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, and are updated through the end of the 2025 season.

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. Josh Hader, 2017-22
Key fact: Winner of the Trevor Hoffman National League Reliever of the Year Award in 2018, '19 and '21 with the Brewers

If the standard is sheer dominance, then there’s an argument that Hader might be the best pitcher, period, ever to wear the uniform, joining the Brewers in 2018 as a throwback to the era in which relievers threw multiple innings. 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."

Hader was incredible for most of his six seasons with the Brewers, teaming with Corbin Burnes on the second no-hitter in franchise history on Sept. 11, 2021 and piling up 125 saves to move just behind franchise leader Dan Plesac’s 133 before the Brewers, wary of some of Hader’s peripherals and eyeing his eventual free agency, traded him to the Padres at the 2022 Trade Deadline. The Brewers’ play following the trade speaks for itself, but the deal did bear fruit in the long run, landing outfielder Esteury Ruiz, who was later flipped for William Contreras and Joel Payamps in a three-team trade, and left-hander Robert Gasser, a top pitching prospect. But Hader will be better remembered for inducing swing and miss at a rate never seen in Milwaukee. All told, he struck out 541 batters in 316 1/3 Brewers innings.

2. Dan Plesac, 1986-92
Key fact: All-time franchise leader with 133 saves

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, and he saved five games during the Brewers' record-tying 13-0 start.

“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.”

3. Devin Williams, 2019-24
Key fact: 39.4 percent strikeout rate ranks right behind Hader for second in franchise history (min. 30 innings)

When you have a pitch so good it has its own nickname, you know you’re onto something special. Unlike so many pitchers who hone the changeup last, Williams found his first.

“I started throwing like that as a kid,” Williams said. “Like, when I played catch with my friends, just to mess with people, trying to make them miss the ball when I threw it to them. That’s what turned into my changeup. I’ve had that since I was maybe 10 years old.”

It served him well over the years. Williams was Milwaukee’s top Draft pick in 2013 (he was a second-rounder; the Brewers didn’t have a first-round selection that year), and he overcame Tommy John surgery in the Minor Leagues to make it to the Majors in 2019. Williams was nearly unhittable during the shortened 2020 season as one of Hader’s setup men, posting a ridiculous 0.33 ERA while striking out 53 of the 100 batters he faced and becoming the third Brewers player to win his league’s Rookie of the Year Award. When the Brewers traded Hader in 2022, Williams took over as closer and didn’t miss a beat, posting ERAs of 1.93 and 1.53 while topping 60 appearances in ’22 and ’23. When Williams won his second NL Reliever of the Year Award in 2023, the honor had gone to a Brewers pitcher five times in the span of six seasons.

4. 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 forever haunted Brewers founder Bud Selig: 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.

5. 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. Through the end of 2025, he was 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 fifth in club history through the end of 2025 behind Hader, Williams, Plesac and Fingers.

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. … 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. … 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. ... After being released by the Yankees, John 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 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. … Francisco Rodríguez is fourth in Brewers history with 95 saves and 10th with 263 appearances.