MLB Insiders Link Brewers Ace To Cardinals In Adventurous Trade Buzz

No one would be shocked if the St. Louis Cardinals Cardinals acted as buyers before the Major League Baseball trade deadline.

St. Louis is a franchise preparing for the future, but they can’t stop winning in the present.

The Cardinals might take a gander at what sort of starting pitching is available come July, in case they want to lean in a little further to a playoff push.

According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan and Kiley McDaniel, one starting pitcher drawing significant interest is Milwaukee Brewers’ right-hander Freddy Peralta.

Passan and McDaniel estimated that Peralta has a 20 percent chance of getting traded and listed a handful of best fits, including the Cardinals.

"Peralta has been a steady presence for years, averaging 140 innings pitched with a 3.49 ERA over the past four seasons," Passan and McDaniel wrote.

"He's on track to do that again, with his heavily used fastball coming in at a career-high average velo of 94.9 mph this season. He has an ultra-cheap $8 million option for 2026. Best fits: Boston (Red Sox), Houston (Astros), Toronto (Blue Jays), St. Louis, Arizona (Diamondbacks), San Diego (Padres), Baltimore (Orioles).”

Frankly, it's surprising that the Cardinals were listed among Peralta's potential landing spots.

Peralta's chances of being traded are already low at 20 percent, but you’d have to divide that figure by at least four to speculate on the likelihood that the Brewers would hand Peralta over to a division rival.

Keep in mind that, entering Friday, the Brewers and Cardinals were separated by just 1.5 games in the National League Central race. Unless that gap widens substantially over the next couple of weeks (in the Cardinals' favor), a Peralta-to-St. Louis trade is pretty much pure fantasy.

Even if the Cards did zoom ahead of Milwaukee before July 31, the Brewers might refuse to send Peralta to St. Louis out of pure spite.

There's always the possibility of an impossible-to-refuse offer. That would look like the Cardinals offering at least two of their top-five prospects to Milwaukee, plus more.

But with St. Louis mostly focused on building for the future, such an offer would undermine their entire blueprint, and it doesn’t seem like they are Freddy Peralta away from winning the 2025 World Series.