There are plenty of reasons why the Brewers find themselves in the NLCS with a matchup against the Dodgers for a second straight season.
Whether it’s Jacob Misiorowski’s breakout, Jackson Chourio’s ascension as a young star and elite playoff performer or Jake Bauers becoming one of baseball’s best hitters this season, Milwaukee has had a lot of positive developments. Then there’s the daunting Brewers bullpen, which has been a bright spot for years.
Despite parting with elite relievers like Josh Hader and Devin Williams in past years, the Brewers continue to churn out quality bullpen arms with ease. Take, for example, the three-headed monster of Trevor Megill, Abner Uribe and Aaron Ashby. In the regular season, that trio combined to throw 210 1/3 innings with a 2.65 ERA while striking out 247 batters.
It was similar dominance in the NLDS vs. the Padres -- that trio threw 12 2/3 of the 19 innings for the Brewers bullpen and allowed just one unearned run. Megill, Uribe and Ashby will look to carry that success over to the NLCS against the Dodgers and try to prevent Los Angeles from a third straight World Series title.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at what makes each of these relievers great with brief breakdowns.
Trevor Megill
Megill is the most notable name of the group as the primary closer for a Brewers team that’s led the Majors in wins for two straight seasons.
Milwaukee acquired Megill in a minor trade from the Twins early in the 2023 season and it’s proven to be one of the shrewdest moves the club has made in recent memory. In parts of four seasons with the Brewers, Megill has a 2.80 ERA and 231 strikeouts in 189 2/3 innings, while recording 81 saves.
What makes Megill so good? For starters, he’s 6-foot-8 and throws a fastball that averaged 97.9 mph this season. It goes beyond just being tall and throwing gas, though.
Megill’s fastball doesn’t just feature elite velocity -- it also averaged 19 inches of induced vertical break this season, which ranked 19th among qualified four-seamers. IVB is essentially how much perceived rise a fastball has, or how much the pitch doesn’t drop. In essence, Megill’s four-seamer boasted great velocity and dropped less than most four-seamers. That’s why Megill’s fastball allowed a .200 batting average and produced 34 strikeouts.
Megill also has a wipeout curveball that averaged 88 mph this season and generated an outrageous 46.5 percent whiff rate. Since 2023, Megill has produced a 49.8 percent whiff rate on curveballs, the third-best mark among all curveballs to produce at least 250 swings.
Megill’s also seen huge command improvements. After walking a career-high 8.9 percent of batters last year, Megill’s walked a career-low 6.2 percent of opposing hitters this season.
“He’s just really comfortable. He’s commanding the baseball. I think this year that’s the biggest difference,” Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook told MLB.com after winning the NLDS. “This is just a guy who knows how to handle the situation, commanding both sides of the plate, and the secondary pitches are really good.”
Abner Uribe
A testament to the Brewers bullpen is that Uribe has arguably been even better than Megill the last two seasons.
Since 2025, Uribe’s 1.80 ERA ranks second among the 110 relievers to toss at least 100 innings. Only Aroldis Chapman (1.51) has a lower ERA in that time frame. Take one look at Uribe on the mound and it’s easy to see why he’s dominated.
Few relievers have the type of stuff Uribe has. A 99 mph sinker with above-average drop and a wipeout upper-80’s slider that averages 10 inches of horizontal break is a tough task for opposing hitters to deal with.
And whereas Megill has huge stuff from a big frame and over-the-top delivery (54-degree arm angle), Uribe is roughly five inches smaller and comes from a lower arm angle (37 degrees) that generates ground balls at an elite clip. His 54.6 percent groundball rate placed him in the 93rd percentile of qualified pitchers. Uribe is also elite at preventing quality contact, allowing barrels on only 2 percent of batted balls against him this season (99th percentile).
Uribe’s biggest development, though, is knowing where his pitches are going now. In parts of two seasons from 2023-24, Uribe walked 32 batters in 45 innings. In 2025, he dropped his walk rate below 10 percent for the first time (9.1 percent). He shaved even more off that walk rate this year, walking just 8.1 percent of hitters, below the league-average clip.
Aaron Ashby
Megill and Uribe are more well known, but Ashby has certainly put himself on people’s radars recently.
Ashby, a former starter, was one of the most-utilized relievers in the sport. He threw 89 1/3 innings this year, 87 of which were in relief, the second-most relief innings in all of baseball. The left-hander excelled while doing so, posting a 3.12 ERA with 116 strikeouts and 1.5 WAR, per FanGraphs.
We saw that length in Game 4 of the Division Series, when Ashby tossed three scoreless innings and was the perfect bridge between starter Robert Gasser and Megill and Uribe.
“Ash doing what he did, he didn’t want to come out of the game,” Hook said. “He was angry and said he could keep going.”
Aside from being a left-hander, Ashby differs from Megill and Uribe in that he’s the shortest of the group (six feet) and boasts a much wider arsenal thanks to his days as a starter. Ashby’s main pitch is a 97.7 mph sinker that he throws roughly half of the time as his bread-and-butter pitch to generate grounders, which he did at a 56.3 percent clip (96th percentile).
The lefty then mixes in a trio of secondaries -- a curveball, slider and changeup -- that each generate whiffs at an elite clip. Among all pitches who produced at least 50 swings in 2026, Ashby’s 56.6 percent whiff rate on sliders ranked third best among individual pitch types. The 52.4 percent whiff rate on his curveball ranked eighth, while his 48.9 percent clip on changeups also ranked in the top 25. No other pitcher was close to having three pitches to have a whiff rate near 50 percent.
We all know the importance bullpens can carry in October, when teams rely on their top guys even more heavily. For the Brewers, this trio of Megill, Uribe and Ashby could secure the Brewers’ spot in the World Series and win the first title in franchise history.