If you went to bed after the first inning, you missed one of the wildest games of this postseason. Tampa Bay came out swinging in Milwaukee on Saturday night and had four runs on the board before the Brewers had even settled in. Starter Logan Henderson took a hard hit, and Liam Hicks capped the inning with a home run. To make it worse, rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt made a throwing error that kept the inning alive.
Then the Brewers did what they've done all October. They chipped away. Sal Frelick tied it up with a homer in the sixth, and in the seventh, Pratt, the same kid who made that early error, drove in the go-ahead run with an opposite-field single. Milwaukee won 5–4 and now leads the series two games to none.
The ending is what everyone's arguing about. With two outs in the ninth, the tying run on third and a full count, reliever Aaron Ashby got Yandy Díaz on a checked swing. The umpire said he went. Rays fans say he didn't. That's the whole game, decided by a judgment call that replay can't touch. Ashby, for what it's worth, still hasn't given up a run this postseason. He got the last five outs.
This is the second time in two playoff rounds the Brewers have come back from four runs down, and history is on their side. Teams that went up 2–0 in the World Series have gone on to win it about 81% of the time. Milwaukee has never won a title.
The series heads to St. Petersburg for Game 3 on Monday at 8 p.m. ET on FOX. So, should a World Series game ever end on a check-swing call nobody can review?
