Brewers Win Game 3, Push Rays to Brink

Milwaukee Brewers fans who made the trip to Florida watched their team move within one win of the franchise's first championship. The Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 10-1 on Monday night, taking a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. Game 4 is set for Tuesday night at Tropicana Field, where Tampa Bay will start Griffin Jax. Milwaukee has not named its starter.

The scoreline was decided in the fifth inning. Milwaukee sent 12 batters to the plate, collected seven straight hits with two outs, and scored eight runs in the frame. It was the first time a team has posted eight two-out runs in a single World Series inning. Brice Turang started the scoring with a two-run single after a replay review kept the inning alive, and Jackson Chourio added an RBI double later in the rally. Chourio finished the night 4 for 5 with a double and a stolen base.

Tampa Bay's Freddy Peralta, the MVP of the league championship series against Cleveland, lasted 4 2/3 innings and was charged with five runs on seven hits. Rays manager Kevin Cash said Peralta was "just a little out of sync" and that he "tried to power through it a little bit." Tampa Bay's sellout crowd of 40,388 could not change the outcome.

Milwaukee's pitching told the other half of the story. Rookie left-hander Robert Gasser worked six innings and allowed one hit, facing the minimum 18 batters. He is the first starter to do that in a World Series game since Arizona's Curt Schilling in 2001. Gasser has allowed one run over 15 innings in three postseason starts, all on the road. He said Brewers fans behind the visitors' dugout made the road start feel different: "Normally it's 35,000 against nine, but tonight we had 20,000 people behind us."

Tampa Bay now faces a record it has rarely escaped. Of the 43 previous teams that trailed 3-0 in a best-of-seven postseason series, only the 2004 Boston Red Sox came back to win. The Rays, who swept the Yankees and beat the Guardians to reach this round, have never won a World Series in 29 seasons. Milwaukee, which moved from Seattle after the 1969 season and took the Brewers name in 1970, has reached one other World Series, losing Game 7 to St. Louis in 1982.

Brandon Woodruff pitched the ninth inning for Milwaukee, his first appearance in 3 1/2 months after a shoulder injury that had been thought to require surgery. He allowed one run on two hits. Rays shortstop Taylor Walls described the fifth-inning collapse as a "knife to the chest," and Cash called it "deflating." Game 4 starts Tuesday.