Best Milwaukee Brewers Manager Of All Time Bracket

It’s March, which typically means bracket season is upon us. While others are making brackets about the best or worst Brewers in franchise history, we’re going to look at the Crew’s managers.

Throughout franchise history, the Brewers have had 19 managers. For the purposes of this bracket, we narrowed it down to 16 to make a simple sweet 16 tournament.

We had to exclude three Brewers managers from this bracket because of how the numbers had to work out, and those three managers were Roy McMillan, Dale Sveum, and Joe Schultz. McMillan was only manager for two games in 1972, while Sveum only managed 12 games in 2008, plus playoffs. Schultz was the manager of the Seattle Pilots in 1969.

We will hold votes on these matchups on the Reviewing the Brew Twitter account over the next several days as we work our way through this bracket.

Let’s take a look at the bracket.

Ball-in-Glove Region

(1) Harvey Kuenn vs. (4) Jerry Royster

Taking the No. 1 overall seed in this tournament is none other than Harvey Kuenn, who led the Brewers to their only World Series appearance in 1982. He managed one game in 1975, a victory, and then took over the manager’s role in the middle of the 1982 season, taking them all the way an AL pennant with a 72-43 record down the stretch.

Kuenn only managed one more season in 1983, and finished his managerial career with a 160-118 record.

Jerry Royster was the Brewers manager in 2002, finishing out the year after Davey Lopes was fired just 15 games into the season. Royster “managed” the ballclub to their first and only 100 loss season in franchise history. The Brewers lost 106 games that year, 94 of them under the guidance of Royster.

(2) Ned Yost vs. (3) Dave Bristol

Replacing the disaster that was Jerry Royster was fan favorite and former Brewers player Ned Yost. Yost played for the Brewers from 1980-83 and bringing him back excited the fanbase. The Brewers knew they had a long way to go before they were ready to contend and had a young roster that they wanted Yost to mold.

The first few years didn’t see great results in the win-loss record, but he got the Brewers up to a .500 record in 2005, which was their first since 1992. He was guiding the Brewers to a playoff spot in 2008 before a little downturn towards the end of the season cost him his job before he could take the Brewers to October. He finished his Brewers career with a 457-502 record.

Dave Bristol was the first Brewers manager in Milwaukee, managing from 1970-72, with a 144-209 record, 65 games below .500. The Brewers lost 90+ games in each of Bristol’s two full seasons, and had a 10-20 record in 1972 when he was relieved by Roy McMillan and Del Crandall. Bristol led the Brewers to a 4th place finish in 1970.