When the Tampa Bay Rays acquired Freddy Peralta at the trade deadline, they must have been expecting that he would provide pitching depth at the very least. Peralta had been in the middle of a tough 2026 campaign with the New York Mets, which made him a bit of a reclamation project. But the Rays are well-known for helping pitchers be their best selves, and Peralta was certainly dealing from the mound on Tuesday in Game 2 of the ALCS against the Cleveland Guardians.

Peralta threw six innings of shutout baseball, allowing just four hits and two walks while striking out six. In the postseason, this is no mean feat. Every inning matters, and the Rays took control of the game thanks in large part to the 30-year-old's excellent outing.

After the Rays sealed a 3-1 victory to even up the series, manager Kevin Cash had nothing but praise for Peralta as he rose to the occasion and helped the team even up the series to avoid going on the road down 2-0.

“He's been pretty confident, and a lot of reason why, given the month that he put together in September and the previous start against the Yankees. I think the velocity really stood out today. I don't know for a fact, but it felt like that might have been his highest velocity we've seen,” Cash said in his postgame presser, via Ryan Bass of MLB TV. “When you have that arsenal, there's no reason not to be confident.”

Peralta did hit 99 mph on the radar gun with his four-seam fastball, and for a man who averaged around 94.4 mph on his fastball in the regular season, there's no surprise that he quieted the Guardians' bats.

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He did get out of a few jams as well; in the second and fifth innings, the Guardians put two runners on base with two outs. But Peralta rebounded on both occasions and got the third out.

There's no better time for the 30-year-old to be at his best, and the Rays will need him to put together more of this moving forward in the ALCS.