Brewers Win First World Series Title With 4-1 Game 5 Win Over the Rays

The Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions for the first time. They beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in Game 5 on Wednesday night at Tropicana Field, taking the series 4-1 and ending a wait that stretches back to their only previous trip to the Fall Classic in 1982. The clincher followed the pattern of the whole series: the bottom of the order did the damage, the pitching staff refused to break, and the franchise that keeps losing its biggest names to bigger markets won with the players who stayed.

How did Game 5 unfold?

Milwaukee scored first and never trailed. Rookie Cooper Pratt singled home Brice Turang in the second inning off Rays ace Drew Rasmussen, then singled again in the fifth and scored on David Hamilton’s single to make it 2-0. William Contreras doubled home Christian Yelich in the sixth and Pratt added a sacrifice fly for a 4-0 lead, before Tampa Bay’s only run came on Chandler Simpson’s ninth-inning double off closer Trevor Megill. Megill then retired Richie Palacios on a grounder to second to end it, threw his arms in the air and was mobbed near the mound. The top three in Milwaukee’s order went a combined 1-for-11 in the game, which made the point of the series one more time: this team won with depth, as the Game 4 comeback that was denied in the 12th inning had already shown.

Why did Jacob Misiorowski leave the clincher?

He left because of a right calf cramp in the sixth inning, AP reports, and the crowd’s reaction said as much about the night as the scoreline. Misiorowski had thrown 5 2/3 scoreless innings of two-hit ball on four days of rest, pitching for only the fifth time on short rest in 34 starts this season, and he walked off to a standing ovation from the Brewers fans who had taken over the section behind Milwaukee’s dugout for the last three games. Leg cramps had forced him out of two outings earlier in the season, AP notes, and he had opened the series by breaking the World Series velocity record with a 103.5 mph fastball on the first pitch of Game 1. He finished the Series 2-0 with a 0.84 ERA, and the bullpen behind him, JoJo Romero, Abner Uribe and Megill, allowed just one baserunner after he left.

What records did Pratt and Chourio set?

Pratt set one and Chourio set another, and the two records tell the story of Milwaukee’s October in miniature. Pratt, 22, made his major league debut in June, and his sixth straight hit of the series in the fifth inning set a World Series rookie record before his sacrifice fly in the sixth, AP reports. He finished Game 5 with two hits and two RBIs, two nights after his 12th-inning home run in Game 4. Chourio went 1-for-4 in the clincher to finish the series with 11 hits, a five-game Series record, AP reports. That also closes the chase tracked in the article on Chourio tying Babe Ruth’s four-game record: 11 hits fell short of the 13-hit single-series record shared by Marty Barrett, Lou Brock and Bobby Richardson, but it was still the most hits anyone has collected in a five-game Fall Classic.

Why does USA Today call this the team nobody left?

Because the Brewers won after losing the people who built them. USA Today frames the title as a rebuke to the idea that a small-market club cannot survive its own success: manager Craig Counsell left for a $40 million contract with the Chicago Cubs, executive David Stearns left for the New York Mets, shortstop Willy Adames left for a $182 million deal with San Francisco, and closer Josh Hader left for $95 million in free agency. Their replacements won anyway. Pat Murphy, Counsell’s college coach, is now a World Series-winning manager. Matt Arnold, Stearns’s top lieutenant, pushed the club from 92 wins to 93 to 97 to 103 over four seasons. Pratt, a sixth-round pick signed away from Ole Miss, took over at shortstop in June. Ashby, the tall lefty cast as Hader’s successor, set a postseason record with 18 consecutive scoreless innings. The gang, as USA Today puts it, is all here, and the people who left are watching from elsewhere.

What made this Brewers team different?

The payroll sheet, for a start. AP notes this was the first World Series since 1991 between two teams in the bottom half of payrolls, with Milwaukee 19th and Tampa Bay 25th as of August 31. Milwaukee still led the majors with 103 regular-season wins and went 11-2 in the postseason, including seven comeback wins and a sweep of the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS, whose $338 million roster earned more than double Milwaukee’s $144 million, USA Today reports. The Brewers scored a major league-low 32.1 percent of their runs on home runs, and the teams combined for just four homers in the whole series. That is the identity Murphy built: contact, defence, a bullpen that never blinks, and a lineup where the ninth hitter can drive in the run that wins a championship. It worked against San Diego in the Division Series, where the captain was benched for a game against a left-handed ace, and it worked again in a Game 1 win that turned on an overturned double play.

What happens next in Milwaukee?

A parade, and then an uncertain winter. Owner Mark Attanasio told fans from the postgame stage on the field that Milwaukee had waited 44 years and now had its world championship, and that the city should prepare for the parade. AP adds a colder note: this might have been the last MLB game for an extended period, because owners are pushing for a salary cap from the players’ association and a management lockout is likely to start on December 2, which could threaten the 2027 season. For one night, that argument can wait. The Brewers began as the Seattle Pilots in 1969, moved to Milwaukee in 1970, lost the 1982 Series in seven games to St. Louis, and spent the decades since defined by who left. On Wednesday night in St. Petersburg, in front of thousands of their own fans who had taken over Tropicana Field, they finally became the team nobody has to explain anymore.