Five Runs, All of Them Earned
By Jess Henderson ·
The official scorer at American Family Field charged the Tampa Bay Rays with one error on Saturday night, and every one of Milwaukee's five runs went into the book as earned. That is the accounting. The Brewers won Game 2 of the World Series 5-4 after trailing 4-0 before they ever came to bat, and they lead the Series two games to none.
The field told a different story. Three Rays plays went wrong behind Drew Rasmussen and Ian Seymour, and one of them, a foul pop nobody called an error, came before both of Milwaukee's first-inning runs. Kevin Cash was asked afterward how differently the game plays out if Jonathan Aranda catches it. "It may be different. We'll never know," he said. "Look, we didn't play our cleanest baseball game by any stretch. We pride ourselves on doing everything we can to support the pitchers and making plays behind them. Today was probably not our best day."
The Foul Pop
Jackson Chourio and Jake Bauers opened the bottom of the first with singles, and Rasmussen struck out Christian Yelich. William Contreras then lifted a foul pop near the netting beyond first base. Aranda got to it and it bounced out of his glove. MLB.com's Bryan Hoch wrote that Aranda "couldn't secure" it, and the scorer gave him no error.
Contreras stayed alive and worked the count full. With Bauers running on the 3-2 pitch, Richie Palacios took a step toward second, and Contreras bounced a single past him into center. Chourio scored. Brice Turang lined out, and Garrett Mitchell singled to right with two outs to bring in Bauers.
Run the inning again with the pop caught. Contreras is the second out, Chourio is still on third and Bauers on first, and Turang's lineout ends it. Milwaukee scores nothing. Both runs count as earned, and both came after Tampa Bay had the out in its glove.
The Grounder
The fourth inning has the one error the scorer did charge. Cooper Pratt walked with one out, and Sal Frelick lined a single to right that sent him to third. David Hamilton then hit a ground ball at Aranda that went under his glove, and Pratt scored to make it 4-3.
"I didn't read the spin off the bat well," he said. "I thought it was going to tail in a different direction, and it ultimately didn't. So I just kind of whacked it with my glove. It was a play that I could have made," Aranda told MLB.com through an interpreter.
The box score still credits Hamilton with an RBI and counts the run as earned, so the scorer decided Pratt would have scored on a routine out with one out. That ruling is fair. What the error took away was the out. Chourio's groundout would have ended the inning, and instead Rasmussen had to face Bauers, walked him on his 89th pitch, and left with two outs in the fourth.
The Fly Ball in Left
In the top of the sixth, Liam Hicks, batting fifth and catching, was hit by a pitch, moved up on a bunt, and was sent home from second on Victor Mesa Jr.'s two-out single to left. Chourio fielded it and threw him out at the plate. The Rays challenged and the call stood.
Cash backed the send. "That's kind of been our MO all season long, put pressure on the defense," he said. "Know that Chourio is extremely talented out there, gets rid of the ball really quick, but put pressure on the defense. He got rid of it quick and put it right on the bag to Contreras." The best throw of the night came from Milwaukee.
Frelick led off the bottom half with a nine-pitch home run off Ian Seymour to tie it. Two outs later, with Bauers on first after a walk, Yelich lifted a fly into shallow left. Taylor Walls and Chandler Simpson both went for it, and the ball came out of Simpson's glove for a single that put runners on the corners. This one cost nothing. Wells came in and got Contreras to ground out to third.
"The lesson is that we've got to play clean vs. those guys," Simpson told MLB.com. "They grind, and we've got to do the same."
What Actually Decided It
Count it up and the Rays' gloves were involved in three of Milwaukee's five runs. Two came after the dropped foul pop, and one scored on Aranda's error, though it probably scores anyway. The other two belong to Frelick, who homered after Cash said Seymour "got a little bit stubborn with the fastballs," and to Pratt. Turang doubled off Wells to start the seventh, Mitchell moved him to third, and Pratt singled off Kevin Kelly to right. "Cooper Pratt did a heck of a job staying on the ball, not trying to do too much, and shoot it the other way," Cash said.
The other half of the ledger is Tampa Bay's offense. The Rays scored four runs on their first five batters and none on the next 32. Their first run was unearned, after Pratt threw Yandy Díaz's leadoff grounder past first for his fourth error of the postseason. JoJo Romero, Dustin May, DL Hall, Abner Uribe and Aaron Ashby followed Logan Henderson with six scoreless innings.
So the defense let Milwaukee back into the game, and the Rays never added a run after the first. A 4-0 lead with Rasmussen pitching can survive a dropped foul pop. It could not survive the pop, the error, and six scoreless innings from that bullpen.
Monday at the Trop
Freddy Peralta starts Game 3 for the Rays on Monday at Tropicana Field against Robert Gasser. "A big thing is, we just have to limit our mistakes," Aranda told MLB.com. "That can't happen moving forward." Down two games, the Rays need the routine plays back first.