Brewers win first World Series title
Milwaukee defeated Tampa Bay 4-1 in Game 5 to end a 58-year championship drought.
By Matthew Qureshi ·
The Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions.
The team beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 on Wednesday night at Tropicana Field to claim the franchise's first title in 58 seasons. Milwaukee finished the regular season with 103 wins and won 11 of 13 postseason games, including a sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS. The victory ends a long wait for a city that has only won one MLB championship, with the Braves, before they moved to Atlanta.
The franchise began as the Seattle Pilots in 1969 and relocated to Milwaukee in 1970. Their only previous World Series appearance came in 1982. That team held a 3-1 lead in the sixth inning of Game 7 but lost 6-3 to the St. Louis Cardinals. Manager Pat Murphy, who survived a heart attack in 2020, guided this squad to the pennant. He won the NL Manager of the Year award in both 2024 and 2025. The team has now completed the feat that Harvey Kuenn's 1982 roster, which featured five Hall of Famers, could not.
Jacob Misiorowski pitched 5 2/3 scoreless innings to lead the Milwaukee staff. The 24-year-old right-hander threw 86 pitches, 58 of which were strikes. He allowed two hits and no walks. Misiorowski left the game due to a right calf cramp. He opened the game by throwing 12 consecutive four-seam fastballs, all between 100.9 and 103 mph. He recorded two strikeouts, matching his career low for the season. He is the NL Cy Young Award favorite and finished the Series with a 2-0 record and a 0.84 ERA.
Rookie Cooper Pratt set a Series record with six consecutive hits. He finished the game with two hits and two RBIs. Pratt singled in the second inning to give Milwaukee a 1-0 lead over Rays starter Drew Rasmussen. He scored on a David Hamilton single in the fifth. In the sixth, Pratt hit a sacrifice fly to extend the lead to 4-0. Pratt made his major league debut in June. He tied the team lead in hits during the postseason.
Tampa Bay ace Drew Rasmussen pitched four innings, allowing one run and two hits. He retired the first four batters before Brice Turang hit a double. Rasmussen struck out Garrett Mitchell to end the fourth. Kevin Kelly entered in the fifth and allowed consecutive singles to Pratt, Mitchell, and Hamilton. The Rays had runners on second and third with two outs in the fourth, but Ben Williamson grounded out to third base.
Closers JoJo Romero, Abner Uribe, and Trevor Megill secured the final two innings. Megill allowed an RBI double to Chandler Simpson with two outs in the ninth. He then retired Richie Palacios on a grounder to second base to end the game. The Brewers scored 32.1% of their runs on home runs this season, the lowest mark in major league baseball. The Rays ranked 25th in payroll, while Milwaukee ranked 19th. This was the first World Series since 1991 to feature two teams in the bottom half of the salary scale.
The win brings Milwaukee a title during a period of labor tension. Owners are pushing for a salary cap, and a management lockout could begin on Dec. 2. The Rays drop to 0-3 in their first three World Series appearances. The team had fallen behind 3-0 earlier in the Series. They became the fifth club in history to lose Game 5 after starting a Series with three losses.
