The Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions for the first time in franchise history. The Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field in Game 5 on Wednesday night (MIL 4, TB 1) to clinch the franchise's first title. Milwaukee took a 1-0 lead in the second inning, tacked on in the middle innings, then let their seemingly impenetrable bullpen take it from there.
Here is the final out of their first-ever World Series championship:
As it has done all series, the bottom of the order did the heavy lifting for the Brewers, offensively. Their top three hitters -- Jackson Chourio, Jake Bauers and Christian Yelich -- went a combined 1 for 11 with five strikeouts in Game 5. The rest of the team went 7 for 21 (.333) with five strikeouts. Rookie Cooper Pratt and No. 9 hitter David Hamilton drove in three of Milwaukee's four runs.
Presumptive National League Cy Young winner Jacob Misiorowski turned in his best start of the postseason, then three relievers -- JoJo Romero, Abner Uribe, Trevor Megill -- held the Rays to one run in the final 3 ⅓ innings. Tampa scored six runs in their final 38 innings of the series. They were simply overmatched. Milwaukee was the better team every which way.
The Brewers went 11-2 and outscored their opponents 59-32 in the postseason. They knocked off the two-time defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series and then beat the American League-best Rays in the World Series. The Brewers took the difficult path through the postseason and dominated anyway.
This is the first time since at least the start of the Wild Card Era in 1995 that the team with the better regular-season record won every postseason series. The 103-win Brewers were baseball's best team wire-to-wire during the regular season and they carried it right through October. A deserving champion through and through.
Here now are our winners and losers from Game 5:
Winner: Cooper Pratt
Pratt was robbed of history in Game 4. His go-ahead home run in the top of the 12th inning should have gone down as the biggest swing in Brewers history. Instead, the bullpen blew the lead in the bottom of the inning and lost the game, and Pratt's home run will go down as a footnote. The 2026 equivalent of the Rajai Davis home run in 2016, basically.
Pratt got his history in Game 5. He drove in the game's first run with a single in the second inning, then singled again in the fifth. That gave him six hits in six consecutive at-bats going back to Game 4, which sets a new World Series record for a rookie.
Pratt added an insurance run with a sacrifice fly in the sixth inning and finished the game 2 for 3 with 2 RBI. He went 8 for 19 (.421) with two doubles, a homer, and 7 RBI in five World Series games. Overall, Pratt hit .354/.373/.479 this postseason, which looks like Robin Yount compared to the .217/.296/.338 postseason average.
A rare bad night for Milwaukee's bullpen robbed Pratt of a legacy moment in Game 4. I think he'll find a way to get over it now that he's a World Series champion. The young man signed a $50.75 million extension on April 3, made his MLB debut on June 16, and won the World Series on Oct. 28. Not a bad year for Mr. Pratt.
Loser: Kevin Cash's quick hook
Look, I get it. Drew Rasmussen has had three career UCL surgeries and Game 5 was his first career start on short rest. Extra short rest, really, because extra rest is normal rest for Rasmussen. Only seven of his 30 regular-season starts came on four days of rest. He threw 89 stressful pitches in 3 ⅔ innings in Game 2 too. The Rays asked a lot of Rasmussen in Game 5.
And you know what? Rasmussen delivered. He held the Brewers to one run in four innings, and I'm not sure what more the Rays could have asked, really. And yet you can't help but wonder if Rasmussen had a little more in the tank after throwing only 48 pitches. Even one more inning could have made all the difference because the game unraveled as soon as he was out.
Kevin Kelly, the first man out of the bullpen, faced five hitters and allowed three hits and an insurance run. Garrett Cleavinger, the second man out of the bullpen, went hit batsman then double to open the sixth inning, resulting in another insurance run. Rasmussen allowed three baserunners in four innings. Kelly and Cleavinger then allowed six of nine hitters to reach.
"He's a stud. That guy is a stud," Rays manager Kevin Cash said after the game about Rasmussen. "His stuff was as sharp as it could have been. We had gone into the game saying it was 60 pitches or four innings. Stuck to that. That was the easiest call in the world to take him out of the ballgame. We've worked very hard with all of our pitchers and pride ourselves on doing right by them. We knew this was a big ask, but appreciate Drew Rasmussen so much for taking the ball, wanting the ball, and going out and doing what he did."
In the end, the Rays simply ran out of pitching. The middle innings were an adventure throughout the postseason and especially so in the World Series. Rasmussen did hero's work in Game 5 and then the bullpen surrendered three runs in five innings behind him. The 2026 Rays were an excellent team. Their lack of home run power and shaky middle relief ultimately did them in.
Winner: Misiorowski pitching to contact
In 30 regular-season starts, Jacob Misiorowski never made it more than seven batters without a strikeout. In Game 5, Misiorowski did not record his first strikeout until his 14th batter, and that was just fine. Misiorowski turned in his best start of the postseason by pitching to contact, something he didn't need to do all season. I'm not sure it was intentional, but it worked.
Tampa's best contact off Misiorowski found gloves, and they put just one runner at third base in his 5 ⅔ innings. When we think of an ace, we think of total dominance, which is what Misiorowski did most of the season. The true aces are the pitchers who find ways to pitch well even when they don't have their "A" stuff. That was Misiorowski in Game 5. Not brilliant, but effective.
Misiorowski's night came to an end with two outs in the sixth inning because his calf began to cramp. He was nearing the finish line anyway. His final fastball was 98.8 mph, which is great for most pitchers and way down for Misiorowski. He emptied the tank in that sixth inning, then his leg cramped up, so the Brewers played it safe and took him out.
"Just a cramp," Misiorowski said after the game of his injury. "I tried to give it everything for the guys and I left it all out there. I'll go out that way any day."
The 4-0 lead and Milwaukee's stacked bullpen made that an easy decision. Even without his strikeout stuff -- the Rays missed with only nine of their 41 swings for a 21% whiff rate that was about half of Misiorowski's season average -- Misiorowski turned in a standout performance to clinch the World Series. An ace through and through.
Loser: The mound
On at least four separate occasions, the grounds crew had to come out and tend to the mound because the packed clay broke up and created unsafe landing spots. The funny thing is that Tropicana Field is generally regarded as having one of the best mounds in the league. Pitchers love it. For whatever reason, it had to be manicured regularly in Game 5. Good thing no one slipped and got hurt.
