Rays Walk Off in the 12th and Deny the Brewers a Sweep

The Milwaukee Brewers were three outs from the first World Series sweep since 2012 on Tuesday night. Then, for the first time all series, the ball bounced Tampa Bay's way. Pinch hitter Ben Williamson chopped a single into right field with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 12th inning, Nick Fortes scored, and the Rays beat the Brewers 4 to 3 at Tropicana Field to force a Game 5.

Milwaukee still leads the series 3 to 1. But the loss snapped an eight game postseason winning streak, one short of the record, and kept the Brewers from becoming the first team to sweep both a best of seven League Championship Series and a World Series in the same October. Hours before first pitch, we wrote that Milwaukee was one win from the first World Series sweep since 2012. After four hours and 20 minutes in front of 40,514 people, that win is still one away.

Twelve Innings at The Trop

The Rays took the first lead in the second inning, when Chandler Simpson doubled home Jonny DeLuca. Cooper Pratt tied it with a run scoring double in the fourth. In the bottom half, Milwaukee third baseman David Hamilton missed a tag on Junior Caminero and then threw wildly to first, and Caminero came around to put Tampa Bay back in front 2 to 1.

Hamilton made up for it in the fifth with a solo home run to tie the game at 2. From there, neither team scored for six straight innings.

Both managers emptied their bullpens to keep it that way. Tampa Bay used seven pitchers, including Nick Martinez, who was lined up to start Game 5 and instead threw two scoreless innings in relief. For Milwaukee, Aaron Ashby kept rolling. His scoreless run out of the bullpen this postseason reached 18 straight innings, a record, and Andrew Miller, who set the old mark in 2016, was in the building to watch it fall.

Pratt Nearly Ended It

The Brewers finally broke through in the top of the 12th. Pratt, their rookie shortstop, hit a solo home run off Rays reliever Ian Seymour for a 3 to 2 lead, and the thousands of Brewers fans inside The Trop erupted.

It was the second time Pratt had driven in the tying or go ahead run. It would have been the swing of a title clincher. Seymour got out of the inning without further damage, and that turned out to matter.

"We've got one more day," Seymour said afterward. "Now let's make it two more days."

Williamson Chops One Into Right Field

The Rays' half of the 12th turned on a rare Milwaukee error. A string of singles and aggressive sends on the bases followed, and DeLuca tied the game at 3 with a run scoring single.

With the bases loaded, Rays manager Kevin Cash sent Williamson up to pinch hit. A day earlier he had fouled a ball off his own face, which about summed up how the series had gone for Tampa Bay. This time he bounced a high chop through the right side, Fortes crossed the plate, and "Walking on Sunshine" came over the stadium speakers.

"It's what you dream of growing up. You know, you play wiffle ball in the backyard with your friends and you're dreaming of hitting a walk-off in the World Series," Williamson said. "And, I mean, to fight like the way the team fought tonight to get me into that situation and to get runners on. And just to have that moment for me was huge for me."

Before the game, Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander had kept the goal small. "We need to win an inning first," he said. His team needed 12 of them.

History Is Still Against Tampa Bay

One win does not change the math much. According to MLB, the Rays are the 44th team to fall behind 3 to 0 in a best of seven series and only the 11th to force a Game 5. Just four of those teams have pushed it to a Game 6, and none of them did it in the World Series. Only the 2004 Boston Red Sox came all the way back, in the American League Championship Series against the Yankees.

The walk off itself was rarer still. There had been 16 earlier walk off wins in World Series history by a team facing elimination, and four of them came in the 12th inning or later. The only other team to do it while facing a sweep was the 1910 Chicago Cubs.

Opta counted the Rays as just the fourth team in World Series history to stay alive with an extra inning comeback, joining the 1912 Red Sox, the 1986 Mets and the 2011 Cardinals. All three of those teams went on to win the title. None of them had been down 3 to 0.

Brewers captain Christian Yelich did not sound rattled. "If you want to win a championship, you're supposed to survive some hard things," he said. "It's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to test you."

Game 5 Is Wednesday Night

The series stays at Tropicana Field for Game 5 on Wednesday at 8 PM Eastern. Milwaukee will start Jacob Misiorowski, the two time All Star and National League Cy Young favorite who allowed one run on four hits over five innings when the Brewers won Game 1 of a World Series neither team has ever won. Tampa Bay answers with Drew Rasmussen on short rest.

A Brewers win ends it and gives the franchise its first championship. A Rays win sends the series back to Milwaukee for Game 6 and makes Tampa Bay the first team ever to force a sixth game in a World Series after losing the first three.

For a team that won the American League pennant behind Caminero's two run homer earlier this month, the first three games looked nothing like the Rays. The defense, the patient at bats and the aggressive baserunning that carried them through October had disappeared. On Tuesday, some of it came back.

"I feel like they've shown that throughout the course of the season," Cash said. "You know, maybe not in this actual World Series to date, but we can start showing it a lot more moving forward."

Neither franchise has ever won a World Series. The Brewers still need one more win to change that. The Rays need three in a row.