The Same, but Also Different: Brewers vs. Rays 2026 World Series Preview
Tomorrow night, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays will kick off the 2026 World Series. They’ll both deploy unhittable aces to open the series, and they’ll both back them with a squad made up of speedsters, platoonable hitters, a young superstar, and relievers as far as the eye can see. To a first approximation, these teams might as well be a mirror image of each other. They’re small-budget operations that rely heavily on pitching, speed, and defense. They put the ball in play. They wreak havoc on the basepaths. They play indoors – at least some of the time, in Milwaukee’s case. But while the Rays and Brewers are superficially similar, key differences will have a lot to say about how this series turns out. So let’s take a look at where the equivalence ends, and how each team will try to use that to their advantage.
Pair of Aces
| Pitcher | GS | IP | K% | BB% | ERA | FIP | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jacob Misiorowski | 30 | 174.2 | 37.9% | 6.6% | 1.80 | 2.17 | 6.6 |
| Drew Rasmussen | 30 | 172.0 | 26.0% | 4.8% | 2.67 | 2.81 | 5.0 |
The Brewers and Rays each have an obvious leader in their respective rotations. Jacob Misiorowski and Drew Rasmussen are two of the best pitchers in baseball, and they’re both having career years. Misiorowski is a shoo-in for the National League Cy Young, and while Rasmussen probably won’t win the American League version, he just put up his sixth (!) straight season with a sub-3.00 ERA, posted over a career-high 172 innings. He’s found another gear in the playoffs — three starts, 21 innings pitched, and just three runs allowed. The Miz hasn’t looked quite so steady – two starts, 8 1/3 innings, three runs – but his 1.80 ERA and 2.17 FIP in the regular season were downright ludicrous.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
I appreciate the Gob reference quite a bit
I appreciate the nuanced look at each of these teams, but ultimately, both the 50,000 foot view and the eye-level view appear to boil down to: “The Brewers and Rays are very similar teams who play with very similar styles and have fairly similar strengths and weaknesses, but the Brewers are just slightly better from top to bottom.”
Both teams are very good, well-rounded teams with pesky hitters and very few weaknesses anywhere. I wouldn’t be stunned if either team won it all; the only thing that would shock me is if the Series lasted fewer than six games. I can’t wait!
Loved that statement:
“The Rays have a two-part approach: The top of the lineup mashes, and the bottom half dashes.” Brewers attempted the most steals this year. Excited to see both scrappy teams on the basepaths.
The Rays are not a small market team. We are far from 1998. Tampa is the 17th largest MSA at 3.4 million while right next door Orlando is at 20th at 2.9 million. Combined they reach the size of the Boston MSA. Just because they don’t spend a lot and have trouble with attendance doesn’t mean they aren’t playing in substantially bigger MSAs than a lot of other teams.
A lot of time the market size is referring to more than just the raw people living around the team and is instead factoring in TV deals, viewership numbers, and fan attendance
That is how people use it, but it also makes it a much less useful metric for using for competitiveness, and yet the same people in the same breath use it to discuss competitiveness. Houston (the largest market with a single team) was called a “small market team” for years when they were losing and then big market when they were winning. A lot of teams are “big market” when winning consistently and “small market” when not. In some ways, that provides more incentive for ownership to win – speculation for many years was that the Cubs fans being so loyal when they were losing meant that it wasn’t really worth it financially to try to spend too much to win.
I’m not sure what the official definition of a small market team is but I think of it more of how your local market supports your team with its dollars. In Tampa’s case, I think that makes them a small market team. On the flip side, I wouldn’t consider a team like the Green Bay Packers to necessarily be a small market team. They do live in a much less populated area but their market supports them well.
Tampa Bay seems to be a bit of the betting underdog but I wonder if the addition of Peralta is being under valued. This sure seems like a 50/50 toss up.
I think the starting pitching is pretty evenly matched, but I’d give the Brewers a slight edge in both offense and bullpen, and I think that difference is reflected in them being slight favorites.
I am floored that Drew Rasmussen has a sub 3.00 ERA for six straight years. I’ve mostly though of him as a mid-level, fringy all-start type pitcher. Ace was never a word I associated with him. Perhaps the constant injuries justify that omission but after 61 starts over the last 2 years, I guess he has earned it.
My last article about him was called “Drew Rasmussen is better than you think (even if you think he’s pretty good)” and that’s definitely how I feel about him. Every time I look at the numbers it’s like wow, okay, yeah.
In the first paragraph of “The Other Starters,” the third sentence misspells the word “each” as “eacb”
Upvote to SadTrombone, who called it. Nick Martinez will start Game 1. I said not starting Rasmussen for that game, given the extra day’s rest, was highly unlikely. I was wrong. Chapeau.