Brewers’ Top 5 right fielders: 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 five right fielders in Brewers history.

• Brewers All-Time Around the Horn Team: C | 1B | 2B | 3B | SS | LF | CF

1. Christian Yelich, 2018-present
Key fact: Since the start of 2018, leads the NL in wRC+, wOBA, AVG, SLG, OBP, hard-hit percentage

We’re breaking precedent from earlier installments of this project, in which production over time trumped players who had better peak seasons. That’s how we got Jim Gantner over Rickie Weeks at second base and Gorman Thomas over Carlos Gomez in center field. By total value over the course of a Brewers career, Sixto Lezcano or Jeromy Burnitz may be the best right fielder in Brewers history. But the fact that Yelich is in the conversation after only two seasons -- compared to Corey Hart’s nine seasons or Lezcano’s seven or Burnitz’s six -- is a measure of the remarkable impact Yelich has had on the organization in a short time.

While winning the National League MVP Award in 2018, finishing a close runner-up in '19, winning the first two league batting titles in Brewers history, making a pair of All-Star teams and being club MVP of back-to-back postseason entrants, Yelich has delivered two of the top four seasons in franchise history by the FanGraphs measure of WAR, and two of the top eight seasons in franchise history by the Baseball-Reference version.

Yes, he has seen significant time in left field and was expected to move to that position in 2020 before baseball pressed pause. Yes, other players -- including Lezcano -- produced at this position for the Brewers over a longer period of time. But no, the Brewers have never had a player man right field who was better than the current version of Christian Yelich.

2. Sixto Lezcano, 1974-80
Key fact: Owns the seventh-highest single-season OPS in franchise history (.987 in 1979)

“The Brewers saved their best for first,” is how Milwaukee Journal beat writer Tom Flaherty put it on April 10, 1980, when Lezcano became the first player in Major League history to hit a grand slam in multiple Opening Day games. Lezcano had already hit a slam on Opening Day in 1978 against the Orioles before he did it again in ’80 against the Red Sox at County Stadium, a game-winning blast in the bottom of the ninth inning. At the time, Lezcano was coming off the best season of his 12-year MLB career, having slashed .321/.414/.573 with 28 home runs and 101 RBIs for the Brewers in 1979. In all, he was a .275/.354/.452 hitter with 102 home runs in a Brewers uniform before GM Harry Dalton packaged Lezcano with pitchers Dave LaPoint and Lary Sorensen and Minor Leaguer David Green and traded them to the Cardinals for Rollie Fingers, Ted Simmons and Pete Vuckovich. That still might rank as the best trade in franchise history.

“He was a very talented young player. He just didn’t know how to use it sometimes,” said Sal Bando, a Brewers veteran in the late 1970s. “He would go full boat instead of learning how to learn the best thing to do. But a lot of talent, and a very friendly, outgoing guy.”

3. Jeromy Burnitz , 1996-01
Key fact: One of four players in club history with four or more seasons of 30-plus homers (also Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, Gorman Thomas)

“He played hard every day,” said Geoff Jenkins, who roamed the outfield with Burnitz during the Brewers’ transition years between County Stadium and Miller Park. “Personality-wise, he was just, ‘Leave me alone.’ Maybe he didn’t adhere to the fans as much as some of us do. But when you look at the big picture of players coming through Milwaukee, what a great move that was getting Burnie away from that great Cleveland team.”

As Milwaukee’s GM, Bando got Burnitz from the Indians in an August 1996 trade for Kevin Seitzer, and Burnitz quickly blossomed into one of the best power hitters in Brewers history. Burnitz hit 27 home runs in ’97, then became the first player in franchise history to top 30 homers in four straight seasons from 1998-2001. Burnitz peaked at 38 homers and 125 RBIs in 1998, and he had a career-best .963 OPS in ’99, when he made the American League All-Star team and lost in the finals of the Home Run Derby to Ken Griffey Jr. In 2001, Burnitz became the first Brewers hitter to homer at newly christened Miller Park. Today he’s ninth in franchise history with 165 home runs, and third (among players with at least 2,500 plate appearances in a Brewers uniform) with a .508 slugging percentage and an .870 OPS.

4. Corey Hart, 2004-12
Key fact: Brewers’ all-time leader with 741 games played in right field

In 50 years, only one Brewers player received three standing ovations for one at-bat. Imagine if Corey Hart had gotten a hit. On May 25, 2004, he was called upon to pinch-hit against Dodgers left-hander Kaz Ishii, and fans at Miller Park saw brighter days ahead.

“It was cool because I got a standing ovation going to the plate, I got a standing ovation for a foul ball, and I still got a standing ovation after I struck out,” Hart said of his big league debut. “Three ovations for a strikeout? That’s pretty nice. … I think the fans were just excited. They saw the future coming.”

Hart was a big part of that future -- literally. He stood 6-foot-6 and grew up in basketball-crazed Kentucky, but he played baseball with speed and athleticism, even if it didn’t always look as smooth as some of his homegrown peers like Fielder, Braun, Rickie Weeks and J.J. Hardy. Hart logged five seasons of 20-plus home runs for the Brewers, twice topping 30 homers, and made a pair of National League All-Star teams. He probably had more good years in him, but a knee injury in 2013 essentially derailed Hart’s career, and he wasn’t able to find similar success in future stops with the Mariners and Pirates. Among players with at least 2,500 plate appearances, Hart ranks fifth in Brewers history in slugging percentage and sixth in OPS.

“He proved everyone wrong year after year,” Hardy said. “He would go out there and take swings at balls that would bounce on the other side of the left-handed batter’s box, and just look so stupid. You were like, ‘What the hell was that?’ Then, the very next pitch, he would hit a 450-foot homer.”

5. Rob Deer, 1986-90
Key fact: Averaged 27 home runs during his five years with the Brewers

“Rooster,” as he was known from his shock of red hair, was prone to strikeouts. But when he connected, he hit the ball a long way, like on Easter Sunday 1987, when Deer slugged one of the most mammoth and meaningful home runs in the Brewers’ 50 years in Milwaukee. His tying, three-run home run into the teeth of a stiff wind at County Stadium in the bottom of the ninth inning preceded Dale Sveum’s winning, two-run homer, pushing the team’s record to 12-0 (on the way to an AL-record 13-0). It remains one of the signature regular-season victories in franchise history.

Deer owed his big break to then-Brewers manager George Bamberger. In Tom Haudricourt’s book, "100 Things Brewers Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die," there’s the story of 1986 Spring Training, when Deer appeared in Chandler, Ariz., fresh off a winter trade from San Francisco, and began bashing tape-measure home runs.