What we're watching
- Game 4 is here: The Milwaukee Brewers are one win away from the franchise’s first World Series title. After a massive 10-1 win Monday, the Brewers hold a dominant 3-0 lead over the Tampa Bay Rays.
- Tampa back on top: It’s a back-and-forth affair as Tampa retakes the lead following a bit of defensive insanity from the Milwaukee Brewers, just after the Brew Crew tied things up. It’s 2-1 in the fifth inning.
- One win away: The Brewers last appeared in the World Series in 1982 and lost in a Game 7. They appear on track to rewrite franchise history – unless Tampa has a miracle comeback in store.
- Tampa Bay faces long odds: Twenty-five previous teams have gone down 0-3 in a World Series. None of them have come back to win. That’s the task that the Rays face tonight.
- History predicts a sweep: Of the 25 previous teams to take a 3-0 World Series lead, 21 of them have won Game 4 to sweep the series. The Brewers hope to make it 22 tonight.
Updates
(19)Why baseball teams party so hard and so often in October
At the end of this series, the final party will begin. It will be the last in a long line of them.
Every major US sport has multi-round postseason schedules, but none of them party like MLB teams. Locker room celebrations in the NFL tend to be subdued until the Super Bowl, and since hockey players are famously superstitious, popping bottles early is practically verboten in the NHL; the Stanley Cup is all that really matters.
Boston Red Sox clubhouse manager Tom McLaughlin has spent over 40 years with the Red Sox, and he says he’s lost track of how many celebrations he’s been involved in, but he counts them in the dozens. He told CNN Sports it was “pretty tame” when he started in the ‘80s, when the postseason was much shorter, but the back end of the season now can feel like one enormous bender for the most successful teams.
Clinched a playoff spot? Party.
Successfully navigate the wildcard round? Let’s get wild.
Made it through the Divisional Round? Get another round in.
Won the Championship Series? We’re going on a spree.
By the time a baseball club wins the World Series, let’s just say that the celebration will not be their first rodeo. Everyone will have had plenty of practice.
Read more here on why baseball teams party all the time, party all the time, party all the time in October.
Brewers tie the game with more clutch 2-out hitting
The fourth inning started with another big play from the Rays as center fielder Jonny DeLuca robbed William Contreras with a fabulous diving catch that could have been big trouble if it had gotten past him.
Griffin Jax then notched his fifth K of the game with a three-pitch strikeout of Brice Turang.
But like last night’s Game 3, the Brewers found some two-out lighting with a single from Sal Frelick quickly followed by a double from Cooper Pratt to score Frelick and tie the game.
Jax bounced back with a strikeout of Garrett Mitchell to end the inning with no further damage.
Score: Brewers 1, Rays 1
Rays return to their not-hitting ways
Strikeout, ground out, fly out from Taylor Walls, Yandy Díaz, and Jonathan Aranda, respectively.
The Rays are showing range in how they make outs, but the end result is yet another 1-2-3 inning.
Sure, they still lead in the game, but we’ve written some version of that an awful lot this series. Entering tonight, the Rays lineup was hitting just .187 in the Fall Classic.
Score: Rays 1, Brewers 0
Jax continues to hold the Brewers at bay
Griffin Jax struck out David Hamilton swinging to open the third inning and complete one scoreless trip through the Brewers’ dangerous lineup.
Jackson Chourio gave a rude welcome to the second time around with a single into right field, Chourio’s ninth hit of the World Series.
Next up, Jake Bauers gave Jax a scare with a ball deep into left-center field, but speedy center fielder Jonny DeLuca was able to track it down and haul in the catch before running into the wall.
Jax ended the inning with a check-swing strikeout of Christian Yelich.
Score: Rays 1, Brewers 0
A couple of speedsters combine for Rays' first run
The Rays have a lead and a little life left!
So far this World Series, we’ve talked a lot about what the Brewers do well and what the Rays had done well previously but lately have been struggling with. Here’s something Tampa has done consistently well: Run really fast.
Jonny DeLuca (94th percentile sprint speed) reaches first based on a fielder’s choice and then scores on a double from Chandler Simpson (95th percentile sprint speed). Speed puts pressure on the opposition and finally, that’s translating to scoring for Tampa Bay.
Score: Rays 1, Brewers 0
Griffin Jax putting his stamp on the game
Rays starter Griffin Jax continued to pitch like he had nothing to lose in the second inning.
Pitching to contact, Jax induced a pair of hard-hit lineouts to the outfield from Sal Frelick and Cooper Pratt.
Jax put a cherry on top of another scoreless inning with a strikeout of Garrett Mitchell.
Score: Brewers 0, Rays 0
Rays' do-or-die game off to inauspicious start
The Rays presumably came back tonight looking to atone for was not just a loss, but an embarrassing beat down. Surely they are motivated, prideful, and frankly, desperate.
So it’s a little disconcerting that the first inning in a do-or-die game consisted of a throwing error in the top half and a quiet 1-2-3 frame in the bottom.
Junior Caminero, the heart of their lineup and their best offensive force, struck out looking to end the inning,
It was an inauspicious start.
Score: Brewers 0, Rays 0
Rays allow a couple walks but escape trouble in the first
With the weight of the world (or at least the Tampa Bay area) on his shoulders, Rays starting pitcher Griffin Jax appears to be attempting a novel approach: Pounding the strike zone. At least to start.
His aggression yielded quick results, as Jax struck out Jackson Chourio and got a quick flyout from Jake Bauers.
Jax took a more cautious approach against Brewers captain Christian Yelich, walking him on four pitches.
Yelich then stole second and took third on an errant throw from Tampa Bay catcher Liam Hicks. Jax then, perhaps wisely, issued a walk to the red-hot William Contreras.
Jax escaped unscathed by inducing an inning-ending groundout to shortstop from Brice Turang.
Any scoreless inning against this Brewers lineup has to feel like a moral victory for the Rays.
Score: Brewers 0, Rays 0
Game 4 is underway!
Tampa Bay Rays starter Griffin Jax toes the rubber with Jackson Chourio in the box and fires a fastball for a strike.
We might have a new champion in just nine short innings. Game on.
Brewers fans turning Tampa into Milwaukee south
From the sounds of it, title-starved Milwaukee Brewers fans are making themselves right at home at St. Petersburg’s Tropicana Field.
The Brew Crew, who have yet to win a World Series since the franchise’s founding in 1969 are just one win away from ending that drought, and it appears as though Brewers fans have come from far and wide in the hopes of witnessing history.
With World Series ticket prices for games 1 and 2 in Milwaukee surging through the roof, taking a trip to the Tampa Bay area – where prices have plummeted as the Rays appear to be dead in the water – might have provided a more cost-effective way to support their team.
Tale of the tape on Game 4's starting pitchers
As the World Series reaches Game 4, both the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays are turning to lesser-used starting pitchers. Lesser-used primarily because each team reached the Fall Classic with such ease that neither had to dig too deeply into its pitching reserves.
With a chance to close out the World Series, the Brewers are sending lanky, red-haired Dustin May to the mound. Though May is making just his second start in these playoffs, he’s no stranger to the biggest stage in baseball.
In 2020, May started three games for the Los Angeles Dodgers in their championship run that culminated with a win over the Rays. With an ERA of 5.63 in the 2026 playoffs, the Brewers might need their high-octane offense to stay hot if they are going to hoist the Commissioner’s Trophy tonight.
The Rays are pinning their hopes on Griffin Jax in their do-or-die game. Jax, making his second career postseason start, has been a serviceable starter for Tampa Bay this season after a career spent mostly pitching in relief.
Jax, who has yet to take the mound in the World Series, has struggled in these playoffs, with an ERA of 6.00 in a pair of appearances in earlier series.
They’re chasing a World Series. Their families are just trying to survive October
Miller Rasmussen, the daughter of Rays’ ace Drew Rasmussen and his wife Stevie, was born during opening week of the 2026 MLB season.
It was a difficult birth, with Miller needing to spend time in the NICU. As baseball was happening every day, Stevie felt like she was immediately in survival mode. She told herself, “Just get through the end of the season.”
“Then the season’s like a little bit longer, and a little bit longer,” Stevie Rasmussen told CNN Sports.
Their rental home in St. Petersburg, Florida, ran through September, so they had to move late last month. They had the option to lease the new place for two weeks or all of October – they opted for the full month.
“So now I’m like, ‘OK, we’re here. We might as well win the whole thing,’” she said.
Down 3-0 in the World Series to the Milwaukee Brewers, the Rays will need a historic comeback to win the whole thing, but they’ve already gone deeper into the postseason than most of their players have ever experienced, with their families along for the incredibly hectic ride.
“My kids have no schedule, no nap routine,” Stevie Rasmussen said.
Read more here on how baseball families survive this crazy month.
Tropicana Field is World-Series-ready after being shuttered for the 2025 season
The Rays are hosting their first World Series games since 2008, and their home stadium – the quirky Tropicana Field – is ready to meet the moment.
This was no certainty heading into the 2026 season, after “The Trop” sustained significant damage from Hurricane Milton in October 2024. The domed stadium’s fabric roof was ripped to shreds by the powerful winds of the storm.
The Rays spent the entire 2025 season playing their home games at cross-bay George M. Steinbrenner Field, the spring training home of the rival New York Yankees. And it was a race against the clock to get Tropicana Field ready for Opening Day this year.
But here we are, six months later, and the Fall Classic has come to St. Petersburg, and Tropicana Field’s quirky architecture might be just what the Rays need to turn the momentum of this series. The roof of the Trop, which is nearly identical in color to a baseball and criss-crossed by a network of wires and catwalks – all of which are in play – has the potential to turn any game on its head.
Depending on where a ball might strike the roof, it could result in an automatic home run or remain a live ball with the defensive players able to play the ball wherever it falls.
For anyone new to Tampa Bay Rays baseball, buckle up and expect the unexpected.
Aaron Ashby is closing out games with deep breaths and scoreless frames
Before this year, Aaron Ashby was not a very good postseason pitcher.
The bespectacled lefty had thrown just over nine playoff innings and allowed nine runs. But right now he is on the verge of historical dominance that has helped power the Brewers to being just two wins away from their first championship.
His 15 ⅔ scoreless innings is one out away from matching the record set by Andrew Miller in 2016 for the longest scoreless streak of relief innings in a single postseason.
That may sound like a lot of conditions but it reflects a very simple fact: Ashby hasn’t allowed anything
this October. Every time Brewers manager Pat Murphy calls for him out of the pen, Ashby delivers a zero.
After closing out Game 2, he said that his failures in previous postseason have taught him how to stay calm.
“Trying to grip it too tight and make too much happen, be too good, throw too hard, any number of things that you can do in big situations when there’s a lot of adrenaline,” Ashby said. “So, trying something new, I guess.”
This time around, however, “A lot of breathing, just kind of praying for peace,” Ashby said.
That and believing in his backstop.
“He is in control right now,” Ashby said of William Contreras. “I feel like I’m just trusting him. There’s not a lot of thinking I got to do.”
It's been a long time coming for Milwaukee
We have a favorite genre here at CNN Sports: Making players on teams identify technology from the last time their team played for a championship.
The Milwaukee Brewers were last in the World Series back in 1982. Think they can identify some early ’80s tech? Find out below:
25 years on, the 2001 World Series still resonates
For the first time in 46 years, a sitting US president was about to throw out the first pitch in a World Series game.
Deep in the bowels of Yankee Stadium, George W. Bush was being warmed up by a man wearing a softball mitt. Outside on the diamond, a fake umpire was standing near home plate with a gun and a taser concealed beneath his uniform. Above them, the stadium was rocking, so much so that the picture frames in the offices below were hanging askew.
Nothing was normal on October 30, 2001: The New York Yankees were hosting the Arizona Diamondbacks for the biggest prize in baseball in a city still in shock – just 13 miles away, the debris from the World Trade Center still burned.
But despite all the fear and emotion, it would end up being one of the greatest World Series ever played.
Read more about why this particular edition of the Fall Classic still means so much to so many all these years later.
The Brewers really just are this good
The first two games of the World Series were close – each ended with the tying run 90 feet from home on third base.
The crazy part is, they didn’t feel close. They felt like legitimate and legible depictions of how the Brewers never waver on the way to ultimate success. They felt like the Brewers were the better team.
But if there was any doubt, Game 3 should have convinced you.
The Rays – a great team, the other one-seed! – managed just three hits. They made outs on the basepaths again, and their regular season aggressiveness on the bases has started to look like a liability this series. Chandler Simpson made the catch of the postseason early on, but errors plagued them elsewhere.
It’s not their fault, though.
What are you supposed to do against a team that can put up double-digits on small ball? The Brewers scored 10 runs without the ball leaving the park once. They scored eight of them with two outs in the fifth inning on a history-making seven-straight hits (no team has had that many consecutive hits in a postseason…ever).
The next time they came to the plate, they managed another couple singles that never came around to score, but the point is: These guys do not let up.
Jackson Chourio was 4-for-5. Robert Gasser – a 27-year-old rookie – faced the minimum through six innings. And the bullpen is usually the Brewers’ biggest strength!
It’s very probable the Brewers will win the World Series, possibly as soon as tonight. It will be the first in the team’s history.
When they do, it will be because they undeniably deserve it. They have lost just one game this entire postseason. They swept the two-time champion Dodgers who are regularly and accurately compared to Goliath. They had the best regular-season record. They had the best regular-season record last year.
And, even if you’re uninterested in the labor implications, we should never stop marveling that a team which plays in the smallest media market in the sport, with a bottom-10 payroll, has established this level of consistent dominance.
Or, we’re about to witness an all-time comeback by the Rays.
About last night: The Brewers' historic rally
There were nine innings of Monday’s Game 3, but it really all came down to one half-inning of history.
The Milwaukee Brewers used seven consecutive hits to score eight runs, all of which came with two outs, to trounce the Tampa Bay Rays and move within one win of claiming the franchise’s first World Series. Both those seven consecutive two-out hits and eight two-out runs were World Series records.
The final score: 10-1.
The Brewers got on the board first in the third with a couple of soft hits that found the right holes in the Rays’ defense. Jackson Chourio laced a single – his second in a day where he would go 4 for 5 – and Jake Bauers drew a walk. They cashed in when Christian Yelich hit his second bloop single of the game to bring Chourio in.
On the very next pitch, William Contreras dropped a single into right field where Victor Mesa, Jr. struggled to field it cleanly, allowing Bauers to score.
The Rays quickly went down in order repeatedly, dominated by Brewers’ starter Robert Gasser. When the Brewers came up in the top of the fifth, they were poised to make history.
With Chourio and Yelich having reached on a hit and walk, Contreras hit a chopper to third base, but replay showed Yelich beat the throw from a spinning Caminero at second, setting up a bases loaded situation. After a pitching change, Brice Turang then smashed a ball right back through the box and off the glove of Taylor Walls. Chourio and Yelich scored as the ball trickled into center field.
That started the hit parade.
The Brewers kept the pressure on with a single from Garrett Mitchell and a double from Cooper Pratt to plate three more runs and suddenly the game was out of hand. Sal Frelick then hit a double into the left field corner to bring Pratt in for with yet another run.
After a pitching change, David Hamilton smacked a single into center field off Cole Sulser to score Frelick. Chourio, who is just 22, then came up and collected his second hit of the inning, a double to plate Hamilton from first base.
After that, things were pretty much academic (even if Frelick was diving in the outfield up 10 runs on his injured shoulder). The Rays scored once in the bottom of the ninth on Yandy Díaz’s long double to make it 10-1.
The Brewers look nailed on to win this series – and if they don’t, it’ll be a historic comeback for the Rays. No team has ever come back from 0-3 in the World Series to win the championship.
The Brewers are on the verge
After one of the most dominant performances in recent World Series history, the Milwaukee Brewers are on the verge of history.
The Brew Crew have never won a World Series title since the team was founded as the Seattle Pilots in 1969. They’ve been within a game of a championship before, losing in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals.
They’ve got a few more cracks at it now with a 3-0 lead over the Tampa Bay Rays.
After 10-1 laugher on Monday, the Rays will need to start making a historic comeback happen tonight if they want to have any shot at shocking the baseball world with a comeback. No team has ever come from 0-3 down to win the World Series. And of the 25 teams who have faced that deficit, 21 of them got swept.
That’s a lot of history staring Tampa in the face. The question is now how they respond.
The game airs at 8 p.m. ET on Fox and streams on Fox One and MLB.tv. We’ll be here all night with all the news, analysis, highlights and live reactions you could want from this edition of the Fall Classic.
