How to sound smart about the World Series

Plus: The Brewers' crazy origin story

Tuesday, October 20 View Online 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.  World Series Game 1: Friday at 8 p.m. ET on FOX/FOX Deportes/FOX One 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. CAN MIZ GET HIS GROOVE (AND WHIFFS) BACK? The Brewers were so impressive in their sweep of the Dodgers that you might've forgotten that Jacob Misiorowski hasn't even gone Full Miz yet in these playoffs.   He's still ripping 104 mph fastballs, sure. But he's had a very un-Miz-like amount of trouble putting hitters away with those heaters.    The Brew Crew has still managed to win both of his postseason starts, but teams have been fouling off a ridiculous amount of pitches against Misiorowski. It's literally over half their swings. That hasn't resulted in a whole lot of runs against Misiorowski, but it has forced him out of his games a lot earlier than you'd expect from the Cy Young favorite.  We wanted to get to the bottom of what's happening, because the Brewers are going to need Misiorowski at his overpowering best to win the World Series against a great contact-hitting Rays team.    Here are a few of the interesting things we found:    • Miz's fastball swing-and-miss numbers have dropped precipitously in the playoffs, from a Major League-best 40% whiff rate induced in the regular season all the way down to a pedestrian 16% in the postseason -- even though he's still averaging 101 mph on his heater.    • Hitters are timing their swings a lot better. They're swinging underneath Misiorowski's fastball much less often, and they're swinging late against it much less often.    • They've shortened up their swings against him to deal with his elite velocity, and especially to fight off pitches with two strikes. The average two-strike swing length against Misiorowski in the playoffs is just 6.7 feet -- the shortest swings any pitcher has faced.   All that said, we do think the Miz could be primed for a bounceback to his dominant self in the World Series. Read more about it here >> THE BREW CREW'S CRAZY ORIGIN STORY Did you know that Seattle's first Major League Baseball team wasn't the Mariners -- it was the Brewers?    They were technically the Seattle Pilots back then, but it's true. Before the team moved to Milwaukee in 1970 and became the Brewers, it played one season on the West Coast in 1969. And that was eight years before the Mariners got there.   Manny Randhawa did a nice deep dive today on the Brewers' origin story, which involved three Hall of Famers (but not ones who played for the Brewers), a Game 163 (for a last-place team?) and a … well … pilot game in Milwaukee (organized by one Bud Selig -- decades before he became MLB Commissioner).    It's a pretty fascinating start to a franchise. Worth the read before the World Series starts in Milwaukee on Friday night. BOONE BACK AS YANKS SKIPPER (SOURCE) In case you missed it yesterday: Aaron Boone is set to return as Yankees manager in 2027.   A source told MLB.com's Bryan Hoch that Boone will be back for the final year of his contract, which will mark his 10th season managing the Bronx Bombers.    The Yankees are coming off their eighth playoff appearance in nine seasons with Boone at the helm, although the team has not yet won a World Series under Boone.    We've also got some front office news: The A's have hired former Red Sox exec Taylor Smith as their new president of baseball operations.    We know you just want to watch the World Series right now, but there are going to be plenty more moves coming as we get into the offseason. Keep track of the latest manager and GM buzz right here >> © 2026 MLB Advanced Media, L.P. MLB trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of Major League Baseball. Visit MLB.com. Any other marks used herein are trademarks of their respective owners. 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