Rays live to fight another day thanks to Williamson's walk-off single
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ST. PETERSBURG -- Ben Williamson has resuscitated the Rays.
Tampa Bay was just three outs away from elimination at the hands of the Brewers in Game 4 of the World Series before launching a stunning, 12th-inning rally to prevail 4-3 in a cinematic thriller Tuesday night at Tropicana Field.
With two aboard and Shane Drohan on the hill, Jonny DeLuca drove in the tying run with a single and Chandler Simpson singled to load the bases before Williamson came on as a pinch-hitter and stroked a high bouncer -- a true Baltimore chop -- to right to score pinch-runner Nick Fortes with the winning run. “Walking on Sunshine” blared on the speakers for a Rays team that somehow escaped the darkness.
There had been 16 previous walk-off wins in World Series history by a team facing elimination. Actually, 13 of them had been in extra innings and six had been in the 11th inning or later like this one. But the only previous team to do it when facing a sweep, like these Rays, was the 1910 Cubs.
The Brewers were trying to not only win the first title in franchise history but also become the first team to win nine in a row in the playoffs and the first team to sweep both a best-of-seven LCS and World Series.
Just when it appeared rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt’s solo homer in the top of the 12th would launch the Brewers into the history books, the Rays found a way to survive for at least another day -- specifically Wednesday, when they’ll play their final home game of 2026 and hope to push this thing back to Milwaukee.
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The Rays had played so poorly in this Series’ first three games that, in a time in the baseball calendar when a week feels like a month, you could be forgiven for forgetting how good they actually are. The defense, plate approach and aggressive-but-not-reckless baserunning that had defined their rise to the top of the AL East and their pursuit of the AL pennant had completely vanished. They beat themselves just as much as they had gotten beat in Games 1 and 2, and then they completely collapsed in Game 3.
So Tampa Bay did not have the luxury of thinking about winning four games or even one.
“Win an inning,” president of baseball operations Erik Neander said before Game 4.
They knew they had to start there, and they did. Specifically, they won the second inning, when a Simpson double had DeLuca motoring home all the way from first to give the Rays a 1-0 lead.
Of course, a lead on the Brewers these days just feels like a date with disappointment. Sure enough, the Brewers answered when Pratt punched his own RBI double to left to score Sal Frelick from first and even it up at 1 in the top of the fourth.
The Rays were able to regain the lead when, in a flip of this Series’ script so far, they pressured the Brewers into some defensive drama in the bottom of the inning.
Third baseman David Hamilton fielded a DeLuca grounder and missed the tag on Junior Caminero as the Rays star advanced from second to third, then threw errantly to first, allowing Caminero to score. A replay challenge of the would-be tag (whether Caminero had run outside the path to third was not reviewable) confirmed Hamilton’s double misplay had given the Rays a 2-1 lead. But because the Brewers are gonna Brewer, it took Hamilton mere minutes to atone for the error by sending a deep blast to the right-field seats for a fifth-inning solo shot that knotted it at 2.
It stayed knotted when the Rays’ golden opportunity of a Yandy Díaz leadoff single in the sixth was snuffed out by a fantastic play from Brewers second baseman Brice Turang. He made a difficult snare of Jonathan Aranda’s scorched 101.8-mph liner and then fired to first in time to catch Díaz off the bag for a huge double play.
It also stayed knotted because Rays starter Nick Martinez was successfully summoned for two scoreless relief innings, a huge hand in Tampa Bay’s “all hands on deck” effort. Their closer Bryan Baker contributed two scoreless innings of his own, thanks in part to Simpson snagging a frightening Garrett Mitchell fly ball that could have gone for extra bases by making a leaping grab at the left-field wall and then Pratt’s safe steal of second base getting overturned by a replay review to end the ninth.
Brewers reliever Aaron Ashby continued his incredible October by keeping the Rays off the bases in the ninth, 10th and part of the 11th. He surpassed Andrew Miller’s 2016 record (16 innings) by reaching 18 straight scoreless relief innings to start this postseason.
The Rays, of course, got big outs of their own – from starter-turned reliever Martinez, Baker, Tyler Wells and Cam Booser – to keep staving off elimination and living to fight another inning. Pratt’s blast off Ian Seymour in the 12th looked as though it would turn the lights out on the Rays. The many Milwaukeeans who had infiltrated the Trop made their loudest noise yet, and the Brewers players poured out of the dugout to celebrate the biggest of Pratt’s four hits on the night.
Somehow, the Rays didn’t get rattled. Not to be overlooked, Seymour got NLCS MVP Jake Bauers to pop out to end the top of the 12th after a Jackson Chourio double gave the Brewers a chance to really break it open. That out loomed large when the resilient Rays rallied.