We fittingly “close out” our All-Time Team with a reliever
This is it: the last spot on the Brewers All-Time Team, where we’ve taken the best single season at each position (excluding the designated hitter, and without repeating players). Here’s what we’ve got, a group that spans 50 years from the Brewers’ first season in Milwaukee to a player on the current squad:
Catcher: Jonathan Lucroy, 2014
First Base: Prince Fielder, 2009
Second Base: Paul Molitor, 1979
Third Base: Tommy Harper, 1970
Shortstop: Robin Yount, 1982
Left Field: Ryan Braun, 2011
Center Field: Carlos Gómez, 2013
Right Field: Christian Yelich, 2019
Starting Pitcher: Ben Sheets, 2004
Today, we’ll wrap up the series with the team’s relief pitcher. Like we did with starting pitchers, I’m going to go over the candidates and then choose one after we’ve examined them all.
Though there are probably others that could be included here, I decided to be a little bit ruthless with the cutoff, as there are a lot of good relief seasons in the club’s history (see the “also considered” bit at the end if you don’t see someone you’re expecting).
The Contenders
Here are, in my opinion, the candidates that I would consider “finalists” when choosing the best relief season in team history, in chronological order:
- Ken Sanders, 1970: 50g, 92 1⁄3 IP, 5-2, 1.75 ERA, 2.34 FIP, 215 ERA+, 64 K, 25 BB, 0.964 WHIP, 13 SV, 4.7 bWAR, 2.0 fWAR
- Rollie Fingers, 1981: 47g, 78 IP, 6-3, 1.04 ERA, 2.07 FIP, 333 ERA+, 61 K, 13 BB, 0.872 WHIP, 28 SV, 4.2 bWAR, 2.6 fWAR
- Doug Jones, 1997: 75g, 80 1⁄3 IP, 6-6, 2.02 ERA, 2.16 FIP, 232 ERA+, 82 K, 9 BB, 0.884 WHIP, 36 SV, 3.1 bWAR, 2.8 fWAR
- Corey Knebel, 2017: 76g, 76 IP, 1.78 ERA, 2.53 FIP, 248 ERA+, 126 K, 40 BB, 1.158 WHIP, 39 SV, 3.7 bWAR, 2.8 fWAR
- Jeremy Jeffress, 2018: 73g, 76 2⁄3 IP, 8-1, 1.29 ERA, 2.78 FIP, 317 ERA+, 89 K, 27 BB, 0.991 WHIP, 15 SV, 3.3 bWAR, 1.7 fWAR
- Josh Hader, 2021: 60g, 58 2⁄3 IP, 4-2, 1.23 ERA, 1.69 FIP, 338 ERA+, 102 K, 24 BB, 0.835 WHIP, 34 SV, 3.2 bWAR, 2.6 fWAR
We start back in the franchise’s first season in Milwaukee with an old-school “relief ace.” Ken Sanders’ career hadn’t amounted to much by the time he reached Milwaukee as a 28-year-old in 1970. He’d debuted initially in 1964 with the Kansas City Athletics but didn’t pitch in the majors in 1965 and was taken after that season by the Boston Red Sox in the Rule 5 Draft. Boston traded him back to Kansas City halfway through the season, and he pitched a lot that year—112 2⁄3 innings across 62 appearances. But the A’s stashed him back in the minors in 1967, gave him only ten appearances in their first season in Oakland in 1968, and he was back in the minors in 1969.
Finally, in January of 1970, the A’s gave him his freedom, sending him to Milwaukee alongside three other players for Ron Clark and Don Mincher (who had been named to the All-Star team in his lone season as a Seattle Pilot). Milwaukee gave him a shot and he was fantastic: 50 appearances, 30 games finished, 13 saves, and a 1.75 ERA (215 ERA+) in 92 1⁄3 innings. He earned 4.6 WAR as a pitcher, the second-highest total ever for a Brewer reliever, and I have him as the league’s best reliever that year. Sanders had another excellent season in 1971 before putting up mediocre numbers in 1972, after which he was included in a big trade — back to the Athletics! — which is notable in that it brought Don Money to the Brewers.
The next great reliever in Brewers’ history is the one who I’m sure popped to the forefront of many of your minds when pondering this question: Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers. Fingers, acquired as part of the huge trade with St. Louis after the 1980 season that also brought future Cy Young winner Pete Vuckovich and future Hall of Famer Ted Simmons to Milwaukee, was well-established by then as a star reliever (five All-Star games at that point) and postseason legend (three World Series wins with Oakland, the 1974 World Series MVP award, and an ERA under 2.00 in a whopping five of eight postseason series).
But in 1981, Fingers dominated hitters like he never had before. That was a short season, split into two halves because of a strike that cancelled games from June 12 to August 9, so Fingers only had 47 appearances rather than the 70-or-so he’d averaged throughout most of the 1970s. But in those 47 appearances, Fingers tossed 78 innings, saved 28 games (which led baseball), had a career-best 4.69 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and allowed just nine runs for a 1.04 ERA (333 ERA+). Awards voters — who admittedly loved relief pitchers in the early 1980s — decided that Fingers’ season was not worthy of just the Cy Young, but of the MVP award. He’s one of just nine relievers to ever win a Cy Young and one of two, alongside Dennis Eckersley (1992), to win an MVP.
The best relief season that occurs in the history of the franchise between the early 1980s and the late 2010s belongs to someone who many of you may not have thought much about: Doug Jones. Jones was actually a Brewer draft pick in 1978 and made his major league debut in Milwaukee in 1982, but he gave up runs in two of four appearances and was sent back to the minors…for almost four years, until he was a September call-up in 1986, by now having been cut by Milwaukee and signed by Cleveland. Things went much better this time, though, and Jones was one of the league’s better relievers for the next decade, with six years in Cleveland and stops in Houston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and in Chicago with the Cubs.
Jones, 39 years old by this point, got off to a poor start in 1996 and the Cubs cut him when he had a 5.01 ERA through 28 appearances. He signed with Milwaukee and things clicked into place, and he put a 154 ERA+ over 24 appearances with the Brewers from his first outing with the club on July 30 until the end of the season. He replaced Mike Fetters as the team’s closer during spring training in 1997, and proceeded to have, at age 40, what was likely the best season in his long career: he led the majors with 73 games finished, and in 80 1⁄3 innings saved 36 games with a 2.02 ERA. Most impressively, he walked just nine batters, one of which was intentional, and had a 9.11 K:BB ratio. His FIP was nearly as good as his ERA, and thus FanGraphs views this as tied for the best season in franchise history for a reliever by the measure of fWAR (2.8).
The season that Jones is tied with for that fWAR record is maybe not the one you’d expect: Corey Knebel’s 2017 season, which sort of came out of nowhere. Knebel had made 48 solid appearances for the Brewers in 2015, and while he was below-average by most measures in 2016, he had a FIP that outpaced his ERA by over a run. Still, that good omen did not indicate what would come in 2017, when he led the National League in appearances and saved 39 games while posting a 1.78 ERA (248 ERA+) in 76 innings. He put up monstrous strikeout numbers — 126 of them, which was record at the time for a Brewer reliever (since surpassed, twice, by Josh Hader) and translated to an eye-popping 14.9 strikeouts per nine.
Knebel, though, couldn’t quite find it in 2018. He wasn’t awful, but he wasn’t particularly good, either, and by the beginning of May the Brewers were giving closing opportunities to a former first-round pick who’d been around the block a bit but who Milwaukee just couldn’t quit. When the Brewers traded for Jeremy Jeffress at the 2017 trade deadline, it was the second time they had re-acquired him since sending him to Kansas City in 2010 as part of the Zack Greinke trade. Jeffress had shown flashes in the seven years since leaving Milwaukee but struggled to consistently put together sustained runs of success.
In 2018, though, Jeffress clicked. He ended up making 73 appearances and saving 15 games for the first-place Brewers as he and Knebel sort of danced around the closer role. But while Knebel was inconsistent, Jeffress was one of the most effective relievers in the league. In his 76 2⁄3 innings, Jeffress had a 1.29 ERA (317 ERA+). His underlying numbers suggested some luck — he had a 2.78 FIP — but it was still one of the best seasons the franchise has ever had, and while his luck ran out in the playoffs, it was still a season to remember.
Finally, the man who might have to be considered the best relief pitcher in franchise history, Josh Hader. Acquired by Milwaukee in the 2015 Carlos Gómez trade with Houston, Hader started for his entire minor league career as a Brewer but proved so effective as a reliever upon making the majors in 2017 that they just kept him there; the last start of Hader’s professional career was on June 4, 2017, his last appearance with the Colorado Springs Sky Sox.
Several of Hader’s seasons with the Brewers could be considered for this spot, particularly 2019, when he had a 0.806 WHIP and 138 strikeouts in 75 2⁄3 innings, giving him 16.4 strikeouts per nine, tied for the fifth-highest number among pitchers with at least 30 appearances in a season.
But despite his overwhelming peripherals, Hader was prone to the home run ball in 2019, which means I’m going to opt for his 2021 season. After spending his first three years as a pitcher who routinely covered more than three outs, Hader moved into a more traditional closer role during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and in 2021, he saved 34 games in 60 appearances (58 2⁄3 innings) and had a sparkling 1.23 ERA (338 ERA+). Hader’s strikeout numbers continued to be stellar (102 of them in just under 59 innings for 15.6 per nine) and for the third time in his career, Hader posted a WHIP under 0.840.
The nature of Hader’s exit from Milwaukee and some of his comments since have left a bit of a sour taste in some fans’ mouths, but from 2017-2021, Hader had one of the best five-year runs in the history of relief pitching. It’s true: I’ve checked.
Choosing one of these seasons is, to me, not quite like the starting pitcher debate, where I think you could legitimately argue for any of five different pitchers for the best single season in team history. For relievers, I chose five finalists, but I think two of these are better than the rest: Hader and Fingers. And of those two, I’m going with…
Relief Pitcher: Rollie Fingers, 1981
47g, 78 IP, 6-3, 1.04 ERA, 2.07 FIP, 333 ERA+, 0.872 WHIP, 4.69 K:BB, 4.2 bWAR, 2.6 fWAR
Even while pitching in a strike-shortened season, Fingers had almost 20 more innings than Hader did in 2021, and his ERA+ was basically identical. And while Fingers’ 4.69 K:BB is impressive, it’s actually even better than that: Fingers walked 13 batters in those 78 innings, but five of those walks were intentional, so the accidental walk count is at eight, or 0.9 per nine innings and giving him a 7.6 K:BB ratio, which would have been the third-best ever to that point in the 20th century by a pitcher with at least 20 appearances.
Fingers was especially good in the second half of the split 1981 season: after allowing a run in his first appearance after the break, he allowed only two runs in 23 appearances (36 2⁄3 innings) from August 13 to the end of the season, giving him a 0.49 ERA over the stretch run of a half-season in which the Brewers finished 1.5 games ahead of the Red Sox and Tigers and 2.0 ahead of the Orioles for a playoff spot.
Also considered (there are lots): Devin Williams’ 2023, when he was probably the best reliever in the league; John Axford’s 2011, when he had a 1.95 ERA and a franchise-record 46 saves; Sanders’ 1971, when he was almost as good as he was in 1970 but in 44 more innings; Tom Murphy’s 1974, when he set a Brewer-reliever record with 5.1 bWAR after putting up a 1.90 ERA in 123 innings out of the bullpen (but also had a 3.74 FIP and thus 0.1 fWAR); Derrick Turnbow’s 2005, when he had 39 saves and a 1.74 ERA; Trevor Hoffman’s 2009, when the Hall of Famer, at age 41, had his best season by ERA+ in 11 years (and second-best of his career) and got close enough to 600 saves to stick it out for one more year; and a handful of seasons in which guys put up eye-popping numbers in small samples: Ray Searage in 1984, who had a 0.70 ERA in 38 1/3 innings, Doug Henry in 1991, who had a 1.00 ERA in 36 innings, and Williams in 2020, who had a 0.33 ERA in 27 innings and won Rookie of the Year. [His ERA+ that season was 1375, which makes me smile.]