Yankees Interested in Freddy Peralta, Nico Hoerner?

By E.J. Fagan

December 12, 2025

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NOTE: The following comes from EJ Fagan's substack page and is shared with permission.

Please check out EJ's substack page for more great articles.

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It turns out, teams don’t really need to be present at the Winter Meetings to text each other about trades. We have some new rumors to discuss.

Also: Kyle Tucker might be holding up the Cody Bellinger market and Carlos Rodon’s shoulder was in worse shape heading into the playoffs than we knew about.

The Yankees Are Interested in Freddy Peralta

The Brewers are shopping Freddy Peralta. The Yankees are among the many teams who are interested.

I like Peralta. It would be greast if the Yankees traded for him. But I think he’s just a tad bit overrated based on being associated with Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff at the peak of the Brewers pitching staff.

Solid pitcher? Absolutely. I’ll take him over a stuff-first project like MacKenzie Gore or Edward Cabrera any day. But his 2.70 ERA in 2025 masks misrepresents him a bit. He’s been consistently a mid-to-high 3.00s throughout his career, with similar xERAs due to his poor-ish control. The Brewers defense was so good last year that they shaved almost a full run off his ERA.

Peralta would be a huge addition to the Opening Day rotation. He’s been reliably healthy and good with the Brewers. But he’d be at least the 4th best starter on the Yankees behind Cole, Fried and Rodon if everyone is healthy and may not have much of an edge over Schlittler. He’s a poor man’s 2025 Carlos Rodon.

All of that is to say that I wouldn’t trade the farm for one year of Freddy Peralta. Take whatever you would include in a Joe Ryan trade and cut it in half at least. My guess is that the Brewers aren’t eager to trade him but are willing to pull the trigger if someone overpays.

Personally, I’d be more interested in Brandon Woodruff, who was incredible when he came back from injury last year. You don’t see a lot of starters getting a $22 million qualifying offer after two seasons of 60 innings. Here’s a crazy idea: Woodruff for Grisham.

The Cubs are Shopping Nico Hoerner

We don’t have any reporting that the Yankees are interested, but MLBTR speculates that they could be a suitor for Hoerner.

You may not be super familiar with Hoerner. Think of him as a right-handed Steven Kwan who plays second base.

Hoerner solves some problems for the Yankees. He’s a right handed hitter who is a little better against left-handed pitching but the splits are too extreme. He’s one of baseball’s best contact hitters. If you swapped him out for Jazz Chisholm, the roster looks a lot more balanced. He would make a decent leadoff hitter against lefties.

What about Jazz? The Yankees aren’t denying that they would trade him, although they don’t see particularly eager to move him. But you could imagine solving some other need by moving him. Or they could mess with his defense again.

Here’s another crazy idea: what about a 1:1 trade of Jazz for Nico? Both teams could arguably do better with the other player and the money and 2025 WAR are both pretty similar. My guess is that neither team feels like it’s worth messing with the status quo to make such a lateral swap. The Cubs probably would trade Hoerner because they either want pitching or prospects, not some equivalent second baseman. But I could see the Yankees, who are far less tied to Jazz than the Cubs are to Hoerner, trading some young pitching to acquire him and flipping Jazz elsewhere.

So yeah, interesting trade in a vacuum, but I have trouble seeing it happening in practice.