One Win From Forever: Brewers Can Sweep the Rays Tonight for Their First World Series Title

Fifty-seven years of waiting comes down to one night in St. Petersburg.

The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 10–1 on Monday to take a 3–0 lead in the World Series, and tonight they can finish it — a sweep, and the first championship in the history of a franchise that began as the Seattle Pilots in 1969 and moved to Milwaukee in 1970. One win. That's all that's left.

And if Game 3 was any indication, Tampa Bay isn't losing a close series. The Rays are being taken apart.

The inning that ended the argument

Milwaukee led 2–0 in the fifth, and with two outs the inning was one force play from being over. Christian Yelich beat the throw to second on a review that overturned the call — and then the Brewers did something no team in World Series history has ever done.

Eight runs. All eight with two outs. Seven straight hitters reaching base: Brice Turang's two-run single off the glove of shortstop Taylor Walls, Garrett Mitchell's RBI single, Cooper Pratt's two-run double, Sal Frelick's RBI double, David Hamilton's RBI single, and Jackson Chourio's RBI double to cap it. Ten-nothing, in an inning that was a replay review away from ending scoreless. It is the most two-out runs any team has ever scored in one World Series inning.

“Knife to the chest,” Walls said afterward. The Brewers finished with 16 hits — not one of them a home run. This is the team that was next to last in baseball in homers and second in runs per game: they don't beat you with one swing. They beat you with the next hitter, and the next one, until the inning buries you.

The kid and the left-hander

Chourio, 22 years old, went 4-for-5 with two runs scored, an RBI and a stolen base — the youngest player with a four-hit World Series game since Joe Garagiola in 1946, and the second-youngest ever with four hits and a steal in a Series game, behind only Ty Cobb in 1908. Through three games of this World Series he is 8-for-14. Brewers manager Pat Murphy has compared him to Kobe Bryant, and on Monday night Chourio was asked about it: “The discipline he had — that's what you try to take from the great ones.”

On the mound, Robert Gasser was just as historic. The left-hander allowed a leadoff single to Yandy Díaz in the first inning and then faced the minimum through six: 6.0 innings, 1 hit, 0 runs, 1 walk, 3 strikeouts, 75 pitches. He is the first left-hander to face the minimum through six innings of a World Series game since Sandy Koufax in 1965. Gasser arrived in Milwaukee as a piece of the 2022 trade that sent Josh Hader to San Diego — the most criticized deal of the David Stearns era. Its biggest payoff showed up in Game 3 of the World Series.

Tampa Bay's side of the cliff

The Rays managed three hits all night. Their only run came in the ninth, a Yandy Díaz RBI double off Brandon Woodruff — who was pitching in his first game since July 4 after a shoulder injury. Freddy Peralta, traded from Milwaukee to Tampa Bay, took the loss against his former team: five runs on seven hits in 4⅔ innings.

This is the strange part of the Rays' October: Games 1 and 2 in Milwaukee both ended with the tying run 90 feet from home. Tampa Bay was that close, twice — and still comes home needing to win four straight against a team that is 10–1 this postseason, that set a franchise record with 103 wins, and that swept the defending champion Dodgers in the NLCS. No team has swept both the LCS and the World Series since the LCS became a best-of-seven in 1985. The Brewers are nine innings from doing exactly that.

The Duel — Game 3

Jackson Chourio (MIL): 4-for-5, 2 R, 1 RBI, 1 SB — the youngest four-hit World Series game since 1946.

Yandy Díaz (TB): 2-for-4, 1 RBI — two of Tampa Bay's three hits and the double that scored their only run.

Game lines from the verified Game 3 box score, ESPN.

Tonight

First pitch is 8 PM ET / 5 PM PT on FOX from Tropicana Field. Milwaukee's own board at The Ticket has the Brewers as the moneyline favorite at −124, laying 1.5 runs, with the total set at 7 — the market expects Tampa Bay's best punch and still expects Milwaukee's night. A Rays win sends this to a Game 5. A Brewers win sends 57 years of almost into the past tense, in one night.

Previously's Take

This stopped being an upset watch a week ago. The Brewers are the best team in baseball — 103 wins, 10–1 in October, a World Series-record inning built entirely with two outs by the bottom half of the order — and they are playing like a team that knows it. Sweeps are supposed to feel fluky. This one feels like paperwork. Tampa Bay's season now depends on beating that team four times in a row, starting tonight, in its own building, against a lineup that just hung the most relentless inning the Fall Classic has ever seen. The brooms aren't a prediction. They're a schedule: one more night like Monday, and Milwaukee's forever starts tonight.

— The Sports Desk