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

Tropicana Field (ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.) – All the fire was zapped from 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 landslide, Caminero seemed resigned. By the time his teammates silently shuffled around the clubhouse in miserable defeat, Caminero, the face of this Rays team, seemed to have already accepted the most probable outcome of this series. The passion to avenge Milwaukee was gone. The hope that the Rays could still do the impossible was not in the room. Caminero, speaking in a low and barely audible voice to a scrum of reporters, no longer believed. “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 in the Rays dugout trying, as he said then, “to create energy and get some life back into it,” the third baseman was deflated Monday, minutes after Brewers veteran right-hander Brandon Woodruff secured the final out. Tampa Bay is down 3-0 in a lopsided battle that once seemed so evenly matched. This was the best team in the American League versus the top 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 that close, Milwaukee couldn’t just run away with the ring. But Game 3 changed all of that. The Brewers rallied for 16 hits, highlighted by an eight-run outburst in the fifth inning with seven consecutive two-out hits off three Tampa Bay pitchers. The Rays had one hit all night, until they collected two more off Woodruff in the ninth inning. The Brewers played clean behind their starter, left-hander Robert Gasser. The Rays stepped on their own feet again, this time behind their best October starter, right-hander Freddy Peralta, who did not have his best fastball on Monday. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, since the Rays lost by nine runs, but it didn’t help that Rays manager Kevin Cash didn’t put his best hitters in the lineup on Monday. Facing a southpaw, Cash stacked the lineup with right-handed hitters, and in doing so, he made sure his leader in hits this October spent the biggest game of the Rays’ 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 pinch-hit for him in the seventh inning. The Rays’ strategy didn’t work, and it’s not one they had employed a ton all year. Of the 155 games Aranda played for the Rays this season, he came off the bench only seven times. For the most part, he had established himself as an everyday player for Tampa Bay, becoming an integral part of their top-heavy lineup that helped them lead the AL East all year. “He wouldn’t have helped much,” Cash told me after the loss, on whether he regretted the decision to start Vilade over Aranda. “We lost by 10.” Cash also opted to bench left-swinging catcher Liam Hicks, who hit a two-run home run in the first inning of Game 2. With the travel day in between Games 2 and 3, it’s not like Hicks would be catching on back-to-back days. There is an argument to be made that the Rays hurt their chances before they even stepped on the field on Monday. At the very least, they were trying their best to find solutions against a relentless Brewers team that has allowed them very little room to build momentum. In a must-win game, back at Tropicana Field where Tampa Bay had the best winning percentage in the majors this year, the Rays had no answers. The Brewers are a buzz saw. “We just got out butts kicked tonight,” said right-hander Griffin Jax, who will take the ball in the do-or-die Game 4 on Tuesday. When I asked right-hander Nick Martinez if the Rays are beating themselves by not playing as well as they have all year, or if they’re running into a team that’s never played better, he said it’s a combination of both. “That’s a really good ballclub over there,” Martinez said. “They’re pretty relentless on both sides of the ball. At the same time we haven’t played our best baseball. I think if things click, we can do something special, still.” If there is still anyone at Tropicana Field who believes the Rays can do what no team has ever done before, come back and win the next four straight games in a World Series, the team needs to amplify that leader’s voice. That belief certainly wasn’t living in the clubhouse after they were flattened to pieces on their own turf. The hope left the building with the Rays fans who shuffled for the exits shortly after the fifth inning. All the Rays need is one win. And the Brewers are making that impossible to find. “It’s kind of that chip and a chair mentality,” Cash said. “We’ve got a seat at the table. We’ve got to do something with the chip. Obviously the only thing we can do is win tomorrow.”