Taylor Walls isn’t buying the idea that the Rays should be satisfied with just taking a game in the World Series.
After Tampa Bay fell behind in the series, Walls was asked by Ken Rosenthal whether winning one game mattered as a way to prove the Rays belonged on the stage. He didn’t love the premise.
“Ha. No, I think that is pretty disrespectful, honestly,” Walls said.
“We are a team that is capable of winning four. No team wants to get swept.
At the end of the day, we think we can win the whole thing. We have full confidence that we can do it.”
That was the message from Tampa Bay: no moral victories, no consolation prize for simply showing up. The Rays believe they have enough to win the series outright, and they’re treating survival as the bare minimum.
They backed that up by taking Game 4, which kept the series alive and gave them another shot at defending home field at Tropicana Field. Game 5 now becomes the next must-win test.
If Tampa Bay loses, the season is over. If it wins, the series heads back to Milwaukee for Game 6.
Milwaukee is set to start Jacob Misiorowski, while Tampa Bay had not announced its Game 5 starter at the time of publication.
Walls’ comments made the stakes and the mindset clear. The Rays do not see themselves as a team that reached the World Series just to collect a token win. They want four, and they have to keep stacking them if they plan to get there.
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Kevin Cash made it clear afterward that the victory came with a price, because getting through an extra-inning playoff game meant leaning hard on pitchers the club may need again immediately. Game 5 now shifts from a simple elimination test to a planning exercise for Tampa Bay, with the staff having to sort through who can still answer the call and how far the Rays can push the group that just helped them survive. [Read more 🡒]
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The Rays were staring at the end of their season in Game 4 against the Brewers, and instead got the kind of chaotic night that can swing an entire World Series. With multiple lead changes and big relief innings from Nick Martinez and Bryan Baker, Tampa Bay kept itself close long enough for the game to spill into extra innings, where every pitch felt season-defining.
Ben Williamson eventually supplied the finish, lining the walk-off hit that sent the Rays home with a win and pushed the series to a Game 5. For a club that needed every out just to survive, the victory was equal parts bullpen grit and late-game nerve, the kind of escape that can change the mood of a series in a hurry. [Read more 🡒]