After a 10-1 ritual dismantling by the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday night, the Tampa Bay Rays are down 3-0 in the best-of-seven World Series and face an elimination game in Tuesday night's Game 4 (8 p.m. The odds of a comeback in the series are all but insurmountable. Across all of Major League Baseball postseason history up until now, 42 teams have been down 3-0, and only one – the 2004 Boston Red Sox – has come back to win the series in question.
Stated another way, history suggests the Rays have a mere 2.4% chance of pulling off the miracle comeback and winning four straight from the Brewers. Really, though, it may be even harder than that. Teams down 0-3 who began the series on the road, as the Rays did, have been down 0-3 18 times in MLB postseason history and lost all of those series.
There is slightly more hope when it comes to extending the series. Teams down 0-3 in MLB postseason series have won Game 4 23.8% of the time. That really has to be the focus for Kevin Cash and the on-the-brink Rays – to survive another day.
Speaking of which, that brings us to three questions for Game 4 – the answers to which will determine whether the Rays can survive long enough to force a Game 5 and maybe just maybe begin chiseling out a baseball miracle. One of the biggest on-paper edges for the Brewers coming into this series was the depth of Pat Murphy's bullpen. Indeed, the Brewers bullpen has been all but impregnable in this World Series and indeed throughout the entire postseason.
This is best exemplified by lefty relief ace Aaron Ashby, who this postseason has to allow a run in eight appearances. Across those eight appearances, he's worked 15 ⅔ innings and allowed just five hits with 17 strikeouts and three walks. Not surprisingly, those have been high-leverage innings, to boot.
Overall, the Milwaukee bullpen has authored the following numbers: By comparison, the Rays' bullpen during this World Series has a 6.17 ERA and a K% of 8.3. That, more than anything, has been the differentiator thus far. Game 4 figures to be a bullpen-heavy game for Murphy and Milwaukee and perhaps a full-on bullpen game.
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