Last offseason, the Cardinals traded Sonny Gray, creating a hole in their rotation. Through trades, the Cardinals added pitching depth, but the Cardinals clearly wanted them to be pitching depth and not Plan A. So they signed Dustin May to take Gray’s spot. Dustin May didn’t really become an ace, but it was wildly successful in the only way that mattered: he netted two great outfield prospects and from a rival to boot.
(Yes, I know the Brewers won the World Series so it’s not like Brewers fans are ever going to regret this, but you better believe I will be annoying as hell if Josiah Ragsdale or Alex Frias become a star, because May was legitimately awful and 8 excellent playoff innings from Romero probably is not worth a star – mostly because they dominated the playoffs so much that there’s no way Romero was the difference maker. I’m already warning you I’ll be annoying about this, might as well start now!)
The Cardinals might be tempted to duplicate that plan. They are returning every member of the rotation from last season, at least as of now, however they might trade either Andre Pallante or Matthew Liberatore. Or Liberatore will be moved to the bullpen. Or maybe they want to go into spring training with Liberatore as the contingency plan, which by the usual Cardinals’ methods, would require an outside addition. Yes, maybe Cooper Hjerpe can be slotted in, but the very likely innings restriction is certainly going to complicate things. I doubt they enter Opening Day ready to put Jurrangelo Cjintje on the MLB roster either. Maybe Richard Fitts, but he missed most of last year and only threw 75 innings in 2025. It would hardly be surprising if they felt like they needed another starter.
The Cardinals could of course re-sign Dustin May, but May probably has different goals on his next contract than he did last offseason. Last offseason, he was coming off a not very good year following multiple injury-filled seasons. He needed to prove he could be good and healthy to set himself for a bigger contract later. Well he did that. With his injury history and being 29, I feel like someone will give him a multi-year deal and I think it would require a level of faith in himself some might call unwise to not go to the highest bidder. Maybe he thinks he has another gear and can get a better contract at 30, but I would imagine he’d be disappointed at a one-year deal.
No a true Dustin May parallel is coming off a bad year. The kind of year where a one-year deal is the best you can do, or some underwhelming two-year deal. He is probably too good to qualify, but Freddy Peralta might fit the bill. He did make all 32 of his starts, but he had his lowest K% of his career, he had his highest ERA since 2019, and his highest FIP and xFIP of his career. He unquestionably had a down season.
You might be thinking: but he was great in the playoffs and that might change things? Analytically, he was actually not very good with the Rays, either after the deadline or in the playoffs. The Rays were very lucky because Peralta wasn’t actually a better pitcher with them, but he got better results. Mainly in the form of home run luck, a talent he hasn’t actually shown in his career. He also struck out less with the Rays. It was even worse in the playoffs: he struck out just 17.6%, walked over 10%, almost nothing was on the ground, and…. somehow that became a 2.62 ERA. It was a 5.62 xFIP.
In the modern age, teams are not fooled by ERA, so I would be surprised if the playoffs had a positive effect on his free agency or his time with the Rays in general. Taken has a whole, he had the kind of season that significantly lowers your free agency prospects. That doesn’t mean he’s destined to get a one-year deal, but he’s merely a candidate for it.
Of course, everything I just said is also a reason to not sign him. The logic for why May’s stats might get better was a lot stronger. May had missed the 2024 season and barely pitched in the three seasons prior, so naturally when he was healthy enough to throw a full season, he was rusty. Naturally, May’s stats were even worse after he was traded because he was tired. He wasn’t used to throwing that many innings. Now that he had a season to work the kinks out, his true talent can shine through in the season after he returns from injury.
With Peralta however…. he might have just permanently declined? It would hardly be the most shocking thing if a 30-year-old got worse and then never actually returned to his former glory. In fact that’s a story that’s been told many times in baseball. Maybe it being his walk year, he fought through some injury stuff that affected his stats and he’s destined to miss significant time in the future.
I know he made some adjustments with the Rays and changed his pitch mix, but I’m actually a little worried his underlying stuff didn’t actually get any better. Some of the results could just be that the Mets are awful defensively and the Rays are very good defensively. By fielding runs, it doesn’t appear to be a huge difference, but when you see the breakdown of how the Rays are +11 in fielding runs by Statcast and the Mets -3, then it looks a little more stark. The Mets catchers are really driving up their fielding run values because infielders and outfielders had -17 range. The Rays had +10 range.
Good news of course: the Cardinals should have a good defense. And I hear it’s hard to hit homers at Busch Stadium. He may very well have a similar advantage with the Cardinals.
Another aspect of Peralta that probably shouldn’t be overlooked is…. I don’t think he has as much upside as you would think. He kind of has this perception, or had anyway, of being ace-adjacent, but that’s never really been backed up by the numbers. He had a 4 fWAR season and a 3.6 fWAR season and they are separated by four seasons. One of those seasons was 2025, so it’s not ancient history. But also his third best season is 2.2 fWAR.
At 31, what is the probability that he reaches his former glory? Former glory that isn’t really ace level. (Again, his 2025 came with an 85.5 left-on base% which is just absurdly high for a starting pitcher – 80% is the absolute upper limit for true talent and Peralta’s career is 74.8% – which is high too to be fair!). I want to talk myself into Peralta, but coming off the season he just had, I think I’ll need the Cardinals to actually sign him to talk myself into it.
Because that’s the thing. Maybe there’s something the Cardinals see. We don’t have any behind-the-scenes info. The Cardinals have more information than me on what Peralta needs to change, how likely he is to change it at this point in his career, maybe how healthy he appears to be, a lot of things. All I have is his down season, moving to a smart organization that enacted changes and it did not result in a fundamentally better pitcher, and I just need a reason to think this wasn’t the beginning of a decline and not a temporary setback that can be fixed.
I may have just wasted everyone’s time however, because here I wrote a whole thing premised on him getting a one-year deal so then I went to Google to see what estimates were for his contract and AVOID AVOID AVOID if any of these are even in the vicinity of being accurate. Jim Bowden said 5 years, $140 million. Hell no. An NYT article said 5 years, $125 million is reasonable. Any team who signs him for over $100 million is insane. I’m very skeptical about these estimates, but it at least tells me that one year is simply not realistic.
Book Corner
I’m currently in the middle of a short, quick book and a much longer book that I’ll reveal later. I was hoping to finish the quick book by now, but Halloween weekend made things difficult. Between work and a party on Friday, a terrible hangover on Saturday plus a block party, and then watching You Can See Everything followed by a family get together, I simply did not have much time to read. So you’ll get my reaction to the short book Thursday.
Quick aside: do not watch You Can See Everything before a social event. I went to see it at 11 am yesterday. I drove straight from the movie theater to my parents’ house. My cousin was in town for the weekend. I ate lunch, found out nobody else had seen it yet, sat on the couch to “watch football”, and inadvertently scrolled my phone for reactions to the movie for the next two hours and barely interacted with anyone. Maybe you go to a social gathering where people have actually seen it. I bet that would result in something different.
In the meantime, I have been meaning to ask a difficult question. I have two books by the same author and no real way to know which to prioritize. Keeping in mind there’s a good chance that the loser of this question won’t be read this year, pick the better book by Cormac McCarthy: The Road or Blood Meridian. I haven’t read a book by him so if that somehow matters to your answer, let me know why. These titles are helpfully not very descriptive towards telling me what the book is about, so as best you can, don’t reveal too much about them in why I should read one or the other first. That’s all I have for you in book corner today.