The Brewers Bracket: Vote For Your Favorite All-Time Brewer

Hey readers – I want you to do something really quick. I want you to steel yourself for what’s about to come.

Last week I created…something.

It’s a bracket you guys! But not just any bracket – it’s a full fledged Brewers Bracket.

We painstakingly picked 64 Milwaukee Brewers players from the entirety of the franchise’s existence and pitted them against one another to find out who you, dear reader, consider to be the best Brewer of them all. Without further ado, follow us past the jump to find out how you can get involved.

This is your official Reviewing the Brew Brewers Bracket. Print it, spread it amongst your friends for office pools or parties, but most importantly remember to vote for the player YOU want to win it all.

It might be hard to read on here, so give it a click and it’ll come up nice and pretty-like for you. If it looks a little intense, don’t worry – we’ve got ground rules for you.

It basically breaks down the same way as the NCAA Brackets that I lose every March, with 64 individuals vying for the title of Reviewing the Brew’s Favorite Player. It comes with a lot of perks, I’d imagine.

Ryan Braun worked hard to get to the number one seed. Doesn’t he deserve your vote? (Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports)

The Bracket itself breaks down into four divisions – each one named after a Hall of Fame Player that played on the Milwaukee Braves. Those names indicate whether the number one seed is a pitcher or a fielder. Pitchers and offensive players are matched-up throughout the first round of the bracket so as not to stack the field either way straight away. We tried, when we could, to match up players from different eras as well.

If you’re wondering what formula we used to create the seeding – I could tell you we’d created some amazing sabermetric-type formula dividing WAR by WPA (or something equally intelligent sounding) and multiplying all sorts of fractions, but it was really just a majority’s worth of gut instinct and sliding around based around career statistics, service time, and a basic idea of fan popularity. You probably think we got a whole bunch of this wrong.

Good – because how else are we going to motivate you to vote for your favorite players?

If we haven’t already, we should shortly be putting up a pool with all of our number one seed match-ups, and that will be up for 24 hours for you to vote. Throughout the day on Twitter and Facebook, we will be posting more match-ups for you to vote along with the closing time for those polls. Just tweet us with the name of the player you’re voting for and the hashtag #BrewersBracket in order to secure your vote.

This will be happening throughout the month until we reach the best of the best Milwaukee Brewers players. So take a note from our Chicago brethren – vote early and vote often.

Here’s a breakdown of the divisions:

Eddie Mathews Division

1. Ryan Braun vs. 16. Derrick Turnbow

2. Teddy Higuera vs. 15. Ronnie Belliard

3. Jeff Cirillo vs. 14. Ken Sanders

4. Yovani Gallardo vs. 13. Scott Podsednik

5. Ben Oglivie vs. 12. Trevor Hoffman

6. Bob Wickman vs. 11. Greg Vaughn

7. B.J. Surhoff vs. 10. Chris Capuano

8. John Axford vs. 9. Sixto Lezcano

Warren Spahn Division

1. Jim Slaton vs. 16. Craig Counsell

2. Paul Molitor vs. 15. Danny Kolb

3. Mike Caldwell vs. 14. Bill Hall

4. Don Money vs. 13. Jim Colborn

5. Pete Vuckovich vs. 12. Corey Hart

6. Rickie Weeks vs. 11. Luis Vizcaino

7. Juan Nieves vs. 10. Geoff Jenkins

8. Jose Valentin vs. 9. Ricky Bones

Red Schoendienst Division

1. Robin Yount vs. 16. Randy Wolf

2. Ben Sheets vs. 15. Dale Sveum

3. Prince Fielder vs. 14. Eduardo Rodriguez

4. Chris Bosio vs. 13. Jonathan Lucroy

5. Jim Gantner vs. 12. Brian Shouse

6. Cal Eldred vs. 11. Ted Simmons

7. Jeromy Burnitz vs. 10. Tom Murphy

8. Moose Haas vs. 9. Hank Aaron*

*Let be known that, for the sake of fairness, we placed Hank Aaron where we did because we felt it should be based only on his performance as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Lew Burdette Division

1. Dan Plesac vs. 16. Casey McGehee

2. Cecil Cooper vs. 15. Kameron Loe

3. Rollie Fingers vs. 14. Marquis Grissom

4. Gorman Thomas vs. 13. Chuck Crim

5. Zack Greinke vs. 12. Fernando Vina

6. Richie Sexson vs. 11. Ray King

7. Jerry Augustine vs. 10. Dave Nilsson

8. J.J. Hardy vs. 9. Bill Travers