Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know, brought to you by David Adler. Today, we're getting ready for the World Series with all the best fun facts about the Rays-Brewers matchup.
It's finally time for the World Series … well, almost time. The matchup is set: Rays vs. Brewers. But we still have three whole days until Game 1.
Why not kill some time by boning up on these two powerhouse teams? We have a whole Fall Classic preview ready to go to help you sound smart when you talk about the 2026 World Series.
Here's a little bit to get you started:
It's No. 1 vs. No. 1.
The Brewers were the best team in the National League this year at 103-59. The Rays were the best team in the American League at 98-64. This is just the fourth World Series matchup between the No. 1 team in each league since 2000 (but the third one this decade). The others were Dodgers-Yankees in 2024, Dodgers-Rays in 2020 and Red Sox-Cardinals in 2013.
We're going to have a first-time champ.
The Brewers and Rays are two of the five teams that have never won a World Series. One of them is finally about to come off that list … but which one? The Brewers have had the longer drought -- their first season as a franchise was in 1969. The Rays' was in 1998.
We haven't seen a matchup like this in a long time.
In the last 100 years, there's only been one other World Series matchup between two teams that had never won a championship. That was the Phillies vs. the Royals in 1980. The Phillies won. Before that, it hadn't happened since 1920, when Cleveland beat the Dodgers.
But we have had a bunch of first-time champs recently.
This is going to be the fourth time in the last 10 seasons that a franchise wins its first World Series title -- the Rangers did it in 2023, the Nationals in 2019 and the Astros in 2017. The last time there were four new champs in a span of 10 World Series was from 1992-2002 (the '92 Blue Jays, '97 Marlins, '01 D-backs and '02 Angels). If you're thinking "Wait, that's 11 years" … remember, there was no World Series in 1994.
These teams have only appeared in three World Series between them.
The Brewers' only World Series appearance was in 1982, 44 years ago (they lost to the Cardinals in seven games). The Rays made it in 2008 and 2020 (they lost to the Phillies in five and the Dodgers in six).
There are plenty of connections between the Brewers and Rays.
Several key players in this World Series have history with both Milwaukee and Tampa Bay -- including both League Championship Series MVPs. ALCS MVP Freddy Peralta pitched his first eight seasons for the Brewers; NLCS MVP Jake Bauers made his MLB debut for the Rays. There's also Rays ace Drew Rasmussen, who's been awesome this postseason. Rasmussen was originally a Brewer before he headed to Tampa Bay in the Willy Adames trade.
