The Best Season in Brewers’ History?

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Photo credit: Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club

Baseball fans love leaderboards and, thanks to a recent addition to a popular statistics site, they now have access to more of them than they’ve ever had before. In addition to sorting tools allowing users to sort players by season and career totals, single game performances, splits and streaks, Baseball Reference’s Stathead tool recently unveiled a feature called “Span Finder” that allows for searches over a set number of games. The result is another new opportunity to look at some of the Brewers’ best individual performances in their 50-plus year franchise history.

It’s relatively widely accepted that the best single season in Brewers’ franchise history belongs to Robin Yount, whose 1982 campaign stands out as one of the greatest in the modern history of the sport. Yount batted .331 with a .379 on-base and .578 slugging that season, led all of baseball in hits, doubles, total bases, slugging and on-base plus slugging and was an All Star, a Silver Slugger Award winner, a Gold Glove-winning shortstop and the American League’s Most Valuable Player. Baseball Reference estimates he was worth 10.5 Wins Above Replacement that season, a mark eclipsed just one time in the following 19 years (Cal Ripken Jr. had 11.5 in 1991).

Even after altering the rules to allow any span of 162 games to be considered, no player in Brewers franchise history has had a run that compares favorably to Yount’s legendary season. There are, however, a few Brewers that still stand out on these new leaderboards:

Christian Yelich’s 62 home runs

Over a span of 162 games from August 2, 2018 through August 18, 2019, seasons where Yelich won and finished second in the balloting for National League MVP, Yelich connected for 62 home runs. During this stretch he went deep about once every 11.7 plate appearances despite the fact that opposing pitchers walked him 95 times.

To say this performance was unprecedented would be putting it mildly: Yelich holds the top 120 spots on the Brewers’ all-time list in this category (the 121st belongs to Prince Fielder, who homered 52 times in 162 games from September of 2006 through September of 2007). Yelich was more than just an all-or-nothing slugger during this hot season, however. He batted .338 with a .430 on-base and .714 slugging, collected 210 hits, scored 133 runs, drove in 142 and went 33-for-37 stealing bases.

Cecil Cooper’s 237 hits

While teammates Robin Yount and Paul Molitor each eclipsed 3000 hits for their respective careers and went to the Hall of Fame, Cecil Cooper holds the Brewers’ record for most hits over a span of 162 games. From September 11, 1979 through September 27, 1980, he collected 237 hits. Molitor’s best during his time in Milwaukee was 232, in a stretch that partially overlaps with Cooper’s. Yount’s best was 229, from May of 1982 through the following May.

Cooper’s record stretch really highlights just how good the 1980 Brewers were on offense. In addition to the aforementioned Yount, Molitor and Cooper the Brewers also had Ben Oglivie and Gorman Thomas, who combined to hit 79 home runs and finished first and third in the American League in that category. Despite scoring the American League’s third-most runs (811) and allowing the fourth fewest (682) that team went just 86-76 and finished third in the AL East.

Paul Molitor’s 148 runs scored

The Brewers’ franchise record for runs scored in a 162-game span belongs to Robin Yount, who scored 149 from the end of May in 1982 through the beginning of June in 1983, a stretch largely overlapping with his MVP season listed above. Right on his heels, however, is his longtime Brewers co-star. Molitor scored 148 times between June 19, 1987 and July 10, 1988.

This span includes one of the most-discussed hot streaks in Brewers’ history, Molitor’s 39-game hitting streak in July and August of 1987. He scored 43 times in those contests and continued to serve as “the ignitor” in the Brewers’ offense for much of the season that followed. Molitor’s finish to the 1987 season was so striking that he finished fifth in the AL MVP voting despite missing more than a quarter of the season.