The Road: How Tampa Bay Turned a 2-1 Hole Into a Pennant

When Bryan Baker got the last out on Sunday night — a pop-up off the bat of Chase DeLauter, dropping out of a loud Florida sky — 40,230 people at Tropicana Field shook the building. Junior Caminero found a microphone and said what the whole region was thinking: "I'm very happy for this team right here, for this city. Going to the World Series, my God. Unbelievable. Tampa is the best. This is for you!"

The Rays are going to their third World Series. The road they took was not the one the bracket suggested — because on paper, Tampa Bay's road was the easiest in the American League. It nearly ended in the second week anyway.

The top seed's road

Start with the correction this team earned: Tampa Bay was never a Cinderella. The Rays went 98-64, the best record in the American League, won the East, took the No. 1 seed and the first-round bye that comes with it. "Road" stories in October are supposed to belong to wild cards. This one belongs to a favorite that had to learn, mid-series, how close the floor was.

Their ace situation tells the story of the franchise. Tampa Bay's two best starting pitchers were both developed by the Milwaukee Brewers — the team waiting for them in the World Series. One arrived in a blockbuster-adjacent trade five years ago. The other arrived in July, broken, from the New York Mets, for three minor leaguers. Both are about to pitch against their old club with a pennant's worth of momentum behind them. More on them shortly.

Statement: the Yankees, swept

The Division Series was the Rays at full height. New York had survived Boston in the wild-card round and arrived with its usual October noise; Tampa Bay silenced it in three games. The opener was a 1-0 shutout, the kind of tight, pitching-first win the Rays have made a franchise signature, and the sweep was completed without the series ever really wobbling. The reward was home field for the ALCS and a few days of rest. The rust, as it turned out, was the problem.

The hole: Cleveland, 2-1

Cleveland — the AL's No. 2 seed, itself a bye team — took Game 1 at Tropicana Field, 7-3, jumping the Rays before their postseason had properly started. Tampa Bay steadied in Game 2 behind six scoreless innings from Peralta, winning 3-1. Then the series moved to Cleveland, a rainstorm pushed Game 4 back a day and scrambled the schedule, and the Guardians won Game 3, 3-2, behind Shane Bieber and Pete Halpin's go-ahead homer.

Two games to one, Cleveland. The top seed's season was tilting — one more loss from elimination games the rest of the way, against the league's most stubborn pitching staff.

The climb-out

What Tampa Bay did next is the reason it is playing Friday night.

Game 4: a 7-3 thumping in Cleveland, with Peralta — between starts — summoned from the bullpen for two of the biggest relief outs of the series. Game 5: the masterpiece. Drew Rasmussen, 16-5 in the regular season with an AL-best 0.913 WHIP among qualified pitchers, threw seven innings of one-run ball; the staff combined on a five-hitter; Baker recorded his fifth save in five postseason chances; 3-1, Rays. Afterward, veteran Yandy Díaz — the franchise's all-time leader in postseason games played — guaranteed a Game 6 win at home.

Game 6, Sunday: Tampa Bay scored first (Richie Palacios's two-run double, a Jonny DeLuca sacrifice fly), and then Caminero authored the swing of the series — his first career postseason home run, a two-run shot off the left-field foul pole in the seventh that made it 5-1 and sent the Trop into delirium. Cleveland clawed back to 5-3 in the eighth and loaded the bases; Ian Seymour and Mason Montgomery and finally Garrett Kelly navigated it, Kelly striking out José Rocchio with the tying runs aboard. Díaz kept his word with a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth. Baker closed the ninth: groundout, groundout, pop-up. Pennant.

It was the first pennant the Rays have won on their home field since 2008 — the 2020 trip was clinched in the San Diego bubble — and the building sounded like it.

The deadline heist

Every championship run has an acquisition that tilts it. Tampa Bay's might be the trade of the decade.

Freddy Peralta spent eight seasons in Milwaukee: 211 games, a 70-42 record, a 3.59 ERA, the ace of the 2025 Brewers. Milwaukee traded him to the Mets in the winter — for a package headlined by pitching prospect Brandon Sproat and infielder Jett Williams — and in New York, nothing clicked. Peralta carried a 4.99 ERA into the summer. At the deadline, the Mets cut their losses and sent him to Tampa Bay for three prospects.

The Rays rebuilt him. They moved him to the stretch full-time, shifted him to the third-base side of the rubber, widened his stance, quickened his delivery — and the pitcher Milwaukee remembered reappeared, improved. Over his final six regular-season starts he allowed three earned runs in 34 innings, a 0.79 ERA that made him the AL Pitcher of the Month for September. In October he has been even better: a 1.08 postseason ERA, an ALCS MVP trophy, and — per OptaSTATS — ten straight appearances allowing one run or fewer with the Rays winning every one, a run last matched by Bob Gibson in 1968 and Walter Johnson in 1913.

"He's kind of put us on our back," manager Kevin Cash said. Peralta's own explanation, to TBS, was simpler: "For some reason, it wasn't able to click. But when I got here, everything changed."

The other ex-Brewer

Rasmussen's story completes the symmetry. Milwaukee developed him, then traded him to Tampa Bay in 2021 for shortstop Willy Adames — a deal that made both teams better, and one that October is about to grade in full. Rasmussen has a 2.83 career ERA, made his second All-Star team this season, and owns a 1.29 ERA across three starts in this postseason. The Rays' rotation, the best left in the American League, was built in Milwaukee's system. The Brewers know exactly how good these two are. They developed them.

Third time

The franchise's World Series history is two heartbreaks: 2008, when a young Rays team lost to Philadelphia in five, and 2020, when they lost to the Dodgers in six in an empty ballpark in Texas. Caminero's clincher pose at home plate Sunday was a deliberate nod to Randy Arozarena, the star of that 2020 run, who was watching from the crowd — one era of Rays baseball handing the stage to the next.

Now the generation that grew up on those losses gets its own shot: Caminero, 23 years old with 42 home runs this season; Díaz, the franchise's postseason iron man; a rotation of former Brewers; and a manager in Cash who has done everything in this sport except win the last series of the year.

Four more wins. The road started as the top seed, detoured through a 2-1 hole, and ends Friday night in Milwaukee — against the team that built Tampa Bay's aces, in the ballpark Peralta called home for eight years. Baseball could not have written it any better if it tried.