Trevor Megill stands tall to record final out of 2026 World Series

The final pitch of the 2026 Major League Baseball season left Trevor Megill’s hand at 99.1 miles per hour, a four-seam fastball that Richie Palacios grounded to the right side. Slowly enough for one of baseball’s best defenders to calmly pursue.

“Everybody wants the strikeout, but to have Brice Turang, our Platinum Gold Glover, make that play for me at the end, it can’t get any better.”

A MOMENT THAT WILL LIVE IN BASEBALL IMMORTALITY pic.twitter.com/Mg7PXbPlJm

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) October 29, 2026

Turang (who logged 19 assists in three games at Tropicana Field in the World Series) made an easy throw to first base in a 4-1 victory that clinched the first World Series crown in Milwaukee Brewers history. It wasn’t a save for Megill, who entered Game 5 with a 4-0 advantage when he checked in to start the eighth inning, but it’s an out that will play forever in Brewers history.

“I kind of figured after [Aaron] Ashby went three last night, I was meditating on the two-inning save to prepare myself for that,” Megill said. “I was fortunate enough to have an eighth with eight or nine pitches, whatever it was. Murphy asked me if I was good to go back out in the ninth. I don’t know what kind of question that was. We saw two innings the whole way, and it couldn’t have happened any better way.”

The 32-year-old then-journeyman right-hander came to Milwaukee in an under-the-radar April 2023 trade. By 2025, he was a first-time all-star. In 2026, he was once again an essential element in Milwaukee’s devastating bullpen.

He finished the regular season with a 2.63 ERA in a career-high 61⅔ innings. He worked another nine in the postseason, allowing two earned runs … and one felt like a footnote in the final seconds before a championship celebration.

Megill did flirt with danger. Taylor Walls hit a tailing drive down the left-field line leading off the eighth that required a lunging catch from Jackson Chourio. Yandy Díaz followed with a flyout that took Sal Frelick to the wall in right field.

But after a strikeout to end the eighth and start the ninth, Liam Hicks hit a fluky double that clipped the corner of first base and jutted into foul territory. Megill’s third strikeout of the night put Milwaukee one out away, but then Chandler Simpson lined his own double to right that broke up the 4-0 shutout and put the Rays on the board.

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At that point, the 2026 season had one batter left.

“First thing I did after the dogpile was look up and see my wife and kid and point to them,” Megill said. “They mean everything to me. Without her support, without my daughter, probably none of this is possible. They keep me locked in throughout the season. They help keep my mind off of baseball when I’m away from the field. I just love them so much.”

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With 30 saves each of the past two seasons, Megill is indeed the team’s closer with a capital C, but the bullpen has been fluid for Brewers manager Pat Murphy. With the lefty Ashby delivering an unprecedented 18 scoreless innings in the postseason, he became the team’s top hammer, and he was warming in the bullpen when Megill worked for the final outs.

Perhaps one of the missteps from a heartbreaking walk-off loss in Game 4 was turning to Ashby for the ninth after Megill recorded a solitary out in the eighth. Ashby wound up working 2⅓ innings in a losing effort, putting his availability in question for Game 5. But Megill was also available for the extra inning of work.

“It’s all worth it,” Megill said. “This team would be damned if we didn’t come back this year after what we did last year and finish business.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Trevor Megill stands tall to record final out of 2026 World Series

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