Rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt drove in one run, plated another with a sacrifice fly and scored as the Brewers – denied a sweep by the Rays’ thrilling extra-innings comeback win on Tuesday – celebrated a four games to one victory in the best-of-seven series at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Milwaukee’s first World Series title comes 44 years after their only other trip to the Fall Classic, when they lost to St. Louis in seven games in 1982.
The Brewers, who swept the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series, gained an early 1-0 edge on Pratt’s single to center field that scored Brice Turang in the top of the second inning.
Pratt was cut down trying to reach second base and the Rays escaped the inning without further damage.
Pratt singled again – his sixth hit in six straight at-bats – and scored on David Hamilton’s single up the middle as the Brewers doubled their lead in the top of the fifth.
Milwaukee added two more runs for a 4-0 lead in the sixth, when Rays reliever Garrett Cleavinger hit Christian Yelich to open the inning.
William Contreras followed with a double to left field that scored Yelich.
After Turang belted a single Tyler Wells took the mound for Tampa Bay. He struck out Sal Frelick before Pratt lofted a sacrifice fly to right field that allowed Contreras to score.
Milwaukee’s flame-throwing pitching ace Jacob Misiorowski, who led the major leagues with 252 strikeouts in the regular season, recorded just two. But he pitched five and two-thirds scoreless innings, giving up just two hits before exiting with apparent leg cramps.
Misiorowski didn’t get his first strikeout of the game until the fourth inning.
He then gave up a two-out single to Chandler Simpson, who reached second on a fielding error by Sal Frelick as Liam Hicks – who had reached first when he was hit by a Misiorowski pitch – advanced to third.
Misiorowski escaped the jam when Ben Williamson grounded out to third to strand the Rays runners in scoring position.
Trailing by four runs, the Rays got a glimmer of a chance in the bottom of the seventh when Chandler Simpson’s one-out chopper was mis-handled by Brewers catcher Contreras, whose high throw down the right field line allowed Simpson to make it to second base.
Simpson reached third base on Richie Palacios’s ground out, but Brewers reliever Abner Uribe retired Victor Mesa Jr. to end the threat.
Simpson drove in the Rays’ only run, with a double in the bottom of the ninth, but there would be no miracle comeback and the Rays remain in search of a first title, having now come up empty in three World Series appearances. (AFP)
