The Brewers Are A Buzzsaw But The Rays Fumbled Game 3 Before It Began

Tropicana Field (St. PETERSBURG, Fla.) – All fire was extinguished by the Rays clubhouse.

On Saturday night, after a one-run loss to the Brewers to fall behind 2-0 in the World Series, Rays third baseman Junior Caminero was fiery in his determination to get his team back on solid ground. On Monday night, after the Rays were humiliated by the Brewers at home in a 10-1 slide, Caminero seemed resigned.

By the time his teammates were quietly milling around the clubhouse in miserable defeat, Caminero, the face of this Rays team, seemed to have already accepted the most likely outcome of this series. The passion to avenge Milwaukee was gone. Hope that the Rays could still do the impossible was not in the room. Caminero, speaking in a low, barely audible voice to a group of reporters, no longer believed it.

“Game 2 is in the past, and now Game 3 is also in the past,” Camerino said. “It is what it is. It’s all in the past.”

The Rays still have life left, and that’s in the future. But unlike Saturday, when Caminero spent time at the Rays’ home plate trying to, as he said then, “build some energy and get some life back,” the third baseman was discharged Monday, minutes after Brewers veteran right-hander Brandon Woodruff provided the final out.

Tampa Bay is down 3-0 in a one-sided battle that once seemed so even. This was the best team in the American League against the best team in the National League. The Rays lost Games 1 and 2 of the World Series by one run. They figured if the games were going to be this close, Milwaukee couldn’t just get away with the ring. But Game 3 changed all that.

The Brewers rallied for 16 hits, highlighted by an eight-run fifth inning burst with seven consecutive two-out hits by three Tampa Bay pitchers. The Rays had one hit all night until they collected two more off Woodruff in the ninth inning. The Brewers pitched clean behind their starter, lefty Robert Gasser. The Rays got back on their feet, this time behind October’s top starter, right-hander Freddy Peralta, who didn’t have his best fastball on Monday.

It probably wouldn’t have mattered, as the Rays lost by nine runs, but it didn’t help that Rays manager Kevin Cash didn’t put his best players in the lineup on Monday. Facing a southpaw, Cash stacked the lineup with right-handed hitters, and in doing so, he made sure his strikeout leader this October spent the Rays’ biggest game of the season on the bench.

First baseman Jonathan Aranda, who leads Tampa Bay with 13 hits this October, was not in the Rays’ starting lineup. Instead, infielder Ryan Vilade, who has hit lefties well this season, batted second and played first base. Vilade went 0-for-2 against Gasser until Aranda hit for him in the seventh inning. The Rays’ strategy didn’t work, and it’s not one they’ve employed a ton of all year.

Of the 155 games Aranda played for the Rays this season, he came off the bench just seven times. For the most part, he had established himself as an everyday player for Tampa Bay, becoming an integral part of their top lineup that helped them lead the AL East all year.

“It wouldn’t have helped much,” Cash told me after the loss, if he regretted the decision to start Vilade against Aranda. We lost by 10.

Jonathan Aranda did not start in Game 3. (Photo by Rob Tringali/MLB Pictures via Getty Images)

Cash also chose to bench lefty Liam Hicks, who hit a two-run home run in the first inning of Game 2. With the travel day between Games 2 and 3, it’s not like Hicks would make it on back-to-back days.

There’s an argument to be made that the Rays hurt their chances before taking the field Monday. At the very least, they were trying their best to find solutions against a relentless Brewers team that has left them very little room to build momentum.

In a must-win game, again at Tropicana Field, where Tampa Bay had the best winning percentage in the majors this year, the Rays had no answer. The Brewers are a seesaw of movement.

“We just got kicked out tonight,” said right-hander Griffin Jax, who will take the ball in Tuesday’s do-or-die game.

When I asked right-hander Nick Martinez if the Rays are beating themselves up by not playing as well as they have all year, or if they’re facing a team that’s never played better, he said it’s a combination of the two.

“That’s a really good faceoff club out there,” Martinez said. “They’re pretty relentless on both sides of the ball. At the same time we haven’t been playing our best baseball. I think if things click, we can do something special, again.”

If there is still anyone at Tropicana Field who believes the Rays can do what no team has done before, come back and win the next four games in a row in a World Series, the team should amplify that leader’s voice. That belief certainly didn’t live up to the club as they were razed to pieces on their home turf. Hope left the building with Rays fans heading for the exits shortly after the fifth inning.

All the Rays need is a win. And brewers are making that impossible to find.

“It’s kind of a chip and an armchair mentality,” Cash said. “We have a place at the table. We have to do something with the chip. Obviously the only thing we can do is win tomorrow.”