The Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions for the first time. They beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in Game 5 on Wednesday night at Tropicana Field to finish the Series in five games, and they won the clincher the same way they won the whole month: with pitching.
Jacob Misiorowski threw 5 2/3 scoreless innings on 86 pitches before a right calf cramp ended his night. Three relievers got the final 10 outs. Catcher William Contreras, whose sixth-inning double drove in an insurance run, was named World Series MVP.
The last out came at 10:13 p.m. CT, per MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy. The franchise had played 57 seasons without a title, going back to its 1969 start as the Seattle Pilots. That’s the fourth-longest wait for a first championship, behind the Phillies (77 seasons), Orioles/Browns (63) and Rangers/Senators (62), per MLB.com’s Sarah Langs. It’s also Milwaukee’s first World Series title since the 1957 Braves. Four franchises have still never won one: the Mariners, Padres, Rays and Rockies.
Contreras, the MVP
Contreras went 8-for-21 with four RBIs in the Series. His double off Garrett Cleavinger in the sixth scored Christian Yelich for a 3-0 lead.
His bigger impact may have come behind the plate. He threw out four of nine would-be base stealers against a Rays team that was 11-for-11 on steal attempts this postseason before the World Series, per MLB.com’s Anthony Castrovince. Brewers pitchers posted a 1.91 ERA and held the Rays to a .182 average in the Series. Contreras also won 10 of his 13 ABS challenges in the World Series.
“He’s special, man,” Brandon Woodruff said. “A lot of great feel behind the plate. He has a great feel for what the hitter’s telling us.”
Contreras is the first catcher to win World Series MVP since Salvador Perez in 2015. The last time the Brewers played in a World Series, in 1982, the MVP was also a catcher: the Cardinals’ Darrell Porter.
Misiorowski won it without the strikeouts
The velocity was all there. Misiorowski averaged 101.1 mph on his fastball, per MLB.com, and threw 51 pitches at 100 mph or harder. That was the 11th time any pitcher has thrown at least 50 pitches of 100-plus in a game since pitch tracking began in 2008. All 11 are Misiorowski’s, all this year, per Langs. He topped out at 103.0, according to MLB’s Statcast data.
What wasn’t there was swing-and-miss. He didn’t record a strikeout until the fourth inning, the first time in his career it had taken him that long, and he finished with two, tying his career low, per the AP. He allowed two hits, walked one and hit one batter. He also had to deal with the Tropicana Field mound. The grounds crew came out repeatedly to work on his landing spot.
He started the game almost all fastballs. Twenty-one of his first 22 pitches were four-seamers, and all six outs in the first two innings came on balls in the air. In the third he started mixing in sliders, curveballs and cutters. By the end of the night, 57 of his pitches were four-seamers and 28 were cutters, sliders or curveballs, per Statcast.
His only real jam came in the fourth. Liam Hicks was hit by a pitch, and Chandler Simpson singled to right and took second on an error by Sal Frelick, putting runners on second and third with two outs. Ben Williamson grounded out to third. Misiorowski set down the Rays in order in the fifth and finished the inning by striking out Yandy Díaz.
With two outs in the sixth, the Brewers’ trainer came to the mound. Misiorowski threw one warmup pitch, winced and left. MLB.com called it an apparent recurrence of a calf issue that bothered him earlier this season. The Brewers had not given an update on his calf as of Thursday morning.
“I’m happy I left it all out on the field,” Misiorowski said. “I obviously wish I could have gotten one more out, but it is what it is. We got the win.”
How the runs scored
Rays starter Drew Rasmussen was pitching on three days’ rest. He lasted four innings and 48 pitches, allowing one run with four strikeouts, and Tampa Bay used seven pitchers in all.
Second inning: Brice Turang doubled with one out and Frelick was hit by a pitch. Rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt lined a single to center to score Turang. Pratt was thrown out trying to take second on the throw.
Fifth inning: Pratt singled again, his sixth straight hit, a rookie World Series record. David Hamilton singled him home off Kevin Kelly for a 2-0 lead.
Sixth inning: Contreras doubled off Cleavinger to score Yelich. Pratt then hit a sacrifice fly off Tyler Wells that scored Contreras and made it 4-0. It gave Pratt seven RBIs in the Series, tying Gil McDougald (1951) for the most by a rookie, per MLB.com.
Ninth inning: Hicks doubled on a ball that hit first base and caromed away, and Simpson doubled him home off Trevor Megill. Megill struck out Jonny DeLuca between the two doubles and finished it by getting Richie Palacios to ground out to Turang at second.
The bullpen finished it, again
JoJo Romero got Hicks on a groundout to end the sixth and recorded the first out of the seventh, using 10 pitches. Abner Uribe got the next two outs on 10 pitches. Megill took the last six outs on 29 pitches with three strikeouts. In all, the bullpen got the final 10 outs on 49 pitches.
The whole postseason looked like that. The Brewers threw 118 innings in October, and relievers covered 65 of them. That’s 55.1%, the fourth-highest share among the 102 teams that have thrown at least 100 innings in a postseason, per Langs. The bullpen posted a 1.38 ERA and held opponents to a .173 average, the second-lowest marks for any bullpen in a single postseason (minimum 50 innings), behind only the 2022 Astros.
Aaron Ashby threw 18 innings this postseason without allowing a run. That’s tied with Whitey Ford in 1960 for the third-most innings in a single postseason without allowing a run, behind Christy Mathewson in 1905 (27) and Kenny Rogers in 2006 (23).
The Brewers never allowed more than four runs in any of their 13 postseason games. Since the playoffs expanded in 1969, the only other champions to do that were the 1990 Reds and 1983 Orioles. Milwaukee went 11-2, the fifth team to win at least 11 games with no more than two losses in a single postseason.
Around the title
Jackson Chourio finished the Series with 11 hits, tied for the second-most through the first five games of a World Series. Only Pepper Martin (12, in 1931) had more, per MLB.com.
“That’s the best team I’ve ever played against,” Rasmussen said, per the AP.
“I can’t tell you how many people have told me, ‘I’ve waited my whole life for this,’” Yelich said, per MLB.com.
The parade
The Brewers’ championship parade is Friday at 10 a.m. CT. It starts at N. 4th St. and W. Wisconsin Ave. and goes through downtown Milwaukee to Henry Maier Festival Park, where the team will hold a championship rally. The gates open at 8 a.m. and the festivities run until 3 p.m., per the Brewers. The parade is free and open to the public.
Featured photo: Trevor Megill pitching for the Brewers in Milwaukee, June 2025. IanStone20165 / CC0 1.0 via Wikimedia Commons (cropped)
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