The Milwaukee Brewers will hand the ball to Dustin May tonight with a chance to win the first World Series title in franchise history.
The team announced May as its Game 4 starter Tuesday afternoon, per Sportsnet. Milwaukee leads Tampa Bay 3-0. First pitch at Tropicana Field is 7 p.m. CT on FOX.
Don’t expect May to go deep. ESPN reported that the Brewers are planning a bullpen game, and he’ll be the first arm out of a relief corps whose top three pitchers all got Monday off.
The only start, and the only loss
May has made one start this postseason. It came Oct. 6 in Game 3 of the NL Division Series at Petco Park, and it’s the only game Milwaukee has lost all October.
He went three innings that night and gave up two runs on three hits and two walks, with three strikeouts, according to the Baseball-Reference box score. Both runs came in the third. He walked Ethan Salas to open the fourth and was done after 51 pitches, only 27 of them strikes. May didn’t get the decision. Jake Cronenworth broke a 2-2 tie with a leadoff homer off JoJo Romero in the fifth, Xander Bogaerts scored an unearned run on a throwing error in the sixth and the Padres held on 4-3.
The Brewers haven’t lost since. They won Game 4 in San Diego the next night, swept the Dodgers in the NLCS and took the first three games of this series. That’s eight straight wins, which ties the record for a single postseason, per MLB.com.
May, 29, has a 5.63 ERA over eight innings in four postseason appearances. Besides the San Diego start, the damage came in a three-inning relief outing at Dodger Stadium in the NLCS, when he gave up three runs. His most recent appearance was a scoreless inning of relief in Milwaukee’s 5-4 win in Game 2, thrown on what would have been his normal throw day.
Milwaukee got the right-hander from St. Louis on Aug. 3, along with Romero, for outfielders Alexander Frias and Josiah Ragsdale, according to MLB’s transaction log. He made 10 regular-season appearances for the Brewers, per Sportsnet, and finished the year 7-9 with a 4.70 ERA between the two clubs. His best night in a Milwaukee uniform was six scoreless innings against Cincinnati on Sept. 11.
He also has something nobody else on the roster had coming into October. May won a ring with the Dodgers in 2020, and MLB.com noted he was the only Brewer with World Series experience before this postseason began.
Why it’s May and not Woodruff
By Brandon Woodruff’s account, this start was supposed to be his. He was preparing for Game 4 until assistant athletic trainer Bryn Hester came down to the bullpen in the eighth inning Monday and asked if he wanted the ninth, MLB.com reported. He took it, pitching for the first time since July 4 and giving up the Rays’ only run in the 10-1 win.
That left manager Pat Murphy with options. Kyle Harrison hasn’t pitched this postseason. Shane Drohan opened a game in the NLCS but hasn’t been stretched out as a starter in a while. May got the ball.
The bigger factor might be everybody behind him. Aaron Ashby leads the staff with 15 2/3 postseason innings, and he sat Monday along with Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill. The game got lopsided enough that the three of them watched the late innings from the dugout instead of the bullpen, per MLB.com. ESPN’s Jeff Passan noted that all of Milwaukee’s leverage relievers are working on at least two days of rest. Ben Clemens of FanGraphs wrote that he wouldn’t be surprised to see May go once through the order if he starts well, and that a lefty would likely come in if there’s traffic when the bottom of the lineup comes up.
Jax gets the ball for Tampa Bay
Griffin Jax hasn’t pitched since Oct. 15, when he lost Game 3 of the ALCS at Cleveland after allowing three runs in four innings. His only other postseason outing was two innings of relief at Yankee Stadium in the ALDS. That’s a 6.00 ERA over six innings.
His run before that was much better. Jax had a 1.88 ERA over his last six outings covering 24 innings, per MLB.com, and the Rays won his final four regular-season starts. He also spent part of August on the injured list with right elbow discomfort, and he hasn’t thrown more than five innings in a game since July, per Sports Illustrated. Rays manager Kevin Cash is expected to keep a short leash. Nick Martinez can give him length, and closer Bryan Baker still hasn’t pitched in this World Series.
The Rays set their lineup before Milwaukee named May, and it’s more traditional than the right-handed-heavy group that faced Robert Gasser in Game 3. Jonathan Aranda and Liam Hicks are back after sitting Monday, and Ryan Vilade is in right field. The Brewers used the same nine in the same order in each of the first three games and made one change tonight. Sal Frelick moves up from eighth to sixth, swapping spots with Garrett Mitchell, per MLB.com.
Tampa Bay has scored one run in its last 17 innings.
What’s at stake
Game 3 was the reason Milwaukee walks into tonight with this much margin. The Brewers scored all eight of their fifth-inning runs with two outs, a World Series record, and Gasser allowed one hit over six innings. We broke down that inning here.
Teams up 3-0 in a best-of-seven have won 42 of 43 times, and no World Series team has even forced a Game 6 from that hole. A win tonight would make Milwaukee the first team to sweep a best-of-seven LCS and the World Series in the same October. ESPN noted the 1976 Reds are the only other club to sweep both rounds, back when the LCS was best-of-five.
Tampa Bay does have one good Game 4 memory. The last time the Rays played one in a World Series, in 2020, Brett Phillips’ walk-off single beat the Dodgers. Evan Longoria throws out the first pitch tonight.
Featured photo: Dustin May pitches for the National League at the 2019 All-Star Futures Game in Cleveland. Erik Drost / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)
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