Alexander: Trevor and Tylor Megill getting big-league educations

Thanks for Reading! Don't miss this deal


Get Standard Digital access to enjoy this article and more

Trevor and Tylor Megill were about a week removed from maybe facing each other in a major league game, or even being on the same field and being able to wave to each other. The timing just didn’t quite work out.

The Mets and Cubs played in New York from June 14-17. Trevor, a Cubs rookie relief pitcher, was recalled right before that series and optioned to Triple-A midway through, one of five times the former Marina High pitcher bounced between the majors and minors before coming up to (presumably) stay in mid-August. Tylor, a Mets rookie starting pitcher who played briefly at Los Alamitos High, was called up on June 23, right after the teams met the final time this season.

But don’t worry. They keep in touch a few times a week, and Tylor – at 26 the younger brother by 19 months and 23 days – confirmed in a phone conversation that they do compare notes.

“I wouldn’t say like insider information, but stuff that we see with our own eyes,” he said. “Just anything that can give me an edge over certain players, certain hitters, I’m going to take into consideration and be able to use when I go out there and throw, and vice versa for him. And then just in general, things we see with each other and what we can do better.”

Better to call them older/younger brothers than big/little. Trevor is 6-foot-8 and 250 pounds, and Tylor is 6-7, 230. As you might expect, they can strike opponents out in bunches.

The teamwork here goes back a while. Trevor left Marina High early to enroll at Loyola Marymount, pitching three seasons for the Lions – interrupted by Tommy John surgery after his sophomore year – before he signed with the San Diego Padres in 2015 as a seventh-round draft pick. Tylor followed Trevor to LMU in 2015, but after a season (and after his brother turned pro) he transferred to Cypress College, where he was 11-3 in 16 starts in 2016. From there he signed with the University of Arizona, where he pitched mostly in relief but drew enough attention to go to the Mets in the eighth round in 2018.

In fact, Lenny Strelitz – a former scout and before that a pitcher good enough to get to Triple-A, and now the Megills’ agent for Wasserman Baseball – recalled that he first paid attention to Trevor and “didn’t know Tylor existed until we started playing catch.”

“Tylor showed up the first day to be the catcher,” Strelitz said. “I watched him throw and I was like, why don’t you pitch?’ (He says) ‘I’ve never pitched.’ I go, ‘You’ve got size and you’ve got a good arm action. And so it evolved.’”

Strelitz said the perception seemed to be that Tylor, the younger brother, was an underdog as he went through the Mets’ system, meaning he had to work harder to get on the radar of the big club’s personnel people than the players considered “prospects.”

But if there were any doubts that he could pitch in the big leagues, they should have been dispelled this summer. Tylor wasn’t invited to the Mets’ alternate site last year but opened some eyes in instructional league last fall, and he jumped three classifications in less than two months this year. Injuries in the Mets’ rotation played a role, but he took the opportunity and ran with it.

There have been high points and low points. He’s exhibited a slider with a 32.6 percent whiff rate and 33.3 strikeout rate, and his changeup – a pitch he didn’t really throw in college, where he was used in relief – is producing a 33.7 percent whiff rate, according to Baseball Savant.

Before Tuesday night, he had 91 strikeouts in 80-1/3 innings, including 10 strikeouts in seven innings against the New York Yankees two weeks ago. Then again, the St. Louis Cardinals scored six runs and knocked him out in three innings in his next start, so there are lessons to be learned.

“Everyone has expectations when they get brought up,” Tylor said. “Getting called up early in my career, it’s more, don’t really think about it too much. Just go out there and do what I can do and see what happens, and so far it’s worked in my favor more than not.”

His opportunities might be reduced in the season’s final two weeks, because Noah Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom are both expected to return next week.

Meanwhile, Trevor – who had been a starter in college but was moved to the bullpen shortly after entering the Padres’ organization – spent last year at the Cubs’ alternate site, after Chicago had picked him in the Rule 5 draft the previous winter and then made a deal with San Diego to acquire him outright, allowing them to keep him in the minors. He made some improvements to his curveball, to go with a four-seam fastball that averages 96.3 mph and a sinker at 97.4, according to Baseball Savant, but his slider seems to be his swing-and-miss pitch, with a 59.1 percent whiff rate.

Trevor’s biggest difficulty this year has been staying with the big club, and some of that has been less about what he’s done than about where the roster is at a given moment, not unusual in an era when the bottom third of a pitching staff is liable to be shuttling between the majors and Triple-A as teams use a lot of pitchers and might need fresh arms at any given time.

“I heard that one,” he said in a phone conversation. “I think it was on my second option. It was right after I got done in New York. I threw a one-pitch inning, or a one-pitch out; Willson (Contreras) picked off the guy at first base. I got optioned the next day for that reason, at least that’s what I was told.

“Things like that make you kind of question and wonder, what’s going on? Where’s my place? And it all just falls back to knowing yourself and being able to repeat what got you there in the first place.”

His method? Take it a day at a time, understand why things happened and fine-tune what he does best. And stay confident.

“I’ve told myself I’m going to be here for 10 years, numerous times,” he said. “I have to keep reminding myself that what I have out there on the mound is able to compete with anybody that’s standing in the box. You can tell yourself that. But, I mean, you got to believe it, and I definitely have put the work in and I don’t doubt for a second that 99 or whatever it is I throw that night is good enough. So it’s taking your lumps and learning from every time something happens.

“And for me, (the lesson is) that throwing fastballs down doesn’t work. I’ve given up six home runs on that pitch this year, so it’s just keeping the ball up, making it pretty simple.”

For both brothers, 2021 has been a jumping-off point. If all goes well, by 2022, they should indeed be waving across the field at each other.

jalexander@scng.com

@Jim_Alexander on Twitter

View more on Daily Bulletin