Top Milwaukee Brewers Of The 2010s: 50. Francisco Rodriguez

Welcome to the beginning of our ranking of the Top 50 Milwaukee Brewers of the past decade.

The 2010s were a very successful time in the Milwaukee Brewers’ franchise history. They made three postseason appearances, which matches the number of postseasons they went to in the previous 40 years of their history.

There were a number of contributions throughout the decade by a wide variety of players.

How We Ranked Them

We created an initial list of the top players by combining their Fangraphs Total WAR from each year they were on the Brewers and ranking them from highest to lowest.

However, this wasn’t going to be list of simply who had the highest WAR while they were here and that’s it. So we adjusted the list based on postseason contributions, overall quality of player, and general importance to the franchise.

Here we go.

50. RHP Francisco Rodriguez

How could anyone forget the K-Rod years? From 2011-2015 the Milwaukee Brewers just couldn’t get away from Francisco Rodriguez. Here are his Brewers WAR numbers by season.

2011: 0.7 WAR

2012: 0.3

2013: 0.3

2014: -0.6

2015: 1.0

Total WAR: 1.7

Rodriguez tallied 95 saves in his career in Milwaukee with a 2.91 ERA in 250.2 innings pitched over 263 games.

He made the All-Star team twice as a Brewer, making both the 2014 and 2015 Midsummer Classics. Those were the years he was the primary closer, after being the setup man to John Axford and Jim Henderson the years prior.

Despite being a fantastic closer for the Angels and Mets before arriving in Milwaukee, K-Rod accepted the non-closer’s role after he was initially traded to the Brewers on July 12, 2011 for two players to be named later (Danny Herrera and Adrian Rosario).

K-Rod had his first career base hit when he was with the Brewers back in 2011 with an infield single on August 12th against the Pirates.

The Milwaukee Brewers had contractual control over K-Rod for the rest of 2011 and 2012. He was granted free agency, signed a one year contract early in the 2013 season, was traded to Baltimore. Signed another one year deal with the Crew in 2014, became a free agent, and signed another pact in 2015.

Then, in November 2015 with the Brewers embarking on a full rebuild, he was traded one final time to the Tigers in exchange for Javier Betancourt and a player to be named later, who just so happened to be Manny Pina, the Crew’s current backup catcher.

Francisco Rodriguez had a lot of contributions to this franchise, despite pitching mostly in the down years after 2011. He was a key setup man in that 2011 postseason run and gave up only one run in five combined innings in the NLDS and NLCS that year.

Congratulations to Francisco Rodriguez for coming in at No. 50 on our Top Milwaukee Brewers of the 2010s countdown.

This series will continue throughout the rest of the month until we reach our top Milwaukee Brewers player of the 2010s.