Tropicana Field looked like American Family Field South on Monday night, and for good reason. The Milwaukee Brewers are one win away from their first-ever World Series title after an emphatic Game 3 win over the Tampa Bay Rays (MIL 10, TB 1). The Brewers have a 3-0 series lead and can win the World Series as early as Tuesday night.
Milwaukee took a 2-0 lead in the third inning, then opened the game with an eight-run fifth. At one point, they scored six points on 12 shots. Brice Turang’s two-run single off Taylor Walls’ glove opened the floodgates and was the second of seven – seven! — consecutive hits with two outs. This could have been the beginning of the end of the World Series:
The eight-run fifth inning was the highest-scoring fourth inning in World Series history. The Tigers had a 10-run inning in 1968, the Athletics had a nine-run inning in 1929 and the Blue Jays had a nine-run inning last year. In a postseason dominated by preventing pitches and runs, the Brewers racked up hit after hit and run after run Monday.
Robert Gasser, not Jacob Misiorowski or Logan Henderson, has been Milwaukee’s best starting pitcher in the postseason. He allowed one hit, a leadoff single to Yandy Díaz, in six shutout innings in Game 3. He faced the minimum thanks to a caught steal and a double play, and at one point Gasser recorded 10 straight outs on just 26 pitches. Gasser is only the second pitcher in World Series history to finish a start of six or more innings while facing the minimum number of batters; Don Larsen did it in his perfect game in 1956. The Rays simply seemed outmatched.
For Tampa fans, you can take comfort in the fact that the Red Sox were blown out badly – badly as in 19-8 – in Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS. They looked dead in the water, much like those Rays, and then they rattled off four straight wins against the Yankees to erase the 3-0 deficit. Now here are our winners and losers from Game 3 of the World Series.
Winner: Christian Yelich’s hustle
Those two-out hits will get all the attention and understandably so, but the eight-run fifth inning won’t happen without Christian Yelich’s hustle. The Brewers captain beat out a force play at second base (after the replay overturned the out call) to keep the inning alive. If Yelich slows down, the inning is over, the Brewers lead 2-0 and it’s a very different game. Instead, eight races followed.
Yelich is not a young man, at least not in baseball player terms. He’ll be 35 in December and he’s had all kinds of back and knee problems during his career, plus he plays on grass, which isn’t nice for running or sliding. Nonetheless, Yelich hurried to overcome the force play and his team rewarded the effort with one of the greatest innings in World Series history.
All nine players in Milwaukee’s starting lineup reached base and eight of the nine had a hit. All nine scored a point and eight of nine scored a point. It was a total team blowout from one to nine in the batting order.
Winner: Jackson Chourio
The Brewers are one win away from their first-ever World Series title and their 22-year-old wunderkind left fielder has been the center of attention. Jackson Chourio continued his Fall Classic star turn with a 4-for-5 effort in Game 3. He doubled and also stole a base. Chourio is the youngest player with four hits in a World Series game since Joe Garagiola for the 1946 Cardinals.
Chourio is the 26th player all-time with multiple hits in the first three World Series games (William Contreras is 27th) and the first since Adam Eaton in 2019. He is also the youngest player to do so. Chourio won’t turn 23 until March. He is slightly older than the college players selected in the first round of the amateur draft in July. The young man is a precocious hitter.
Overall, Chourio is 8-for-14 (.571) in three World Series games and is hitting .286/.308/.429 in 11 total playoff games. This batting line may not jump out at you, but keep in mind that the league average is .216/.297/.339 in the postseason. Chourio looks like Ted Williams compared to the rest of the league in October.
Loser: Opponent aces
Assuming they win the series, no one can say the Brewers had an easy path to the title. They have won eight straight games and in those eight games they have beaten Tarik Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Drew Rasmussen and now Freddy Peralta. The Brewers also have a ninth-inning comeback against Mason Miller in the postseason.
Milwaukee continues to beat the other team’s best, and in Game 3 it was Peralta, who failed to finish five innings and was charged with five runs after allowing two runs in the entire postseason before Monday. He faced 22 batters and 10 reached base.
Fastball Freddy had been so good since joining the Rays at the trade deadline. In the end, it was just another branch that was fed by the Brewers’ wood chipper. The Brewers either worked long at-bats or got hits on the first or second pitch, nothing in between, and they had traffic in every inning. Baseball’s best team of the regular season reached another level in October.
Winner: Rest the bullpen
Because getting blown out wasn’t bad enough, the Rays didn’t force Brewers manager Pat Murphy to even think about warming up Abner Uribe or Aaron Ashby, his go-to relievers. Uribe had four outs in Games 1 and 2. Ashby had five outs in both games. Murphy acknowledged that neither is “fresh” after Game 2. It’s October and neither pitcher is fresh, but these two have worked hard this postseason.
Gasser’s blowout and dominant outing allowed Uribe and Ashby (and closer Trevor Megill) to enjoy a restful night sitting on the bullpen bench in the air conditioning of Tropicana Field. Uribe and Ashby will enter Tuesday night’s potential World Series deciding game without having pitched since Saturday; at this time of year, that’s the equivalent of two weeks of vacation. The Brewers won the game and the play within the game too.
Loser: home field advantage
The man on the scene, Matt Snyder, reports that the crowd at Tropicana Field was about 50/50 Rays fans and Brewers fans. For most of the game, it looked like 90% Brewers fans and 10% Rays fans. That was true even before Milwaukee’s eight-run fifth inning. The Brewers’ hits were greeted with cheers, as were the outs thrown by the Rays’ batters. It was a unique soundtrack.
This was the first World Series game at Tropicana Field since 2008 (remember, the 2020 World Series was played at Globe Life Field), but it was a 50/50 crowd at best. That certainly wasn’t the reason for the blowout, but it must have been a little disheartening for the Rays players to hear their stadium taken over by visiting fans. It wasn’t an intimidating atmosphere for the Brewers at all.
Gn sports
