Brewers' Top 5 relievers: McCalvy's take

No one loves a good debate quite like baseball fans, and with that in mind, we asked each of our beat reporters to rank the top five players by position in the history of their franchise, based on their career while playing for that club. These rankings are for fun and debate purposes only … if you don’t agree with the order, feel free to let the reporter know on Twitter.

Here is Adam McCalvy’s ranking of the top 5 relievers in Brewers history.

• Brewers' All-Time Team: C | 1B | 2B | 3B | SS | LF | CF | RF | DH | RHP | LHP

1. Dan Plesac, 1986-92
Key fact: His 3.21 ERA is best in Brewers history for pitchers who logged at least 500 innings.

Plesac was the 41st player drafted in 1980 -- not by the Brewers but by the Cardinals, who took him in the second round out of high school in Crown Point, Ind. Plesac was a multi-sport star who played outfield for the baseball team but didn’t pitch until his senior year when a coach, Dick Webb, begged him to take the mound. Plesac threw a no-hitter in his first start.

“It was crazy. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing,” he said. “Big, tall, threw hard. Awful delivery, awful mechanics, awful windup.”

He opted not to sign with the Cardinals and instead attended North Carolina State, then he went to the Brewers with the 26th pick in the 1983 Draft, when the Brewers were reigning American League champions. Plesac had clear memories of watching the ’82 World Series in his dorm room, and felt like he already knew the likes of Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Cecil Cooper, Jim Gantner and the other mainstays who would be his big league teammates just three years later in ’86, when Plesac delivered a 2.97 ERA and 14 saves in 91 innings of relief. The following season, he made the AL All-Star team for the first of three straight years.

Plesac is the Brewers’ all-time leader in appearances, saves and ERA (the Brewers use 500 innings as their minimum threshold). In 1987, Plesac saved five games during the Brewers' record-tying 13-0 start, including the 5-4 win over the White Sox for victory No. 13 in a row to start the season, setting the AL record and matching the Braves’ MLB mark.

He went on to pitch 18 years for the Brewers, Cubs, Pirates, Blue Jays, D-backs and Phillies, appearing in 1,064 games -- the seventh-highest total in Major League history. Today he’s an analyst for MLB Network and occasionally fills in as a color commentator on Brewers television.

“The Brewers took a chance on me,” Plesac said. “I was still raw. I was so proud to wear that Brewers jersey, and I didn’t have enough appreciation for it until I left. There’s no team like your first team. There just isn’t. I think of my career now, and there were six stops. But if you were to ask me, ‘What organization pulls at your heartstrings the hardest?’ It’s the Brewers. I learned how to pitch. I grew up.”

2. Rollie Fingers, 1981-85
Key fact: Second player to wear a Brewers uniform inducted to the Hall of Fame

Fifty-one seasons of 162 games produces countless what ifs for a franchise, but here’s the one that haunts Brewers founder Bud Selig to this day: What if the Brewers had a healthy Rollie Fingers for the ’82 World Series?

Fingers was already established as one of baseball’s best relievers when the Brewers acquired him in the December 1980 trade with the Cardinals that also landed catcher Ted Simmons and future Cy Young Award winner Pete Vuckovich. Fingers won both the AL Cy Young Award and AL MVP Award in the strike-shortened 1981 season, when he posted a ridiculous 1.04 ERA in 78 innings and led the Majors with 28 saves, pitching in 23 of the Brewers’ 31 victories in the “second half” with 16 saves and five victories. He got the final four outs of the win over the Tigers that clinched Milwaukee’s first postseason appearance.

“You always remember little highlights,” said Jim Gantner. “One of them for me is Rollie striking out Lou Whitaker for the win. I never saw a guy as good as Rollie that year.”

Fingers was having another stellar season in ’82 -- 2.60 ERA, 29 saves in the first five months of the regular season -- when he felt a pop in his shoulder in Game 2 of a doubleheader against the Indians on Sept. 2, 1982, the same day Don Sutton made his Brewers debut. Fingers missed the rest of the season and all of 1983, and while he tried to pitch for the Brewers in ’84 and ’85, he was never the same. There was an offer from the Reds for 1986, but owner Marge Schott had a no-facial-hair policy.

“I told her to shave her dog and I would shave my mustache,” Fingers said. “That was the last I heard from the Reds.”

“That was Waldo,” said Simmons, using the nickname he bestowed upon Fingers. “He would say things all the time and you’d go, ‘Hey, you shouldn’t say that.’ But he was an incredible pitcher.”

Fingers retired as MLB’s all-time leader with 341 saves and was inducted to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982.

3. Josh Hader, 2017-present
Key fact: Winner of the Trevor Hoffman National League Reliever of the Year Award in 2018 and ‘19

If the standard is sheer dominance, then there’s an argument that Hader, though just 26 and with only two full Major League seasons on his resume, is the best reliever -- maybe the best pitcher, period – to ever wear the uniform. His owns the highest strikeout rate in Major League history at 44.6 percent and has already made two NL All-Star teams. In each of his two full seasons, Hader led MLB relievers in strikeouts. In September 2018, when the Brewers were charging to the NL Central title, he recorded 16 consecutive outs via strikeout, the longest such streak in the expansion era.

He’s also a throwback of sorts to a previous era in which closers were used for multiple innings. Hader has led the Majors in multi-inning saves each of the past two years, and he has made 37 appearances of at least two innings in that time. The Brewers are 36-1 in those games. They needed one more such outing in the 2019 NL Wild Card Game, but that time Hader couldn’t deliver. It was a rare example of a left-handed hitter -- Juan Soto in that instance -- winning a battle. Usually, it’s the other way around, like the night in Cincinnati in 2018 on which Hader faced nine Reds and struck out eight of them.

"I don’t know what to say about Josh," manager Craig Counsell said that day. "Literally, your mouth is kind of wide-open, watching it. It was absolutely incredible."

4. Jeremy Jeffress, 2010, 2014-19
Key fact: Made the NL All-Star team in 2018, when he pitched a team-high 73 times with a 1.29 ERA

Jeffress is a former first-round pick who ran into trouble in the Brewers’ Minor League chain, struggled with health, performance and off-field trouble at stops in Kansas City, Toronto and Texas, but he almost always thrived in Milwaukee. He’s third in franchise history with 300 relief appearances and logged a 2.62 ERA -- compared to a 4.76 ERA in 96 1/3 innings everywhere else. He also helped in other ways; in 2010, the Brewers traded Jeffress as part of the prospect package that landed Zack Greinke from the Royals. In 2016, the Brewers traded Jeffress and catcher Jonathan Lucroy to the Rangers for prospects headlined by Lewis Brinson, who in turn was traded to the Marlins in the Christian Yelich deal.

Jeffress was reacquired in a July 2017 trade with the Rangers, and he had an outstanding '18 season, but his Brewers tenure had an unceremonious end when he was released last year with a 5.01 ERA, but remains one of the most valuable relievers who wore the uniform. One stat -- RE24, which provides context to a pitcher’s contribution -- has Jeffress fourth in club history behind Hader, Plesac and Fingers.

5. John Axford, 2009-13
Key fact: Ranks second in franchise history with 106 saves

After being released by the Yankees, Axford was looking for a job for the 2008 season and staged a tryout at an indoor facility in Mississauga, Ontario. Because of a snowstorm, only one scout showed up, and he happened to be from the Brewers. It proved a wise investment; Axford took over as closer from Trevor Hoffman in 2010 and blossomed into one of the NL’s best closers for a period into 2012, including the ’11 season when he led the league with 46 saves. Axford converted 49 straight save opportunities in one stretch, the fourth-longest streak in history at the time, and famously left a note for reporters on the night that streak came to an end apologizing for being absent. He had a good excuse; his pregnant wife was having contractions.

Honorable mentions
Ken Sanders was the first lights-out relief pitcher in franchise history. In 1970, the Brewers’ first year in Milwaukee, Sanders had a 1.75 ERA in 50 games. The following year, he had a 1.91 ERA while leading the Major Leagues with 83 appearances (a franchise record that stood alone until Alex Claudio tied it in 2019) and posting 31 saves while pitching 136 1/3 innings. He was named the AL Fireman of the Year. … Bill Castro was a mainstay of the organization as a player and coach for decades, starting with a playing career that that included seven years with the Brewers from 1974-80. … Bob McClure pitched in every imaginable role for the Brewers over 10 seasons from 1977-86 and ranks fifth in club history with 279 relief appearances and third with 352 appearances overall. … Chuck Crim is the Brewers’ all-time leader in relief innings (503 2/3). He led the AL with 70 appearances while posting a 2.91 ERA in 1988, then led the Majors with 76 appearances while posting a 2.83 ERA in 1989. Crim pitched at least 53 times in all five of his seasons in Milwaukee including four years with 66 or more appearances. … The Brewers traded Crim to the Angels in December 1991 for Mike Fetters, who became the Brewers’ next stout setup man. His 4.7 fWAR is fourth-best in Brewers history for a reliever. … Bob Wickman was an AL All-Star in 2000, just before the Brewers traded him to Cleveland as part of a blockbuster that brought Richie Sexson to Milwaukee. … Few pitchers in Brewers history rose and fell as fast as Derrick Turnbow, who set a franchise record with 39 saves in 2006 and lost the closer’s role midway through the following season. ... Trevor Hoffman finished his Hall of Fame career in a Brewers uniform, saving 37 games and making the NL All-Star team in 2009 before a difficult '10 in which he became the first player in MLB history to reach 600 saves. … Francisco Rodríguez is fourth in Brewers history with 95 saves and 10th with 263 appearances. … Corey Knebel already has the fifth-best fWAR in club history and made the All-Star team in 2018 before Tommy John surgery sidelined him in ‘19.