Stearns would keep his job through the 2028 season when his contract expires. He wants some continuity with the front office. But continuity only works if the decision-making is sound. Peralta was a decision made by Stearns, one of many that haven’t worked out this season.

Stearns knows Peralta better than most, having worked with him in Milwaukee, so once again, it brings up questions about his scouting and projections. Those are questions for a later date when the club can do a full post-mortem to learn from this year’s mistakes, something Cohen said they need to do.

For now, the Mets have to shift their focus to the Braves. The mindset going into Atlanta?

“Go win baseball games,” Green said.

Easier said than done.

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