The Brewers Had Never Won a World Series. They Beat the Rays in Five With Baseball’s 19th-Biggest Payroll.
The Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions. Read that twice, because the franchise had existed since 1969 without ever getting to say it.
Milwaukee beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 at Tropicana Field on Wednesday night to close out the series four games to one. It is the first title in franchise history and the first championship baseball has delivered to Milwaukee since the Braves won in 1957.
Jacob Misiorowski Finally Looked Like Himself
Misiorowski had been the story of the Brewers’ regular season and the problem of their October. He got the Game 5 start and threw five and two-thirds scoreless innings with two strikeouts before leaving in the sixth with a cramp in his right leg.
Drew Rasmussen took the loss for Tampa Bay on short rest, going four innings and allowing one earned run with four strikeouts. JoJo Romero and Abner Uribe bridged the middle, and Trevor Megill handled the last two innings, ending it with a groundout to second base.
The scoring was unglamorous and entirely on brand. Cooper Pratt singled home a run in the second. David Hamilton drove in another in the fifth. In the sixth, William Contreras doubled and scored on a Pratt sacrifice fly for a 4-0 lead. Tampa Bay got one back in the ninth on a Chandler Simpson double after Liam Hicks doubled ahead of him.
Contreras Took the MVP and Earned It
Contreras hit .381 with an .863 OPS and four RBI in the series, and he threw out four baserunners. He also went 10-for-13 on challenges of the automated ball-strike system, which is a modern stat line and a weirdly perfect one for a catcher who spent the week winning arguments.
Pratt, a rookie shortstop, went 2-for-3 with two RBI in the clincher and set a World Series rookie mark for consecutive hits along the way. He finished second in the MVP voting.
“It had to happen for the city,” Contreras told MLB on Fox. “They were waiting a long time for that.”
This Was the Best Team in Baseball All Year
There is a temptation to file this under Cinderella. Do not. The Brewers went 103-59, the best record in the sport and a franchise record, won a fourth straight NL Central title, and went 11-2 in the postseason. They beat San Diego, then swept the Dodgers in the NLCS, then handled a 98-win Rays team that had already beaten the Yankees and the Guardians.
What makes it remarkable is the money. ESPN had Milwaukee’s payroll 19th in the majors, and the Brewers finished 28th in home runs. They won 103 games and a championship by being better at the parts of baseball that do not show up on a highlight package.
“We came in with a spirit about us, and we weren’t going to be denied,” said Pat Murphy, 67, in his third season as manager and the two-time defending National League Manager of the Year.
Tampa Bay Is Still Waiting
The Rays went 98-64 and won the AL East. They had pushed this series to a fifth game with a 12-inning walk-off in Game 4 on Tuesday, when Ben Williamson’s bouncer into right field ended it. Two nights later they were done.
This was Tampa Bay’s third World Series. They lost to the Phillies in 2008 and the Dodgers in 2020, and they have still never won one. “I’m crushed right now, disappointed,” Kevin Cash said.
Four franchises have now never won a World Series. Milwaukee is no longer on the list, and Christian Yelich had the line of the night about what that does to a place. “I think any time you win a World Series, it changes a place a little bit.”
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.
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