MMO Trade Profile: Trevor Megill, RHP

Position: Relief Pitcher
Bats/Throws: L/R
Age: 28 (December 5, 1993)
2022 Pitching
Traditional: 39G, 45 IP, 4.80 ERA, 1.489 WHIP, 4-3 W/L, 49 K, 17 BB
Advanced: 81 ERA+, 25 K%, 8.7 BB%, 4.91 xERA, 3.29 FIP, 3.52 xFIP, 0.4 fWAR, -0.6 bWAR

Rundown

Were you expecting a different brother of someone who pitched in the combined no-hitter? Tylor Megill‘s brother, Trevor Megill, is an intriguing pitcher in his own right and he might just be the next Clay Holmes.

Now you might be wondering why a team owned by Steve Cohen needs to be looking for relievers in the Island of Misfit Toys, to coin a phrase from Peter Brand. The only relievers the Mets have for 2023 that pitched in 2022 are Drew Smith, Elieser Hernández, Jeff Brigham, and Edwin Díaz. The Mets will probably sign some more guys but in order to rebuild an entire bullpen but they will also need to take some gambles and bet on some arms. Given the Mets need to fill three rotation spots and add a hitter or two, the bullpen’s construction will likely need to get creative.

I do not think getting creative in the bullpen is a bad thing. The Astros bullpen was anchored by Rafael Montero, Ryan Pressly, Ryan Stanek, and Bryan Abreu. Three of these guys were undervalued relievers on other teams. I do not think it is a coincidence the teams that always trot out the best bullpens year after year are teams that identify arms with breakout potential and amass as many of those arms as possible. Relievers can be very volatile so being able to find these inefficiencies gives teams a huge advantage. To think of it another way, the Mets will need to identify their Clay Holmes, Rafael Montero, Seranthony Dominguez, and Robert Suárez.

Trevor Megill could be the Mets version of those guys listed above. For starters, Megill gets insane vertical movement on both his slider and curveball. Among pitchers with 100 pitches thrown, Megill ranks seventh vertical movement for his curveball and second with his slider. Megill is not the spin rate master like Seth Lugo has been but he is in the 85th percentile for his curveball and in the 92nd percentile with his fastball. A fastball that also averages 98 MPH.

Here are a few videos of him making hitters look silly with his pitches:

(Courtesy of Baseball Savant)

What makes his spin more enticing is that there is a lot of unused active spin in his profile. Active spin is essentially how effective a pitcher is at using his spin rate to generate pitch movement. Megill does a good job with his curveball but the active spin on his slider is only 40.5% and his fastball is at 80.7%.

That fastball could be a real weapon if there is some more active spin behind it, especially if it is coming in at 98-100 MPH. The Reds only had four pitchers with a lower active spin on their fastball than Megill did so Eric Jagers would have a fun first project with the Mets.

Package

How much would it take to acquire Megill and the answer is not much. The Twins added Megill on a waiver claim last off-season. If the Mets remain patient, they can probably see if the Twins DFA Megill when they add someone later this off-season. Of course, other teams probably see that the Megill has breakout potential too and will be calling the Twins about Megill too. I think they could get Megill in a similar deal to how they added Brigham and Hernández. It’s tough to predict small deals like this but the Yankees gave up Diego Castillo and Hoy Park for Clay Holmes. Those two had a future value (as graded by FanGraphs) of 40+ and 40 respectively. According to FanGraphs, two names who would match that level of value are Michael Otanez and Dedinel Núñez. I think that would be the higher end of what it would take to get Megill. Both are interesting relief prospects in the minors but Megill showed a more interesting repertoire at the MLB level.

My Opinion

All these numbers are great but as I usually do in my articles where I discuss buy-low options, there is probably a reason he has a career 6.03 ERA and I acknowledge he could very easily be a DFA candidate by July. I will say that I am not advocating for Megill to be their big remaining acquisition for the bullpen either. I just believe they are ready as an organization to turn an interesting arm with good underlying data into a useful Major League Pitcher. As I mentioned above though, the Mets will need to identify arms that have breakout potential in order to become a great bullpen. They have already started that process by adding arms like Elieser Hernández, Jeff Brigham, William Woods, Tyler Saucedo, and Stephen Ridings.