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.
"I was ready, and I wanted to win today,” Chourio said. “I knew that us winning this game today, it was a big one and it was going to be a big one for us."
Milwaukee, a winner of eight straight in this postseason, 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.
Especially in a fifth inning that went from 2-0 to 7-0 in the span of three pitches … and then kept going.
“It's definitely deflating,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “How could it not be?”
Deflating and deafening. Because the Brewers didn’t just attract a packed house back home at the watch party at American Family Field. The sheer noise of Milwaukeeans who made the trek to the Trop made it sound like the number of Brewers fans rivaled the number of Rays fans in attendance.
“It was unbelievable, and our players felt it, and they'll tell you about it,” manager Pat Murphy said. “The players looked around like, ‘Wow!’ … That's a statement about how much this team has captured the hearts of the people from Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin, all the Brewer fans. It was amazing, the level of support we got tonight. It was incredible.”
Deep Brew has 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.
“You're kind of lengthening your primary [lead] there,” said Yelich, “in case that happens, where there's a ball in the hole or some sort of play happens where, you know, you could potentially beat the throw.”
After the game, Yelich’s teammates raved about that play from their captain. It changed the game. 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.
“That’s just the credit to these guys and the way they play the game,” hitting coach Dan Vogelbach said. “They just don't play the game in the batter’s box. Offense is way more than just hitting. These guys play for each other, and nobody wants to be the hero. They're OK with the next guy being it. They just pass the baton over and over again, and they're getting rewarded for it.”
Peralta, who was resurrected by the Rays after a rough tenure with the Mets team that acquired him from the Brewers last winter, was charged with five of the runs -- only one less than he had allowed in seven combined starts at the Trop since the trade.
“I was analyzing, like trying to see, and the key for them was that they weren't trying to do too much,” Peralta said. “They weren't trying to hit homers or all that. What I saw tonight [is] they were just waiting for a good pitch and just tried to hit the ball.”
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.