Milwaukee Brewers Win First World Series Title in Five Games Over Rays
The smallest media market in baseball ends a 57-year wait with a 103-win team that went 11-2 in October.
The Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions for the first time in franchise history, closing out the Tampa Bay Rays in five games to end a 57-year wait and hand baseball's smallest media market its biggest night.
The Brewers went 11-2 in October and have not lost back-to-back games since Labor Day weekend, almost two months ago. In every matchup of this postseason, the team with the better regular-season record advanced. In the end, the team with the best record was the one left standing. Milwaukee won a franchise-record 103 games in the regular season and then won the 11 more it needed in the playoffs, including a sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who had been presumed to be on a path to a third straight title since Opening Day.
Catcher William Contreras was named World Series MVP after hitting .381 in the series. He also earned constant praise from the pitching staff, for whom he won extra strikes through successful challenges under baseball's Automated Ball-Strike System. Outfielder Jackson Chourio set a five-game World Series record with 11 hits. Twenty-two-year-old rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt, who debuted for the team in June, had a record-setting six straight hits across the final two games. Reliever Aaron Ashby set a postseason record for consecutive scoreless innings, anchoring a bullpen that was close to bulletproof.
Starter Jacob Misiorowski set a World Series record for pitch speed on the first pitch of Game 1. In his second start of the series, he left after five and two-thirds scoreless innings with a cramp and was given a standing ovation in two different stadiums. In Tampa, Brewers fans had invaded the opposing ballpark so thoroughly that the team might as well have been wearing white and batting second. Back in Milwaukee, watch parties at the team's home ballpark sold out in minutes, with $15 tickets reselling for close to $300.
The title caps a long climb. Captain Christian Yelich arrived from the Miami Marlins in a January 2018 trade, and that season he won the National League MVP award and the Brewers came within one win of the pennant. From the start of 2018 through the end of the 2026 regular season, Milwaukee won the fourth-most games in Major League Baseball. Until this month, though, that success never carried into October. The Brewers made the playoffs in seven of the last eight years but won only 11 combined postseason games in that stretch.
They did it despite losing the executive who built the roster to the biggest market in the sport, and the manager who shaped it to a division rival that made him the highest-paid skipper in baseball. On Opening Day, FanGraphs gave Milwaukee a 2.1% chance of winning the World Series, and 14 teams had better odds.
"It only took four months," Pratt said after the final out, a nod to how quickly he went from signing an eight-year, $50.75 million contract in April to a championship. For the franchise and its fans, it took 57 years. Bleacher Report has already published details on a parade, with a large crowd expected in Milwaukee.
A labor fight over baseball's salary structure still lies ahead, and the sport's payroll gap will be argued again. For one night, though, the argument belongs to a small city that won the whole thing.
