The Tampa Bay Rays do not need a speech about what Monday night means. They need a win. Game 3 of the World Series is tonight at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg at 8 p.m. Eastern time, with the Rays trailing Milwaukee 2-0 after losing 3-2 on Friday and 5-4 on Saturday. A loss would leave Tampa Bay down 3-0 and needing four straight wins against a team that has won the first two games by finding a way in the late innings both times. A win would make it 2-1, with two more games at home, and would change the entire feel of a series that currently feels like it is slipping away.
Peralta’s homecoming start
Freddy Peralta, the former Brewers ace, starts for the Rays, and the storyline writes itself. Peralta turned his season around after joining Tampa Bay, posting a strong second half and earning the American League Championship Series most valuable player award, and now he faces the club that traded him, with his new team’s season effectively on the line. Milwaukee counters with left hander Robert Gasser. For Tampa Bay, the assignment for Peralta is not only to pitch well but to pitch deep, because the Rays’ bullpen has already carried a heavy load in the first two games and cannot be asked to win this series alone. For Milwaukee, the assignment is to spoil the homecoming early, as Tampa Bay did to Milwaukee in Game 2, when the Rays scored four runs in the first inning before losing the lead.
What Tampa Bay must fix first
The Rays’ problem in Game 2 was not talent but execution after a fast start. Defensive miscues and missed offensive opportunities let Milwaukee back into a game Tampa Bay had controlled, and Sal Frelick’s sixth inning homer and Cooper Pratt’s seventh inning single finished the comeback. Junior Caminero’s dugout message after the loss, to stop the miscues, get outs and flip the page, was aimed at exactly that pattern. Teams that take a 2-0 lead have won the title about 81 percent of the time, according to series history, which is why Monday is a must win in the truest sense: not because the series mathematically ends with a loss, but because the road back from 3-0 against this Milwaukee team, in this form, would require a kind of baseball Tampa Bay has not yet shown it can play for four straight games.
