The Rays’ run ended the hardest way possible: one last loss, one last packed house, and one last reminder of how far this team had climbed before the Brewers slammed the door in Game 5 of the World Series.
Milwaukee beat Tampa Bay 4-1 on Wednesday night at Tropicana Field, ending a season that had already stretched well beyond what most outside the organization expected. The Rays finished with an American League-best 98 wins, rolled through the Yankees in the first round, then outlasted the Guardians in six games to win the pennant. But the World Series belonged to the Brewers, who finished the job and celebrated the first championship in franchise history on the Trop turf.
Tampa Bay had put itself in a brutal hole early in the series. The Rays dropped the first three games, including the first two in Milwaukee by one run and with their final out coming with a runner on third base.
Game 3 turned into a blowout. By the time they finally fought back with Tuesday’s walkoff win in 12 innings, the mountain was already steep.
No team had ever erased a 3-0 World Series deficit, and only the 2004 Red Sox had ever done it in any best-of-seven series, when they came back on the Yankees in the AL Championship Series.
Even with Tuesday’s win and the talk afterward about momentum and playing loose, the Rays never found the offense they needed. They scored just 12 runs in the five games, hit .182 and went 8-for-39 with runners in scoring position. On Wednesday, they mustered only four hits.
Jacob Misiorowski gave them problems while on the mound for Milwaukee, even though he dealt with the condition of the mound all game and left in the sixth because of a right calf cramp. Tampa Bay’s only extra-bases later came in the ninth, when Liam Hicks doubled on a ball that caromed off first base and Chandler Simpson added another double.
The Rays’ pitching staff was working on fumes after seven arms were used in Tuesday’s win, and the group held up for a while. Drew Rasmussen got the start and turned in four innings of one-run ball in what was the first time in his career he had started back-to-back games on less than four days’ rest.
After that, the relief corps started to crack. Kevin Kelly gave up a run in the fifth, and Garrett Cleavinger and Tyler Wells combined to allow two more in the sixth.
Milwaukee got on the board in the second when rookie Cooper Pratt singled in Brice Turang. The Brewers added another in the fifth on consecutive singles by Pratt, Garrett Mitchell and David Hamilton, then extended the lead in the sixth with a hit batter, William Contreras’ double, a Turang single and a Pratt sacrifice fly.
Before Game 4, Yandy Diaz tried to put the season in perspective.
“I think it will be (considered) a phenomenal season,” the veteran DH said via team interpreter Kevin Vera. “At the beginning of the year, media, a lot of people around the league counted us out.
They didn’t have us in the postseason, but look at us now, we’re here in the World Series. “Definitely can’t hang our head with everything, because it was a very successful year.
I think it was a fantastic year for a lot of reasons.”
Still, the ending was familiar in one painful way. This was the Rays’ third World Series loss in an 18-year span, making them the only team still chasing a first championship to lose the Fall Classic three times. They also became the third team, along with the Dodgers and Tigers, to lose at least their first three World Series.
Tampa Bay’s previous losses came in 2008, when it fell 4-1 to the Phillies in its breakthrough season, and in 2020, when it lost 4-2 to the Dodgers in the pandemic-impacted Series.
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