Maybe, Possibly, Trevor Megill Throws the Best Pitch in Baseball

[Davy Andrews]

Pitching models fell madly in love with one of Megill's pitches. The only problem? It's not supposed to exist.

Have you ever wondered what the best pitch in baseball is? I’ve been thinking about that lately, mostly because last week at FanGraphs, Ben Clemens wrote an article called “The Best Pitch of 2024.” He was talking about individual pitches, but I’ve been thinking about the combination of pitcher and pitch type. What’s the best pitch in baseball? Maybe it’s Emmanuel Clase’s cutter, or Paul Skenes’s splinker, or Jacob deGrom’s slider. Luckily, these days there are some pretty sophisticated ways to answer that question, so I consulted the pitch modeling leaderboards. Models like Stuff+, PitchingBot, and StuffPro analyze pitches based on several characteristics—velocity, spin, movement, release point, approach angle, and so on—then use years of actual big-league results to rate their nastiness. They’re by no means perfect, but they’re extremely useful. You can bet that every team in baseball has their own model, and is constantly working to improve it. For example, when you see the Mets jump all over Frankie Montas, you know they’re not doing so because of his 4.84 ERA. They’re doing it because they like the way his stuff graded out after the Brewers raised his arm slot.

So who throws the best pitch in baseball? I started with the pitch modeling leaderboards at FanGraphs and set a minimum of 40 innings pitched. According to Stuff+, it’s not that Clase cutter and it’s not the Airbender. Trevor Megill throws the best pitch in baseball. Stuff+ rated Megill’s sinker a 257. For reference, 100 is average. Not only is 257 the highest Stuff+ rating in the game, but no other pitch is within 20 points of it. It’s a runaway champion. Next, I checked PitchingBot, which grades pitches on the 20-80 scouting scale. The sinker rated a perfect 80. PitchingBot also gave 11 other pitches a perfect score, but still, it’s fair to say that both models think Megill’s sinker is the best in the game. Last, I headed over to Baseball Prospectus to use StuffPro. I was in for disappointment. According to StuffPro, Megill’s sinker is all the way down at 21^st on the leaderboard. Apparently, it’s not as good as Mason Miller’s thousand-mile-an-hour splinker. Still, three different models rate Megill’s sinker as either the absolute best pitch in the game, or just a few clicks behind the best.  

Ok, it’s time to drop the charade. If you’re a Brewer Fanatic Caretaker, you’re probably in on the joke already. Trevor Megill doesn’t throw a sinker. Like, at all! Back in March, when Matthew Trueblood broke down Megill’s repertoire and talked to Megill about his plans coming into the season, the word sinker never even came up. Megill throws a great four-seamer and a great curveball, he strikes everybody out, and then he goes back to the bullpen and sits down. He’s a two-pitch pitcher. So does this pitch exist? And if not, why do all the pitching models not only think that he has a sinker, but think that his non-existent sinker is the best pitch in all of baseball? It took me a while to figure it out. Here is Megill’s pitch chart for the entire 2024 season:

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