Brewers vs. Rays: Sal Frelick and Cooper Pratt Erase a 4-0 Hole as Milwaukee Wins World Series Game 2

For one half-inning on Saturday night, this looked like the Rays' turn. Tampa Bay strung together three run-scoring hits in the top of the first, the last of them a 411-foot, two-run Liam Hicks homer that was the first long ball of the Series, and the Brewers were staring at a 4-0 hole.

Then Milwaukee ran its favorite October play again. The Brewers scratched back two runs in the bottom of the first, another on a Tampa Bay error, then got a game-tying solo shot from Sal Frelick in the sixth and a go-ahead single from rookie Cooper Pratt in the seventh. The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 5-4 and take a 2-0 lead in the World Series to St. Petersburg.

Tampa Bay Swings First

The Rays wasted no time. Yandy Díaz came around from second on Chandler Simpson's ground-ball single to center. Simpson stole second and scored on Junior Caminero's single to left. Then Hicks unloaded on a Logan Henderson pitch and sent it out to right-center.

Henderson, the mustachioed rookie, settled down after that and got through three innings, charged with four runs (three earned) on three hits. By then, though, his offense had already gone to work.

The Chip-Away Begins Immediately

Drew Rasmussen entered this game 2-0 with a 1.29 ERA this postseason. He did not look like that guy. Jackson Chourio and Jake Bauers opened the bottom of the first with back-to-back singles to put runners on the corners. One out later, William Contreras slapped a hit-and-run single up the middle to score Chourio, and Garrett Mitchell added a two-out single to right that brought home Bauers. Just like that, it was 4-2.

The fourth inning brought the kind of mistake that has followed Tampa Bay through this Series. With Pratt and Frelick aboard, David Hamilton chopped a ball down the first-base line that skipped under Jonathan Aranda's glove. Pratt scored, everybody was safe, and the lead was down to one.

"In the moment, I didn't read the spin off the bat well," Aranda said through an interpreter. "I thought it was going to tail a different direction, and it ultimately didn't."

Rasmussen did not survive the inning. He exited after 3 2/3 innings, six hits, three runs, two walks and 89 pitches, his shortest start in months.

The Turning Point: Frelick Goes Where He Rarely Goes

Frelick led off the sixth against left-hander Ian Seymour and fought through a nine-pitch, full-count battle before crushing a four-seam fastball 408 feet to center. It was his first home run in three months, and the place shook. 4-4.

The man himself admitted it was not exactly his specialty. "Murph jokes with me," Frelick said of manager Pat Murphy. "He says I can't hit the ball off the ground to center because it'll be an out the rest of my life. So I was just pumped to try to get back to the dugout so I could give him a big fist bump."

That swing changed everything. Before it, Tampa Bay still had the lead and its bullpen lined up. After it, the momentum lived exclusively in the home dugout.

Pratt Gets His Moment

The winning rally came in the seventh. Brice Turang doubled off Tyler Wells and moved up 90 feet on Mitchell's long flyout. The Rays went to Kevin Kelly to face Pratt, and the 22-year-old shortstop poked a sinker the opposite way to score Turang. 5-4, Milwaukee.

"It was," Pratt said, "pretty electric."

Nobody had to tell the crowd. One night after Pratt's foot became the most scrutinized body part in Wisconsin, he got the game-winning hit.

Milwaukee's bullpen had been nails all along. After Henderson left, JoJo Romero, Dustin May, DL Hall, Abner Uribe and Aaron Ashby combined for six scoreless innings, allowing four hits and one walk while striking out six. Milwaukee did squander an insurance run in the eighth, when a collision play at home went against Chourio, and Tampa Bay got the tying run 90 feet away against Ashby in the ninth. But Díaz went down on a check-swing third strike to end it, and he was not thrilled about how it all went.

"It is frustrating," Díaz said through an interpreter. "We didn't do our job and score more runs to help out our pitchers."

Who Delivered

Sal Frelick went 2 for 4 with the tying homer, an RBI and a run scored. He also set up the fourth-inning run with a single.

Cooper Pratt went 1 for 3 with a walk, a run and the decisive RBI, part of a night when Milwaukee also piled up five stolen bases.

William Contreras and Jackson Chourio each had two hits, and Contreras drove in the first Milwaukee run of the comeback.

Liam Hicks did his part for Tampa Bay, going 1 for 2 with the homer and two RBIs, but the Rays went quiet after the first inning and never scored again.

Stats That Matter

• 7: Comeback wins for Milwaukee this postseason.
• 2: Times this postseason the Brewers have erased a four-run deficit. The other came in a 6-4 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 4 of the NL Championship Series, which completed a four-game sweep.
• 6: Scoreless innings from five Milwaukee relievers after Henderson left.
• 5: Stolen bases for the Brewers.
• 80.7%: How often a team holding a 2-0 World Series lead has gone on to win it, across 55 previous cases.

What It Means

The Brewers lead the Series 2-0 and have now won the first two games in their own building without ever looking comfortable. The Rays built a pennant on making opponents squirm. On Saturday, they did the squirming: an official error, a pair of other botched plays the scorer could have ruled errors, and a baserunner nailed at home.

The Series moves to Tropicana Field for Game 3 on Monday night. The Rays need to find their identity in a hurry.

"We're down to the end of the season here," Murphy said. "They're going to tap us on the shoulder here at some point and tell us, 'No more.' Guys just, they don't give up. They believe, and they don't give up. They just keep going."

Closing Take

Falling behind 4-0 has become this team's version of a sitcom running gag: everyone knows the setup, everyone knows the punchline, and it keeps landing anyway. Frelick boiled the whole philosophy down to six words.

"If we're down," he said, "we're not out."

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Postgame quotes as reported by MLB.com; historical notes from the Associated Press and MLB.com.