Ben Williamson's pinch-hit single in the 12th inning gave the Tampa Bay Rays a 4-3 walk-off win over the Milwaukee Brewers in World Series Game 4 on October 27, cutting Milwaukee's series lead to 3-1.
The Tampa Bay Rays kept their season alive on Tuesday night, beating the Milwaukee Brewers 4-3 in 12 innings in World Series Game 4 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. The win cut Milwaukee's series lead to 3-1 and forced a Game 5 on Wednesday night, denying the Brewers a sweep in what would have been the franchise's first championship.
Tampa Bay scored first in the second inning, when Chandler Simpson drove in Jonny DeLuca, and the game stayed tight from there. Milwaukee tied it in the fourth on a Cooper Pratt double, Tampa Bay went back in front on a wild throw that allowed Junior Caminero to score, and the Brewers tied it again in the fifth. The score was still 2-2 when the game reached extra innings.
The 12th inning swung twice. Pratt, who finished 4-for-5, opened the top of the inning with a solo home run to give Milwaukee a 3-2 lead, its first lead of the night at a moment when a win would have ended the series. Tampa Bay answered in the bottom half: Caminero reached on an error, Liam Hicks singled, and DeLuca singled to centre to score pinch-runner Cedric Mullins and tie the game. Simpson then singled to load the bases with no outs.
Ben Williamson, pinch-hitting and playing as the last man on Tampa Bay's bench, grounded a single to right field that scored pinch-runner Nick Fortes for the winning run. It was Williamson's first hit of the World Series, and it came after Milwaukee's bullpen, dominant through most of the postseason, failed to record an out in the final frame. Brewers pitcher Shane Drohan, who had not pitched in twelve games before the outing, allowed four hits in the bottom of the 12th.
The accounts of the game agree on the score, the inning-by-inning sequence and the identity of the winning hit: the Tampa Bay report, the On Tap Sports Net recap and the Milwaukee Courier report all describe the same 12th-inning chain, from Pratt's go-ahead home run to DeLuca's tying single and Williamson's walk-off. The game lasted four hours and 20 minutes, and Simpson finished 3-for-5 while Pratt recorded two runs batted in.
Milwaukee still holds the advantage, and the series returns to Tampa Bay for Game 5 before any remaining games move to Milwaukee. The Brewers will send Jacob Misiorowski to the mound for Game 5 with a chance to close out the series, while Tampa Bay, after surviving the night it could have been eliminated, needs three more wins, starting with the next one at home.