Rays World Series Comeback Forces Game 5 vs Brewers

The Rays World Series comeback bid is still alive after Tampa Bay walked off the Milwaukee Brewers in the twelfth inning on Tuesday night, turning a looming sweep into a Game Five on Wednesday. It was a wild, chaotic, four-hour night, and it might be the most Gen Z-coded baseball game of the year: pure plot twists and zero chill.

A sweep that almost happened

Milwaukee walked into Tropicana Field up three games to none, with its first championship in franchise history one win away. The Brewers had already swept the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the National League pennant, their first trip to the Fall Classic since 1982, according to CBS Sports. In Game Three they flattened Tampa Bay by ten to one thanks to an eight-run fifth inning.

That kind of run makes a team feel unstoppable. Milwaukee also arrived with an eight-game postseason winning streak, one shy of the record, which gave Tuesday the feel of a coronation waiting to happen.

Seven innings of tension, then a Pratt bomb

Tampa Bay took a one-to-nothing lead and lost it. The Rays went up two to one and lost that too. Their second run came in the fourth inning after Brewers third baseman David Hamilton missed a tag on Junior Caminero and then threw wildly to first, according to MLB.com.

From the top of the fifth through the twelfth, the score sat tied at two. Both bullpens dug deep. Rays would-be Game Five starter Nick Martinez came out of the pen for two scoreless innings, while Milwaukee reliever Aaron Ashby stretched a record relief run to eighteen straight scoreless postseason innings.

Then, in the top of the twelfth, Brewers rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt crushed a two-two sweeper from Ian Seymour into the left-center seats for a three-to-two lead. Pratt had already collected three hits. "That was probably one of the coolest swings of my life," he said afterward. "But it's over."

The twelfth inning that flipped everything

Milwaukee was close enough to taste the champagne. Seymour, though, got NLCS MVP Jake Bauers to pop out to end the top half and keep the Rays within reach. "I'm pitching for the season there," he said.

In the bottom half, Caminero led off with a grounder to third. Brewers third baseman Joey Ortiz made a long throw that bounced in front of Bauers and off his glove, a second costly defensive miscue on the night. The Associated Press reported that Liam Hicks then singled off reliever Shane Drohan, and Jonny DeLuca singled home pinch-runner Cedric Mullins to tie the score.

After Chandler Simpson loaded the bases with a single to center, pinch-hitter Ben Williamson bounced a "Baltimore chop" into right field to score pinch-runner Nick Fortes with the winning run. The final was four to three. Williamson had fouled a ball off his own face a day earlier. "Tonight," he said, "good things happened."

How rare is this, really?

History is both on and against Tampa Bay. According to MLB.com, there had been sixteen previous walk-off wins in World Series history by a team facing elimination, and the only earlier team to do it while facing a sweep was the 1910 Cubs.

The bigger math is steep. The Rays are the forty-fourth team to fall into a three-nothing hole in a best-of-seven series, and just the eleventh to force a Game Five. Only four have ever forced a Game Six, and none of them did it in the World Series. Tampa Bay is trying to become the first.

What to watch in Game Five

Game Five is tonight at eight Eastern on FOX, back at Tropicana Field. Tampa Bay burned seven pitchers and used Martinez in relief, so the Rays pitching plan is the big question mark. Milwaukee, meanwhile, hopes Jacob Misiorowski can deliver a title-winning bounce-back after the errors that sank them.

Brewers captain Christian Yelich kept the mood steady. "If you want to win a championship, you're supposed to survive some hard things," he said. "It's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to test you."

Rays manager Kevin Cash described the winning rally as pieced-together singles rather than fireworks, calling it "maybe the most important inning of our season." If you want more October drama, catch up on the rest of our sports coverage and keep an eye on whether Tampa Bay can keep the miracle going for one more night.