Padres still lucky Brewers were wise enough to avoid Freddy Peralta doomsday scenario

The San Diego Padres don’t need to be told how the NL West works. You can be good, even great, and still spend six months getting your teeth kicked in by the sheer gravity of what Los Angeles can stack on a roster.

That’s why Padres fans should be sending the Milwaukee Brewers a thank-you card for doing the most basic thing a contending organization can do: sending Freddy Peralta to the Mets and not handing him to the Dodgers.

If Milwaukee had actually shipped Peralta to L.A., it wouldn’t have been a normal trade. It would’ve been a doomsday scenario for the entire division, and especially for a Padres team already living in the “every series matters” lane. The Dodgers don’t just acquire players. They weaponize them and turn good ideas into inevitabilities.

And Peralta in that environment would’ve been exactly that.

Padres fans should feel relieved the Brewers didn’t commit Peralta malpractice

This isn’t about whether the Padres were “in” on him, or whether the Brewers were truly motivated to move him. This is about the simple math of pain: a high-end starter with swing-and-miss stuff landing with the one team that already has enough margin for error to treat October like a formality. 

And for the Padres specifically, it would’ve been especially brutal because San Diego’s entire path is built on competing in a division that already demands perfection. The Padres can’t afford extra “scheduled losses.” They need space to let their own roster bets breathe.

Milwaukee not doing it matters because it confirms something that shouldn’t be rare, but somehow is: some teams still understand the concept of competitive boundaries. If you’re going to trade a premium pitcher, fine. Do it for value. Do it for prospects. But sending him to the Dodgers is the kind of self-inflicted wound that echoes for years. 

Padres fans should feel lucky. Not because the Brewers “helped” the Padres, but because the Brewers avoided the kind of historic malpractice that would’ve made the entire NL West worse overnight.

The Dodgers will keep dodgering. That’s what they do. But this time, at least, the Brewers were wise enough not to hand them the match.