Photo via Devin Williams - Instagram
Devin Williams
Devin Williams
The Milwaukee Brewers came into the 2025 season with plenty of question marks, but the bullpen wasn’t supposed to be one of the most prominent. Despite trading Devin Williams over the winter they still projected to have one of the game’s best relief corps behind Trevor Megill, Elvis Peguero and Joel Payamps.
The first six weeks of the season, however, have not gone as planned for the top of the relief depth chart. Megill has struggled with command and converted just three saves across his first eleven appearances. Peguero was hit hard across five outings before returning to the minors. Payamps had a pair of early meltdowns mar his stat line, and still has an ERA over ten on the season despite allowing just one earned run in his last six appearances. Collectively FanGraphs estimates that trio has been worth -0.3 wins above replacement to date and credits the Brewers with the game’s 18th best bullpen as a group. It’s a far cry from last season, when they were fourth.
The good news, however, is that the best Brewers bullpens in recent memory have typically not sprung forth fully formed on Opening Day. They’ve been the end result of trial and error, injury and emergence, and in-season additions. Here are the last three times where FanGraphs credits the Brewers with having had one of the sport’s top relief units, and a look at where they started:
2024
As noted above, last season’s Brewers graded out as having the fourth best relief unit in all of baseball and they did it despite a heavy workload, gathering the fourth-most innings of any bullpen. That unit was dealt a rough blow before the season even started, however, as two-time All Star closer Devin Williams missed the season’s first 104 games with a back injury. On Opening Day of that season the Brewers turned to Abner Uribe to take the ball in a save situation. Uribe recorded the final three outs that day but didn’t stay in the role long: He recorded three saves in the Brewers’ first four games and none after and was later demoted to the minors before suffering a season-ending injury in May.
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2018
One of the most successful teams in Brewers history didn’t necessarily start that way, as the 2018 Brewers had a 5-9 stretch in early April and found themselves in fourth place in the NL Central just 17 games into the season. Josh Hader and Jeremy Jeffress would both go on to represent that Brewers team in the All Star Game but neither were the closer to start the season: Incumbent relief ace and 2017 All Star Corey Knebel opened the year in that role but struggled to replicate the success he had experienced the year before. Hader and Jeffress would eventually claim roles expected to be handled by veterans Matt Albers, Joakim Soria and Boone Logan.
2011
One of the most memorable figures of the Brewers’ first division championship team in nearly three decades was closer John Axford, who was nearly untouchable for much of the year and recorded 43 consecutive saves from April through the end of the season. Behind him, however, the Brewers had to work through some early growing pains: Set up man Kameron Loe had a 5.82 ERA through his first 20 outings and veteran Takashi Saito pitched just twice before missing three months early in the year. From June 18 through the end of the season those two combined to pitch in 63 games with a 1.71 ERA, however, rewarding the organization’s patience with them.
