Left-hander Luis Peralta went unclaimed on waivers after being designated for assignment by the Cubs and has been assigned outright to Triple-A Iowa, per the MLB.com transaction log. He hasn’t been outrighted previously in his career and doesn’t have three years of major league service, so he doesn’t have the option to reject the assignment in favor of free agency.
The 25-year-old Peralta has appeared in 37 big league games, all coming with the Rockies from 2024-25. The southpaw allowed only one run with a 14-to-5 K/BB ratio in 12 1/3 innings during his debut campaign in ’24 (0.73 ERA) but was shelled for 20 runs on 26 hits and 18 walks with 16 strikeouts across 19 innings in ’25. Overall, he’s posted a 6.03 ERA with a 20% strikeout rate and a 15.3% walk rate in 31 1/3 MLB frames.
Peralta bounced from the Rockies to the Cardinals to the Cubs in a sequence of DFAs early this season. He’s had a brutal go of it in Triple-A this year, combining for 22 2/3 innings with an 8.74 ERA. Peralta has punched out 30% of his opponents but also issued walks at a disastrous 24.8% clip. He’s always missed bats at a high level and has never shown particularly good command, but this year’s strike-throwing issues have snowballed to a whole new level.
Peralta will now head back to the Cubs’ Triple-A affiliate in Des Moines and try to get his command back on track. He was thought of highly enough to be scooped up off waivers twice early in the year, but teams took a pass this time around after seeing him walk 16 of 72 opponents (22.2%) in Iowa.
