Trading for Wandy Peralta was one of Brian Cashman's best moves
Wandy Peralta of the New York Yankees pitches during the eighth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Yankee Stadium on Monday, Aug. 15, 2022. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman has made so many memorable trades over the years, it’s easy to pick out the best and worst ones.
How’s this for an under-the-radar top 10 Cashman trade? On April 27, 2021, the Yankees acquired lefthander Wandy Peralta from the San Francisco Giants for outfielder Mike Tauchman.
Cashman thought he was getting a useful bullpen arm. Nowhere in his wildest dreams did he think he’d be getting a stalwart reliever who would pitch in each of the first four games of this year’s AL Division Series against Cleveland (Monday night’s Game 5 was postponed until Tuesday afternoon because of rain).
It was Peralta who saved a 4-2 victory in Game 4 with the Yankees’ season on the line.
He not only pitched the ninth inning Sunday in Cleveland but got three outs on only seven pitches. That allowed manager Aaron Boone to contemplate using him for a fourth straight day on Monday, although the rain made that unnecessary.
“We’re [in] a wait-and-see [mode],” Boone said after Game 4. “Hopefully it helped that, I think, he threw in the single-digits pitch-wise. Maybe that will help. I’ll have Nestor [Cortes] available in kind of that role, too. And we’ll just see how [Peralta] wakes up, see what we’re looking at when we get to the ballpark.”
Peralta told reporters on Sunday night that he planned to be available on Monday. Now he’ll have an extra day of rest.
That he is having success and pitching so often in his first postseason is surprising only in that he didn’t get into a regular-season game after Sept. 18 because of a sore back.
Peralta rehabbed the back and participated in the Yankees’ minicamp in Somerset, New Jersey, as the regular season came to an end. It probably helped that the Yankees had five days off before they started the playoffs.
All that time off could have led to Peralta being rusty. Could have, but didn’t.
In the first four ALDS games, he threw five innings and allowed two runs. Clarke Schmidt was on the mound when the two runners he inherited from Peralta scored during the Guardians’ three-run rally in the Yankees’ 6-5 loss in Game 3.
Boone said he thought Peralta was out of gas when he took him out in the ninth in Game 3. Peralta had thrown 27 pitches after throwing 15 the day before.
But Boone didn’t hesitate to bring the 31-year-old back out for the ninth in Game 4 after Clay Holmes threw a scoreless eighth.
“He was great,” Boone said of Peralta. “I mean, so efficient, too. I was only going to go three hitters there with Wandy and didn’t really want to get [Jonathan Loaisiga] in the game. So for him to just come in, just execute right from jump street, was huge.”
And Tauchman? He hit just .178 for the Giants in 2021 before getting released. Tauchman spent this season with the Hanwha Eagles of the Korea Baseball Organization.
In 2021, Peralta went 3-3 with a 2.95 ERA and three saves in 46 games for the Yankees. This regular season was more of the same: 3-4, 2.72 ERA and four saves in 56 appearances.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
