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, ending a 57-year wait. They finished the postseason 11-2 and outscored their opponents 59-32, CBS Sports reported.
They did it with a payroll that ranked 19th in baseball as of Aug. 31, according to the Associated Press. Milwaukee is also MLB’s smallest TV market.
The title arrives just as owners argue that clubs like this one need a salary cap to compete, and about five weeks before a lockout the AP says is likely to start on Dec. 2.
Game 5 came a night after a 12th-inning collapse
Milwaukee led the series 3-0 and was three outs from the title in Game 4 on Tuesday. Rookie Cooper Pratt hit a go-ahead home run in the top of the 12th, and the bullpen then gave up a walk-off loss in the bottom half, CBS Sports reported.
The Brewers answered quickly. Pratt singled home Brice Turang in the second inning on Wednesday, and David Hamilton’s single through a drawn-in infield made it 2-0. Pratt later added a sacrifice fly in the sixth for a 4-0 lead, MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy wrote.
Jacob Misiorowski threw 5 2/3 scoreless innings before a right calf cramp forced him out. “Just a cramp,” he said afterward, according to CBS Sports.
JoJo Romero, Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill covered the rest. Tampa Bay’s only run came in the ninth on a Chandler Simpson double. Megill got the final out on a grounder to Turang at 11:13 p.m. local time.
About 31,000 fans watched the game on the scoreboard at American Family Field, 1,200 miles away, MLB.com reported. Before Wednesday, five current franchises had never won a World Series. Now four remain: the Mariners, Padres, Rays and Rockies.
“Like who believed it?” manager Pat Murphy said. Captain Christian Yelich put it simply: “It’s better than you think it would be.”
A catcher and a rookie carried the Series
William Contreras was named World Series MVP. He went 8-for-21 (.381) with four RBIs against Tampa Bay, Yahoo Sports reported. He is the eighth catcher to win the award.
He is also the first National League catcher to win it since Darrell Porter in 1982, Yahoo noted. That was the Series St. Louis won in seven games against Milwaukee, the Brewers’ only other trip to the Fall Classic. Across 13 postseason games, Contreras hit .373 and threw out six of 13 base runners, Yahoo’s game report said.
Pratt made a strong case of his own. He went 8-for-19 with seven RBIs in the Series and set a World Series rookie record with hits in six straight trips to the plate, according to CBS Sports and MLB.com. Milwaukee had signed him to a $50.75 million extension on April 3, before he had played a big-league game. He debuted on June 16.
Misiorowski, Pratt’s fellow homegrown star, opened the Series with a 103.5 mph fastball, the fastest pitch in World Series tracking history, which we broke down after Game 1.
Milwaukee built this roster instead of buying it
The road to the title ran through baseball’s biggest spender. Milwaukee beat San Diego in the Division Series, then swept the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Championship Series. The Dodgers had knocked the Brewers out of the postseason three times in the previous eight years, MLB.com noted.
The money gap is wide. On opening day, the Dodgers’ payroll was $323.3 million and Milwaukee’s was $125.9 million, the AP reported. By our math, Los Angeles spent about $197 million more, or roughly two and a half times as much.
Milwaukee closed that gap mostly through its farm system. Of the 40 players on the Brewers’ roster, 12 are homegrown, 22 came by trade and three were free agents, CBS Sports’ Dayn Perry counted. Five homegrown players produced slightly more than half of the team’s 50.4 wins above replacement. They are Misiorowski, Jackson Chourio, Turang, Garrett Mitchell and Logan Henderson.
The trades supplied the rest of the core. Contreras and Megill came by trade, and so did Yelich, in 2018 under former front-office chief David Stearns. Yelich earns $26 million this season and Brandon Woodruff earns $22 million, CBS Sports reported. Matt Arnold, the current president of baseball operations, spent nine years in Tampa Bay’s front office before joining Milwaukee.
That record now sits in a short list. Since the 1991 Minnesota Twins, the only World Series winners with bottom-half payrolls were the 2002 Anaheim Angels, the 2003 Florida Marlins and the 2017 Houston Astros, the AP reported. No small-market team had won since Kansas City in 2015.
The title lands in the middle of a salary-cap fight
Milwaukee’s run is about to become evidence in baseball’s labor talks. MLB owners have proposed a salary cap with a floor, and players say they will never accept that system, the AP reported. Our preview of this Series laid out how the two finalists’ payrolls together came in below the Dodgers’.
Commissioner Rob Manfred made the owners’ case at the All-Star Game in July. He said larger-market teams have a “dramatically higher” chance of making the playoffs, and that the advantage grows each round.
“It defies human experience to ask a fan to think that the bottom end of that gap has the same opportunity to win as the top,” Manfred said.
Players’ association head Bruce Meyer disputed that at the same event. “They all have the resources to compete,” he said, adding that the union’s proposals “would give them more resources and reward the teams that actually do compete.”
Both sides can claim this result. A small-market champion supports Meyer’s argument that spending is a choice. Manfred, though, has framed teams like Milwaukee as exceptions, and the Brewers needed 103 regular-season wins, a franchise record and the best mark in baseball, to get here.
The last time owners pushed hard for a cap, players struck in 1994 and the World Series was canceled, the AP noted.
Milwaukee’s parade comes first, then the lockout clock
The city holds its championship parade on Friday at 10 a.m. CT. It starts at North 4th Street and West Wisconsin Avenue and runs through downtown to the Summerfest grounds, according to MLB.com.
Milwaukee threw the 1982 team a parade even after it lost Game 7.
Woodruff, the longest-tenured Brewer, will be on it. He decided against season-ending shoulder surgery in August so he could try to pitch in the World Series, and he threw the ninth inning of Game 3. “What this means to the city is incredible,” he said.
The next date on baseball’s calendar is less festive. A lockout is likely to begin Dec. 2, the AP reported, and the dispute over a cap threatens the 2027 season the Brewers will open as defending champions.