Catch of the year made in ... the Brewers' bullpen?

This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy's Brewers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

MILWAUKEE -- If you want to understand the “next man up” bullpen mentality being chronicled with each installment of the Brewers’ docuseries, “The Firemen” -- the latest of which you can watch here -- see 6-foot-8 right-hander Trevor Megill on Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium.

It was the ninth inning. The Brewers were trailing by two runs and down to their final strike as Megill casually stood on a mound in the left-field bullpen. When William Contreras doubled, Milwaukee suddenly had the tying run at the plate. When Gary Sánchez walked, the Brewers had a real shot.

Still, Megill worked casually. A reliever with a 100 mph fastball doesn’t get hot unless he has to, so every other pitch was at about 50% effort. He took his time between offerings, with bullpen catcher Adam Weisenburger crouched 60 feet, six inches away.

You probably saw what happened next. Willy Adames hit a go-ahead three-run homer that sailed right into Megill’s glove while he stood there like a tall statue, even leaving a black leather scuff on the baseball. The way Megill flipped it away -- to be gathered by reliever Kevin Herget, who gave it to bullpen coach Charlie Greene, who gave it to equipment manager Jason Shawger to be preserved for posterity -- you’d have thought nothing happened.

“But I’ll tell you, it completely changes a man’s demeanor, and the look in his eyes,” Weisenburger said. “If you watch the highlight, he catches it and kind of looks at me. In that moment, he was completely different. It was Trevor Megill, closer time.”

That’s the job. Adapt to the moment.

“It was like, ‘All right, cool. Time to go do it,’” Megill said.

It’s exactly the sort of mental adjustment that relievers have discussed in the Brewers’ docuseries. The most recent installment focuses on the Spring Training loss of All-Star closer and reigning NL Reliever of the Year Devin Williams to a back injury that will sideline him until the All-Star break.

Megill is one of the arms asked to backfill that spot, with Joel Payamps and Abner Uribe among the others who have garnered multiple save opportunities.

“Losing Devin was, obviously, a huge blow for everybody,” said Greene, who’d been a catching instructor in Milwaukee’s system for years before a promotion last winter to bullpen coach. “Take the best closer out for three months? As soon as the day it happened, we met with everybody, all the relievers upstairs and challenged them. We said, ‘This is going to be it for three months, so guys are going to need to step up and try to fill in those gaps.’

“The guys have been up to the challenge. Guys are trying to establish themselves up here, so I think they’re willing to do the extra stuff to fit in.”

This season represents an opportunity for Megill to step into the closer role. That’s the premier position for relievers, who otherwise typically get little credit when things go right -- and all of the blame when things go wrong.

In the docuseries, a former Brewers closer explained that concept using a football analogy often mentioned by manager Pat Murphy.

“Nobody is interviewing an offensive lineman after a game, but they’ll interview you if you missed your block,” said assistant pitching coach Jim Henderson. “When you lose the game as a reliever, they’ll come and interview you.

“That kind of psychology is hard to wrap your head around. If you have an off night, it’s on you. You feel like that, right? But then you have to kind of wash it off and come back the next day.”

On this next day, Megill didn’t want to let on that he was still buzzing, but Weisenburger knew better. They’d shared a genuinely memorable experience after Megill made that catch and gave that look. For some reason, he signaled to Weisenburger that his next pitch would be a curveball, and he spiked it way in front of the plate.

“I picked the [bleep] out of it,” Weisenburger said proudly. “I was just as jacked as he was.”