ST. PETERSBURG -- The rebuilt Tropicana Field roof technically contained the Brewers. Absolutely nothing else has.
When the World Series shifted to St. Pete for Game 3 on Monday night, the Rays had faith that they had been beaten but not creamed in the Cream City, had belief that Freddy Peralta could shut down his old squad, had hope that they were one win away from reshaping the narrative of this Fall Classic.
Then came the eight-spot in a fifth inning that Peralta could not finish. Not just any eight-run outburst, but one that came entirely with two out.
The big inning that cemented the Brewers’ epic 10-1 victory and the one hit allowed in six scoreless innings from Milwaukee starter Robert Gasser made for the most extreme encapsulation yet of the way this team has demoralized opponents and made the postseason its personal playground on the increasingly likely path to a franchise-first title. Every Brewers starter reached base, eight of the nine drove in a run, and Jackson Chourio had four hits – one shy of tying the World Series single-game record – by the end of the fifth inning.
Milwaukee is up 3-0 in this best-of-seven. So not only is this club a win away from making Brewers history; it is a win away from joining the 1976 Reds -- the Big Red Machine – as the only clubs to sweep the LCS and World Series in succession (and the only one to do it since the LCS became a best-of-seven in 1985).
Call it Deep Brew, a baseball team as difficult to outwit as a chess-playing supercomputer.
Deep Brew has taken a Rays defense that was pretty much flawless in October and turned it into a mistake-prone mess. It has taken a Rays lineup oriented around contact and speed and turned it into a mostly silenced, sub-.200-swatting squad that keeps running into outs on the basepaths. It had Tampa Bay’s Ben Williamson fouling a ball off his own face.
It took that faith and hope and belief and poured a cold one all over it.
And Deep Brew did it in Game 3 in front of a packed house. Not just here at the Trop, where many a Milwaukeean had made the trek and the noise made for the visitor introductions and runs was deafening. But also back home at American Family Field, where even the watch party became a tough ticket.
The Brewers have made magic this month, with two wins after trailing 4-0, six wins after allowing the game’s first run, seven wins while trailing by any deficit and even one big fly ball batted down by a roof cable. But the sum of all this is something better than magic. It’s baseball as it ought to be, built on teamwork and tenacity and excellent execution in all facets of the game. (Even with the ABS Challenge System, where catcher William Contreras successfully challenged four ball-strike calls in a single game.)
Deep Brew went up 2-0 on Peralta and the Rays in the second inning with RBI singles from Christian Yelich and Contreras, the latter of which was aided by a Victor Mesa Jr. oopsie in right field.
But that was nothing.
The big inning, the historic inning, the inning that made the long flight for the Wisconsinites worth it was that fantastic fifth. There were two on and two out when Contreras grounded to third baseman Junior Caminero, who threw to second to try to get the inning-ending force. Yelich slid into second and was called out.
The Brewers challenged. The Brewers, in keeping with a theme, were right.
So instead of inning over, it was bases loaded. The Rays brought in Cam Booser, their most effective reliever of late, to replace Peralta. And then here’s what happened:
- Brice Turang singled up the middle to eat up the ordinarily excellent Taylor Walls and score two (4-0, Brewers).
- Garrett Mitchell singled on a hit-and-run to score one (5-0, Brewers).
- Cooper Pratt grounded a double off the glove of a diving Caminero to score two (7-0, Brewers).
- Sal Frelick doubled on a line drive to left to score one (8-0, Brewers).
- The Rays brought in Cole Sulser to provide a rare breather between Brewer runs.
- David Hamilton singled to center to score one (9-0, Brewers).
- Chourio doubled to right to score one (10-0, Brewers).
That is an INNING. The World Series, in all its 122 iterations, had never provided one like it. Never had a team scored that many runs with two outs in a single inning in a Fall Classic game.
And the Brewers did all of this without the benefit of a home run, which is so Brewers. It was only the 16th time – and the first since 2014 (Royals vs. Giants, Game 4) – that a team scored double-digit runs without going deep.
Aside from Gasser finishing off a gem of an outing (six innings, one hit, one walk, three strikeouts), Frelick making a sensational catch in right in the eighth and Brandon Woodruff making his first appearance in nearly four months in the Rays’ one-run ninth, the rest of the game was immaterial. And now it’s up to the Rays to make sure the rest of this Series isn’t immaterial. The 2004 Red Sox, in the ALCS, are the only team to come back from an 0-3 deficit in a best-of-seven postseason series.
If these Rays are going to do the same, they’re going to have to somehow deprogram Deep Brew.