ST. PETERSBURG -- The Rays spent 2026 doing the little things right.
They won 98 games, took the division and claimed the American League pennant by playing cleaner baseball than most teams around them, by coming through in key spots and by leaning on pitchers who made opposing lineups miserable.
Then the Brewers showed up with the same kind of identity - only a little more of it.
Milwaukee closed out the World Series on Wednesday with a 4-1 win over the Rays in Game 5 at Tropicana Field, and Tampa Bay was left to sort through how a team built on fundamentals got beat by another club that did those same things even better. Afterward, there was no mistaking how the Rays felt about the opponent across the field.
“I was just saying that is one of the best teams I've seen at any level, in any sport, to be honest,” said closer Bryan Baker.
The disappointment still hung over the clubhouse, though. The Rays knew they had a team good enough to make this a fight, and they knew a few different breaks could have changed the shape of the series.
Game 2 is where that possibility started slipping away. Both clubs had built their seasons on avoiding self-inflicted damage, but Tampa Bay opened the door with a handful of mistakes.
Jonathan Aranda missed a foul popup that extended an at-bat and led to an RBI single. A few innings later, Aranda was charged with an error when a grounder got through his legs and produced another run.
Liam Hicks was thrown out at the plate on a single to left, and Chandler Simpson had a ball come out of his glove for a hit, though that one didn’t lead to more damage.
The Brewers weren’t spotless either, but that mattered less because they were the ones holding the edge. In a series where the Rays lost Games 1 and 2 by one run apiece, every missed chance got magnified.
“We didn't play our best,” veteran starter and pending free agent Nick Martinez said. “They played really well. Even when we played well, we didn't have our bounces go our way or calls go our way, just little things -- and that's part of it.”
The missed opportunities went beyond the errors. Tampa Bay also didn’t get the hit it needed in the biggest moments.
In both of the first two games, the Rays left the tying run on third base. For the series, they finished just 8-for-35 (.229) with runners in scoring position, and three of those hits came in the 12th-inning rally in Game 4.
That was a steep drop from the regular season, when the Rays led the Majors with a .283 average with runners in scoring position. Milwaukee, by contrast, came through in those spots at a .327 clip, going 17-for-52.
“It felt like their whole lineup, almost one through nine, was kind of rolling at the same time, which is really hard to deal with as a pitching staff,” Baker said.
The pitching gap showed up too. The Rays were expected to have the advantage in the rotation, but that edge never fully materialized.
Drew Rasmussen, the team’s ace, made two starts and allowed four earned runs on eight hits across 7 2/3 innings. Freddy Peralta, who had been excellent during Tampa Bay’s path to the World Series, gave up five runs in 4 2/3 innings during the Brewers’ 10-1 win in Game 3.
Milwaukee’s bullpen was the difference the Rays couldn’t match. The Brewers’ relievers posted a 1.48 ERA over 24 1/3 innings, while Tampa Bay’s bullpen finished at 4.38 ERA across 24 2/3 innings. By the end of the series, the Rays’ team ERA sat almost three runs higher than Milwaukee’s, 4.89 to 1.91.
“They're just all really good,” outfielder Jonny DeLuca said of the Brewers’ pitchers. “[It feels like] they all throw 100.
They're all around the zone. They all have secondary pitches.
It's just a really good bullpen, and so that's kind of what made them dangerous, along with a really good lineup.”
That was the blunt truth of the series: the Brewers outplayed the Rays. They pitched better. They hit better.
The Rays understood that after Game 5. What they couldn’t shake was how much it hurt anyway.
“It doesn't matter if it's the greatest team to ever be assembled on dirt, you still want to go out there as a competitor and beat the best of the best,” reliever Cam Booser said. “I don't think anything makes it easier to stomach a loss.
I think it's just going to hurt no matter who the opponent is. So I think you feel the pain, understand what it means and try to use it as motivation for next year.”
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