Bullpens are typically very volatile from year to year, so getting a reliever who can show consistently good performances across multiple seasons are very valuable. Unfortunately for the Cubs, they have not been able to find any such players recently.
They’ve had good seasons from Adbert Alzolay, Porter Hodge, Daniel Palencia, Brad Keller and this year with Ryan Rolison. But then either injuries, ineffectiveness or free agency have not led to more than one season of really good numbers.
One guy who has been consistently good for four straight seasons is Trevor Megill of the Milwaukee Brewers, posting ERAs of 3.63, 2.72, 2.49 and 2.63 over that span. And he was once a Chicago Cub.
The 6’8″ right-hander was drafted by the Padres in the 7th round of the 2015 draft out of Loyola Marymount. He was initially drafted by the Cardinals in 2014 in the 3rd round, but did not sign. He gradually moved up in the Padres organization, dominating AA in 2019 and making it to AAA when he was 25 years old. He had a mediocre season in AAA, posting a 4.47 ERA and 1.49 WHIP in 32 games.
But the Cubs saw potential in Megill, and made him the 9th pick in the 2019 Rule 5 draft.
He did not make the team out of Spring Training in 2020, so by rule, he had to be returned to the Padres. However, the Cubs were high enough on him to re-acquire him from San Diego. This allowed them to send him to their alternate site during the Covid season of 2020.
After an unimpressive stint in the Mexican Winter League, Megill started 2021 in Iowa, where he had a 5.14 ERA and 1.43 WHIP in 12 games. But Jason Adam was having a rough start to the season, with a 5.91 ERA, so the Cubs decided to replace him with Megill in April.
Of course, Adam resurrected his career in 2022 with the Rays, and has not had an ERA over 2.98 any season since, including 4 sub-2.00 seasons (1.56, 2.98, 1.95, 1.01, 1.93 and 2.62). But how the Cubs gave up on Adam is not the point of this post – I was writing about Trevor Megill.
Megill — on the surface — had a very bad 2021. He suffered a forearm strain right after his major league debut (where he pitched two scoreless innings), and was on the IL until June.
He had an 8.37 ERA and 1.86 WHIP, both terrible numbers. He allowed 36 hits and 8 walks over only 23.2 innings, The only real positive was that he had 30 strikeouts, and a good strikeout to walk ratio. He also turned 28 during the season, making him a fairly old “project”.
Ultimately, the Cubs decided to put him on waivers after 2021 in order to open up a 40-man roster spot. But the Minnesota Twins swooped in to claim him. Here are some articles about the move:
Bleed Cubbie Blue
Bleacher Nation
Twins Daily
Generally, it seemed like the Cubs may not have wanted to completely lose Megill, and thought they might be able to sneak him through waivers. But the Twins decided to take a chance on him.
The Cubs have done this a few times, including last offseason, when they grabbed Ryan Rolison, who had been waived by the Rockies. But few have had as much success as we’ve seen from Megill.
And it was not an immediate turnaround when he left the Cubs. Megill split his time between AAA and the majors in 2022, wth a 3.00 ERA in St. Paul and a 4.80 ERA with the big league club. His 50 hits allowed in 45 innings and 1.55 WHIP were still a concern. But he was still striking lots of hitters out, with 49 K’s in those 45 innings.
2023 saw him back in AAA, where his control abandoned him. He gave up 9 hits and 13 walks in only 9.2 innings, and the Twins gave up on him, shipping him to the Brewers for cash considerations.
He started with the Brewers AAA team in 2023, and was called up in May. He got optioned and then called back up 3 more times during the season. He was not great for the Brewers, allowing 35 hits and 12 walks in 34.2 innings. But he was still striking people out, with 52 K’s in the majors that season.
And when Devin Williams was injured at the start of 2024, Megill took on the closer role, and flourished. His hits allowed per inning dropped, while his walks did not increase, bringing his WHIP down from 1.36 in 2023 to 1.01 in 2024.
With Williams being traded after 2024, Megill moved into the full-time closer role, and has had two excellent seasons since.
The biggest change that I can see in his underlying numbers since moving to the Brewers is that his secondary pitch, the knuckle-curve has been impossible to hit. The four-seam fastball has gotten more effective as well, but not nearly as much as his curve. And he has abandoned the slider and sinker, which he briefly used as third pitches.
| Season | OPS vs 4-seam | OPS vs curve |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 – CHC | 1.050 | 0.900 |
| 2022 – MIN | 0.768 | 0.858 |
| 2023 – MIL | 0.752 | 0.596 |
| 2024 – MIL | 0.545 | 0.495 |
| 2025 – MIL | 0.739 | 0.342 |
| 2026 – MIL | 0.526 | 0.352 |
His did see a fairly large increase in fastball velocity after leaving the Cubs. He averaged around 96.4 MPH in 2021, and was up to 98.1, then 99.2, down slightly to 98.8, and back to 99.2 before coming down to 98.0 this year.
The fact that the Cubs were not able to unlock the higher fastball velocity while he was with them might be one of the reasons they brought in Tyler Zombro, who showed success in working with Brad Keller to improve his velocity.
So what is the lesson here? Well, one lesson is that sometimes players will not reach their peak until they have changed teams, and the teams they were with previously will regret letting them go. With roster size restrictions and the Rule 5 draft, tough decisions need to be made about who the keep and who to give up, and sometimes they will be wrong.
I’ve sometime wondered why the Cubs have been so keen to keep Gavin Hollowell around, despite never really breaking though in the majors, and one reason might be that he’s a tall, hard-throwing right hander who could still potentially be unlocked and become a solid MLB reliever.
On the flipside, Luke Little, a lefty with a fastball that reached the upper 90s in 2024 saw his career with the Cubs flame out in 2026, as a trip to AA could not straighten out his control issues. He was finally waived, and claimed by the Royals, where he had a 16.88 ERA in 13 games with their AAA affiliate.
I’m sure there are lots of Cubs fans out there like me, who are jealous of these bullpens with multiple guys throwing 98 mph+. And most of these pitchers did not join their teams as heralded free agents, but rather were developed by those teams.
So this does not seem like an easy fix, but rather an issue that may take years to improve. Which will require that the Cubs front office must again piece together a workable bullpen – instead of having a trusted set of weapons that can be deployed to shut down other teams.
And we’ll look at Trevor Megill closing out a playoff game for the Brewers and wonder what might have been.
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