This time, the Milwaukee Brewers didn't waste a stunning and thrilling show of power from Sal Frelick. But yes, there was more late-inning drama. The Brewers wouldn't have it any other way.
Frelick, who hit all of four home runs in the regular season, launched a game-tying home run to dead center in the sixth inning off Tampa Bay Rays lefty reliever Ian Seymour, and Cooper Pratt got redemption for an earlier error with a go-ahead single in the seventh. Yet again, the Brewers rallied from an earlier deficit in the 2026 postseason after staking the Rays to four first-inning runs. The 5-4 win gives Milwaukee a 2-0 lead in the World Series, two wins shy of the first championship in franchise history.
Pratt's soft single to right field against relief pitcher Kevin Kelly plated Brice Turang for the go-ahead run after Turang had doubled leading off the seventh inning against Tyler Wells. Abner Uribe retired Junior Caminero to kick off the eighth and picked up the win by retiring four batters. As they've done all postseason, the Brewers then turned the ball over to Aaron Ashby, who ran his scoreless innings streak in these playoffs to 15⅔ innings by sealing off the win, but not easily.
Ashby yielded a leadoff double in the ninth inning to Jonny DeLuca, but after a strikeout of Victor Mesa Jr., a groundout by Ben Williamson put the tying run at third base with two outs. When Yandy Díaz was ruled out on a check swing, the game was over and the Brewers had a 2-0 series lead.
By then, a disastrous first inning with starter Logan Henderson on the mound was all but forgotten. Liam Hicks had hit a two-run homer to cap the four-run rally, which began with an error by Pratt that allowed Díaz to reach second base and later score. But similar to being down 4-0 in Game 4 of the NLCS against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Milwaukee immediately went to work. The lead was only 4-2 by the end of the first inning thanks to RBI singles from William Contreras and Garrett Mitchell. Rays ace Drew Rasmussen didn't make it out of the fourth inning, part of a Tampa Bay pitching performance that ceded a ton of hard contact. The nine hardest-hit balls in the game belonged to the Brewers.
Pratt walked and scored in the fourth when Rays first baseman Jonathan Aranda struggled to cleanly come up with a David Hamilton grounder, making it 4-3. Then came Frelick leading off the sixth, hitting the fifth Brewers homer of the postseason featuring a left-handed batter against a southpaw pitcher.
Henderson left after three innings, on the hook for three earned runs out of the four he surrendered, with one walk, four strikeouts and three hits. JoJo Romero, Dustin May and DL Hall all recorded scoreless innings despite a baserunner each en route to getting the ball to Uribe. Frelick, who hit just two homers in the 2024 regular season, also homered in Game 3 of the wild-card series against the New York Mets that year, going back-to-back with Jake Bauers in a thrilling seventh inning that went for naught when Pete Alonso hit an infamous ninth-inning blast for the Mets.