The Brewers Scored Eight Runs With Two Outs in One Inning. The Rays Are One Loss From Being Swept.
Milwaukee 10, Tampa Bay 1. The Brewers lead the World Series 3-0 and can finish it tonight at Tropicana Field, and the fifth inning of Game 3 was the most lopsided half-inning this event has produced.
Eight runs. All eight with two outs. Twelve Brewers came to the plate, seven straight of them got hits, and the score went from 2-0 to 10-0 before Tampa Bay recorded the third out.
How It Actually Fell Apart
Jackson Chourio singled with one out. Jake Bauers flied out for the second. Christian Yelich walked. Yelich was then called out at second on a throw from Junior Caminero, Milwaukee challenged, and replay overturned the force. That is the play that decided the game.
William Contreras loaded the bases with an infield single. Freddy Peralta came out. Cam Booser came in, having allowed no postseason runs all month, and gave up a two-run single to Brice Turang that glanced off Taylor Walls’ glove and was not ruled an error. Then an RBI single by Garrett Mitchell, a two-run double by Cooper Pratt, an RBI double by Sal Frelick. Cole Sulser replaced Booser and allowed an RBI single to David Hamilton and an RBI double to Chourio.
Walls on the ball that got past him: “Knife in the chest.” Booser, on his own night: “Worst feeling in the world, feeling like you let your team down.”
Milwaukee scored 10 runs without hitting a home run, which MLB.com notes is only the 16th time that has happened in a World Series game. Sixteen hits, zero errors.
A Rookie Left-Hander Faced the Minimum
Robert Gasser threw six scoreless innings on one hit and 75 pitches, and he faced the minimum 18 batters. The hit was a Yandy Diaz single in the first. He retired 14 in a row after it before walking Victor Mesa Jr. to open the sixth.
The historical comparison is contested. MLB.com says he is the first starter to face the minimum through six innings since Curt Schilling in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series. ESPN framed it as the first left-hander to do it since Sandy Koufax in 1965. Take whichever you prefer, because the one-hit, no-run part is not in dispute.
“Normally it’s 35,000 against nine, but tonight we had 20,000 people behind us,” Gasser said of the Brewers fans who took over the Trop. Pat Murphy backed him up: “It was amazing, the level of support we got tonight.”
Chourio went 4-for-5 with a double and a stolen base, one hit short of the World Series single-game record of five. He has eight hits in three games.
Nobody Has Ever Come Back From This
Twenty-five teams have taken a 3-0 lead in a World Series. Twenty-one of them swept, four won in five, and none lost. Across all best-of-seven postseason series, 43 teams have gone down 3-0 and exactly one came back, the 2004 Red Sox.
Kevin Cash is not pretending otherwise. “It’s definitely deflating,” he said. “How could it not be?” He also offered the only framing available to him: “It’s kind of that ‘chip and a chair’ mentality. We’ve got a seat at the table. We’ve got to do something with the chip.”
Game 4 is tonight at 8 p.m. ET on FOX. Tampa Bay starts Griffin Jax, who carries a 1.88 ERA over his last six outings covering 24 innings. Milwaukee announced Dustin May, which ESPN reads as a bullpen game.
Neither franchise has ever won a World Series. The Brewers lost in seven to St. Louis in 1982, back when they were an American League team. The Rays lost in 2008 and 2020. One of them is about to break through, and Milwaukee has won eight straight postseason games to get to the doorstep.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
