Brewers Win the 2026 World Series: Game-by-Game Review
The Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions. They beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in Game 5 on Wednesday night at Tropicana Field, giving the franchise its first title in 57 years and finishing the postseason 11-2. It was a deserving champion. It was also a series that started as an instant classic and ended as something closer to a coronation, and my feelings about it changed along the way.
Game by game
Game 1: Brewers 1, Rays 0. A tight game with no home runs. Tampa had chances to tie in the ninth and could not.
Game 2: Brewers win by a run after trailing 4-0. A Sal Frelick home run and a Cooper Pratt go-ahead single in the seventh did the damage.
Game 3: Brewers 10, Rays 1. Milwaukee scored eight runs in the fifth inning, and Robert Gasser threw six innings of one-hit ball. Jackson Chourio went 4-for-5, and Freddy Peralta, pitching against his old team, was charged with five earned runs in 4.2 innings.
Game 4: Rays 4, Brewers 3 in 12 innings. Pratt homered in the top of the 12th, then Tampa scored twice in the bottom half on an error, a string of singles and a pinch-hit walk-off from Ben Williamson, who had been 1-for-15 in the postseason. The Rays became the fifth team to win Game 4 after trailing the series 3-0.
Game 5: Brewers 4, Rays 1. Jacob Misiorowski threw five scoreless innings before leaving in the sixth with a calf cramp, Contreras doubled in the sixth, and Trevor Megill jammed Richie Palacios with a 99.1 mph fastball for a groundout to Brice Turang to end it.
My honest review: a disappointing series
After two games I told you this was the most watchable World Series I could remember. I would not say that now. Game 1 was great. Game 2 was a stinker in which the Rays imploded. Game 3 was a bigger stinker. Game 4 was good, with extra innings and the stress of survival. Then Game 5 was a big, anticlimactic nothing, a game in which the Rays were never in it.
I expected six or seven games, two heavyweights trading blows. Tampa got in one punch, the four-run first inning in Game 2, and then got pummeled. I have watched a lot of Rays baseball this year and I have never seen that team look worse than it did over the final week. Nick's description of Game 2 is the right one: it was a one-run game that felt like a four-run win for Milwaukee.
That is not an excuse for Tampa. The Brewers took it to them, and any opportunity that appeared, they grabbed. Nick and I landed in the same place: the better team won, probably nine times out of ten over a seven-game series.
Why Milwaukee won
Pressure in every phase
Starting pitching, bullpen, offense, defense, and pressure everywhere. This team rarely beats itself, and when it did in Game 4, it was the only time the Rays got something back. I knew Milwaukee was good. I did not realize how good. They showed that a finely tuned machine does not need superstars: put the ball in play, make the defense beat you, and the Rays could not.
Contact never slumps. By our count Milwaukee hit just three home runs in the five games, and all three came from the bottom of the order: Frelick, David Hamilton and Pratt. They still scored a boatload of runs, including 10 in a game with no home runs at all.
The bullpen
Before the series I said the Rays matched up well offensively and in starting pitching, and that the bullpen was the biggest wild card. The Brewers version was elite. Aaron Ashby set a single-postseason record for a reliever with 18 consecutive scoreless innings, and the pen carried Milwaukee through a Game 4 in which it did not allow a run for seven straight innings before the 12th. JoJo Romero, Abner Uribe and Megill handled the late innings of the clincher. Honestly, starting pitching was the least impressive part of the Brewers' game, and they won anyway.
Murphy's two defining moves
Nick pointed to two decisions that shaped the season. The first was a move Milwaukee did not make: they never traded for Tarik Skubal, which would have completely changed the makeup of this club. The second came in the middle of September, when Pat Murphy benched William Contreras for not hustling with the home stretch coming. It lit a spark in him, and Contreras went on to win World Series MVP. Plenty of managers no longer do that to a star. Murphy did, and he said it was because the team plays a certain way.
Murphy also described his job as making the players believe they are better than they are, which is as good a definition of the job as I have heard. The Rays, by contrast, looked tight and like they were pressing, and I put a lot of that on Kevin Cash. Contreras threw out runner after runner to end innings, and Cash kept pushing the pace when he did not need to.
The MVP: easy call, real debate
William Contreras was named World Series MVP, and I called it after Game 2. He posted an .863 OPS, had eight hits and four RBIs, threw out three would-be base stealers, saved pitches in the dirt behind Ashby's buried curveballs and went 10-for-13 on ABS challenges. The staff held the Rays to a .182 average.
But Nick and I both admitted that three or four players had a case. Chourio tied Babe Ruth's record with 10 hits in the first four games and was a threat all series. Pratt had a hit in six straight World Series at-bats, the first player to do that since David Ortiz in 2013, and finished with nine hits and seven RBIs. If his Game 4 homer had been the game winner, I think we would have had a real MVP argument. Not one Brewers regular had a bad series, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Where the Rays broke down
The offense was the biggest shock. This team had been hitting the ball the other way, fighting off tough pitches and keeping the line moving through the Yankees and Guardians. Against Milwaukee it looked as if everyone was trying to hit a game-tying home run instead of a single to start a rally. Nick's shock was pitching depth. Once the bullpen was exposed and the offense was not scoring, Cash had to piece together a staff in a way he never planned, and he ran out of options. Add Rasmussen on short rest coming off arm trouble and it was clear how thin Tampa was.
I also never understood the lineup, with Yandy Diaz leading off and Chandler Simpson, who nearly won a batting title, hitting third. Nick and I debated the logic, which is to put a contact guy behind two on-base guys so he can drive in a run. I hate it as an old-school fan and as an analytics fan, for different reasons. It worked sometimes. I think it could have worked better.
Does a small-market champion change the lockout?
No. I think this is the point people will get wrong all winter. Two small-market teams having the best records in their leagues is a great story, but the playoffs still feature the same big-payroll teams year after year, and half the league has no realistic shot on April 1. Milwaukee has existed for a long time, and this is its first World Series win. That says more about how hard it is for a small market to win than how easy.
The argument cuts both ways. Players can point to this as proof that a well-run small-market team can win. Owners can point out that it happens about once every few decades. A Yankees and Dodgers series would have handed the owners a much better argument, and I do not think this one extends the lockout by even a month.
And the same story shows the problem. This Brewers roster is not going to stay together. Ashby and Jake Bauers are going to get paid, probably somewhere else, Yelich is not getting younger, and Contreras's contract may be coming up soon. Nick and I figure realistically a three-year window for Misiorowski and Chourio, even with Pratt locked in for eight years. Dustin May has already declined his option. This is the kind of team that could make several deep runs if you could keep it together for four or five years, and baseball's economics say you cannot. That is a big part of why the collective bargaining agreement expires December 1.
The Rays, and a few fan notes
Tampa reached the World Series for the third time in franchise history and still could not get over the hump. A new stadium in Tampa will help, but the Florida lifestyle will keep competing with baseball, and anybody who has tried the drive around the bay from St. Petersburg knows the problem. Game 5 felt like a Brewers home game, and I joked that the Rays quit in Game 5 the way their fans did. Last-minute tickets reportedly ran about $250, and one fan said two tickets and parking cost $505 total.
Three things to watch next
Misiorowski's health. A calf cramp that ended his Game 5 night is probably nothing, but it is worth tracking.
The Brewers' roster. Free agent departures and arbitration raises will test the whole model.
The winter itself. With a lockout looming, a lot of what normally happens in the offseason may not happen at all. The awards calendar is the last normal baseball news we are likely to get for a while.
We broke down the first two games in Sunday's show recap, and the full Thursday discussion is in our post-series recap. We are live every Sunday and Thursday on the Rounding Third show page. Want your own take heard? Join us in the community.
