ARLINGTON, Texas — When he pitched in all five games of the ALDS in a span of eight days last October, Wandy Peralta was lauded by his catcher for having “brass balls.”

Turns out he’s pretty good at busting them, too.

Peralta, besides being one of the Yankees’ most valuable relievers, is one of the most beloved players in their clubhouse. The 31-year-old lefty is a bona fide character, capable of making even his most stoic teammates crack a smile with his daily antics, whether or not they actually know what he is saying.

“He speaks fluent gibberish,” Gerrit Cole said.

“He’s a freaking clown,” Luis Severino said, mostly endearingly.

“If you’re ever having to wonder where Wandy is, it’s probably like, ‘Is Wandy alright?’” Clay Holmes added.

In the grind of a 162-game season, it is invaluable to have someone such as Peralta along for the ride to keep things loose — especially because he knows how to flip the switch when it’s time to take the mound, where he has been a bulldog for the Yankees since coming over from the Giants in an unheralded trade for Mike Tauchman in April 2021.

When he arrived in the Yankees clubhouse after the trade, Peralta was reserved as he got to know his new teammates and understand their personalities. But Cole had gotten a heads-up from his brother-in-law, Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford, that he would love Peralta. So shortly after Peralta became a Yankee, Cole went to the reliever with an important message.

“He told me, ‘Hey, Crawford told me you’re a pretty funny guy. You’re loose and you have a big personality. Keep it going here,’” Peralta said this week through an interpreter. “So I feel like that gave me a push in the right direction to let my personality [show] and get comfortable in the clubhouse.”

The rest is history.

“He’s one of a kind,” Cole said. “He’s just always ready to play, always ready to hype the boys up. He’s just good energy.”

But what is it about Peralta that makes him so funny?

“He’s just always making fun of other people,” Cole said. “He’s like zero to 100. He’s really calm, and then if you chirp him or you make a joke about him, he just goes berserk and it’s hilarious.”

Peralta, who is comfortable in his own skin, can take the jokes as much as he dishes them out.

Last July, the Yankees had a series at Progressive Field in Cleveland, and Peralta’s back stiffened up on him after a long flight into town. But he wanted to be ready to pitch, so Peralta loaded up his back with Red Hot — maybe a little too much, especially on a warm day.

Soon enough, Peralta’s back got too hot, so he went into the bathroom to try to wipe it off. Fellow reliever Albert Abreu joined to help him while the rest of the bullpen cracked up.

But that wasn’t all. Bullpen coach Mike Harkey told Peralta to take a few coffee pods, open them up and rub the coffee grinds on his back to neutralize the heat.

“And he actually did it,” Harkey said as he broke into laughter, “and it didn’t work. He had to go in the training room, and the trainers were like, ‘Where did all this coffee come from?’”

The scene is still talked about regularly within the Yankees clubhouse.

“But he’s such a sweet man,” Harkey said. “Guys mess with him out of love because I guarantee he’s one of the most-loved guys in there. … I’ve had a lot of guys in the bullpen, but as far as a true, genuine, what-you-see-is-what-you-get, that’s the guy.”

The banter between Peralta and Harkey rarely stops. While Peralta was discussing his joking ways with The Post, in Spanish via a team interpreter on Wednesday inside the visiting clubhouse at Target Field, he spotted Harkey across the room.

“Watch, watch, watch,” Peralta said in English.

Harkey locked eyes with Peralta and playfully deadpanned, “He does not need an interpreter. He speaks perfect English. That is such a cop-out.”

Funny, because Peralta was just talking about how he is able to connect with both his Spanish-speaking and English-speaking teammates.

“I think that’s also part of the fun of it all,” Peralta said. “Some of these guys don’t understand what I’m saying, but they’re trying and they’re laughing because they see the gestures and the other people laughing. Then, all of a sudden, even though they might not understand what I’m saying, they still understand that something funny’s happening, and it’s contagious.”

His teammates can confirm.

“He has such a good way about him, of speaking Spanish to you,” Anthony Rizzo said. “I have no idea what he’s saying, but I feel like I do.”

“Whether you’re Spanish[-speaking], English[-speaking] or whatever, whatever he’s saying is funny,” Ron Marinaccio said. “When he’s speaking in Spanish, those guys are cracking up. He’s speaking as much English as he can and he has us rolling, too.”

Over time, Peralta’s English-speaking teammates have begun to catch on to some of the Spanish words he likes to use the most, or “Wandyisms,” as Holmes described them. If a reliever hasn’t pitched in a day or two, Peralta will give him a hard time and call him a thief. Or if a couple teammates join together to mess with him, Peralta will call them suckups — in his own words.

“His ability to communicate with the Spanish-speaking and English-speaking guys and still keep his same personality is what makes him special,” Holmes said. “You talk to some of the guys that speak Spanish and it’s like, this is the funniest guy ever. But English[-speaking] guys, we say the same thing. … I think it’s why everybody loves him.”

Peralta, who said his big personality comes naturally, has a caring side, too. Sometimes it’s as simple as him handing everybody a water when he arrives in the bullpen. But he is also perceptive, and can use his humor to lift his teammates up.

“One of the things I do is if I look around and I see someone that’s low-energy that day or whatever, maybe that’s the guy I come by and play with him a little bit, get him laughing,” Peralta said. “Maybe that helps as a boost to get the day going.”

It usually works.

“Everything he says makes everybody laugh,” Severino said. “He just comes out of nowhere with random stuff. You have to laugh. The guy is a prankster. It’s not even a prank, it’s the way he talks. … Every time he says something, it’s something out of the blue. Nobody’s expecting that.”

Well, by now, they have come to expect something funny that lightens the mood, at the very least.

“He’s a great teammate,” Severino said. “Sometimes even when you’re mad, you can’t help but laugh.”

Nick Ramirez was in Worcester, Mass., on Monday night with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre when he got the call around midnight that he was being promoted to the Yankees.

The next morning, the lefty reliever got a car service at 5:30 a.m. to the airport, only for his 8:10 a.m. flight to be canceled.

“Panic,” Ramirez said when asked what was going through his mind. “I knew I was going to get here [to Minneapolis]; we had plenty of time. My main concern was my baseball bag was under [the plane], so I asked them if they could pull it and they said, ‘Yeah, we put the [request] in, but no guarantees.’

“So that made me feel good,” he quipped.

Ramirez did make it to Target Field in time for Tuesday’s game, and he threw two scoreless innings in his first MLB action since 2021. Then, after Wednesday’s game, he got treated to the major league lifestyle, flying on the Yankees’ chartered plane — via Delta, the same airline that made no promises about his bag — to Texas for their next series.

If you’re looking for a Yankees book to dive into, get your hands on Jack Curry’s “The 1998 Yankees: The Inside Story of the Greatest Baseball Team Ever.”

The book, which comes out on May 2, offers a fascinating look at how one of the most dominant teams in the history of the sport came to be.

With a few flights on the Yankees’ road trip this week, I’ve been able to make my way quickly through the book, which is filled with interesting details and new interviews with all the key pieces of that team.

One thing that struck me, in a somewhat tangential relation to this year’s team, was how overlooked the trade for Scott Brosius was at the time — he was the player to be named later from the A’s in exchange for Kenny Rogers and $5 million. Brian Cashman told Curry in the book that Brosius “was a gift from above.”

This year’s Yankees could sure use a seemingly small trade or signing to work out like that, especially as they wait for their long list of injured players to return. There has been an opportunity for the likes of Franchy Cordero, Willie Calhoun, Ian Hamilton (who does own a 1.84 ERA out of the bullpen) or Colten Brewer, but so far, nobody has taken advantage quite like Brosius did in 1998.