ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Tampa Bay? More like Whitefish Bay, as in the Milwaukee suburb.
With the Brewers two wins away from their first World Series title and ticket prices for Games 1 and 2 at American Family Field over the weekend topping $2,000, Milwaukeeans piled onto airplanes and headed south for Game 3 at Tropicana Field. They were drawn to a stadium where tickets were still available near game time, with prices as low as $466 on resale sites.
The Brewers made it feel like money well spent with a 10-1 rout Monday.
Three hours before the first pitch of Game 3, the average “get-in” price for Game 3 was $422, down 47% from the previous three days, according to TicketData. The Brewers’ 2-0 series lead likely didn’t inspire local fans to splurge, but unsold inventory has been a postseason storyline not only in St. Petersburg, but also in Atlanta and Los Angeles.
Milwaukee has been the exception, both at home and on the road.
Even with the Rays and Brewers sporting similar blue-and-yellow color schemes, the volume of Wisconsin fans made it clear well before first pitch that Tampa Bay would not generate its typical partisan atmosphere. Brewers fans even commandeered “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
“Players respect it, you know what I mean?” Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy said. “They know that they have a fan base that follows them, loves them, supports them, travels for them. I mean, there’s been a lot of places we went this year on the road that would just stun you how many Brewers people are there.
“You’re like, ‘We’re pretty far away and we’ve got all these Brewers people here?’ It’s really a neat thing.”
“We could tell in batting practice,” Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski, a potential Game 5 starter, said. “As soon as they opened the gate, it was all Brewers fans.”
ACTION JACKSON: Brewers left fielder Jackson Chourio went 4-for-5 with two runs and an RBI in Game 3, continuing a postseason coming-out party for the 22-year-old Venezuelan.
“He’s a special player, not just a special hitter. He’s just so talented. I think people forget how young he is,” Brewers hitting coach Daniel Vogelbach said. “He’s just a kid. He could be playing college baseball right now.”
Chourio is batting .286 with two home runs and nine RBIs in the postseason.
GAS UP: Robert Gasser delivered the longest outing by a Brewers starter this postseason in Game 3, allowing one hit and one walk while striking out three over six scoreless innings.
THAT’S ALL FREDDY: Rays starter Freddy Peralta entered Game 3 with an 0.89 ERA over his previous 10 starts but saw it climb to 2.95 after allowing five earned runs on seven hits and three walks while striking out four in 4 2/3 innings.
Peralta had not allowed multiple runs in an inning since Aug. 21, but William Contreras and Christian Yelich hit consecutive singles to give Milwaukee a 2-0 lead in the third. The Brewers tagged him for three more runs in the fifth.
The Brewers made Peralta labor through much of his outing, driving up his pitch count and finally forcing manager Kevin Cash to remove him with two outs in the fifth after 87 pitches.
Peralta has not thrown 100 pitches in a game for the Rays since being acquired in an August trade.
Peralta nearly escaped the fifth when Contreras (3-for-5) grounded to third with two runners aboard and two outs. Rays third baseman Junior Caminero elected to throw to second for a forceout, but the call was overturned on replay review.
Brice Turang and Garrett Mitchell followed with run-scoring singles, and Cooper Pratt and Sal Frelick added RBI doubles against reliever Cam Booser to build an 8-0 lead. In the process, the Brewers set a major league postseason record with seven consecutive hits.
“(It’s) just guys going up there and having good at-bats constantly. That’s the most important thing,” said Turang, who finished 3-for-5 with a double and two RBIs. “Even sometimes the outcome may not be in your favor, but you make the guy throw a lot of pitches or have good at-bats for the next guy to come in and do his job.”
The eight two-out runs in an inning set a World Series record.
CAUGHT UP: A game after a high-profile gaffe in left field, Rays outfielder Chandler Simpson looked every bit like a Gold Glove finalist again with a spectacular catch in the second inning.
With one out and Pratt on first, Simpson sprinted toward the foul pole and slammed into the short wall about 315 feet from home plate after making an over-the-shoulder catch of Frelick’s opposite-field drive.
BENCHED: Cash removed one of his key “Los Tres Pequenos” (translation: Three Little Ones) from the starting lineup, with No. 2 hitter Jonathan Aranda sitting out the start of Game 3.
The move came after Aranda made two errors at first base in Game 2, but it also fit Cash’s platoon tendencies. Gasser, a left-hander, entered having held left-handed hitters to a .552 OPS this season.
Aranda, part of the lineup’s core alongside Yandy Diaz and Caminero, entered Monday batting .310 with a .788 OPS in the postseason. However, he had a .678 OPS and just three home runs in 164 at-bats against left-handers during the regular season. He posted an .837 OPS with 19 home runs in 416 at-bats against right-handers. Catcher Liam Hicks, another left-handed hitter, also began the game on the bench.
Ryan Vilade started at first base. Nick Fortes, who was in Jupiter, Fla., on Sunday for the birth of his first child, drove back to St. Petersburg on Monday to start behind the plate.
Aranda entered after Gasser was removed following six innings and went 0-for-2.
EMOTIONS IN MOTION: Caminero’s dugout eruption after Simpson dropped a fly ball in the sixth inning of a Game 2 loss became a talking point about the 23-year-old’s leadership.
The miscue came after Frelick homered to open the inning and tie the game at 4, erasing Tampa Bay’s 4-0 lead. It did not lead to additional runs for Milwaukee, but it prompted a pitching change and highlighted the Rays’ uncharacteristically subpar defensive effort in an eventual 5-4 loss.
There was no issue, Rays infielder Richie Palacios said.
“Junior is a leader by example. He mostly just goes out there and does his thing. But what’s exciting is when he does open his mouth, it’s always useful, and it’s in the time that we need it,” Palacios said.
The Rays, Palacios said, received the message in the right spirit.
“We all took it as a positive,” he said. “There’s times throughout the game where we might lose a little bit of energy, and we need somebody on our team to pretty much pick us up and tell us, ‘Look, we’re not ending here. We’re not giving up. We’re going to go out there and continue to compete,’ and that’s what he was able to do.”
In Game 3, it was Caminero’s perhaps questionable decision to attempt a forceout at second on Yelich rather than throw to first to retire the slower Contreras that preceded Milwaukee’s fifth-inning eruption.
STATS: Milwaukee became the 43rd team to take a 3-0 lead in a postseason series. Just 10 teams facing a 3-0 deficit have come back to force a Game 5. Four forced a Game 6, and two forced a Game 7. Only one, the 2004 Boston Red Sox, came back to win a series — the American League Championship Series.