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Rays vs. Brewers Guarantees Baseball a First-Time Champion
The World Series opens Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern on FOX. It is the first Fall Classic between two franchises without a title since 1980.
Whoever wins this World Series wins it for the first time. The Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers are two of the five current franchises that have never won a title, with the Mariners, Padres and Rockies, and it is the first World Series between two such teams since the Phillies beat the Royals in 1980, MLB.com notes.
They are also the two best teams of the regular season. The Brewers won a franchise-record 103 games and the Rays 98, the best records in their leagues. The Rays won the ALCS in six games, which let them line up their rotation.
Game 1 is Friday, October 23, at 8 p.m. Eastern on FOX and FOX Deportes, streaming on FOX One. MLB.com expects right-hander Drew Rasmussen to start for Tampa Bay, 11-0 with a 1.73 ERA in 15 starts since the All-Star break, against the team that drafted him and traded him away. Milwaukee starts Jacob Misiorowski, who led the majors in ERA at 1.80 and strikeouts with 252, and whose first pitch of the NLDS was clocked at 104.8 mph, the fastest postseason pitch in the tracking era.
It is also the first World Series played with the automated ball-strike challenge system. Neither team leaned on it much in the regular season: on the hitting side, Milwaukee and Tampa Bay gained the least value from challenges of any teams, according to MLB.com's analysis.
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