The Rays Reach a World Series Nobody Has Won

The Tampa Bay Rays beat Cleveland 7-3 on Monday and won the American League pennant. Yandy Díaz had said they would, then hit a 416-foot homer in the eighth inning at Tropicana Field.

They will play the Milwaukee Brewers starting Friday, the first World Series since 1980 in which neither club has ever won a title.

Yandy Díaz Backed His Sunday Guarantee

After Tampa Bay’s 3-1 win in Game 5, Díaz spoke through interpreter Kevin Vera and did not hedge. “It all ends tomorrow. We’re going to win tomorrow,” he said. Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said Monday he had not even heard the line.

It all ends tomorrow. We’re going to win tomorrow.

Yandy Díaz, Rays first baseman, after ALCS Game 5

He made it stand up in Game 6. Junior Caminero, the two-time All-Star third baseman, led off the Tampa Bay second with a single off opener Shawn Armstrong, who became the first pitcher in postseason history to start a game after working both of the previous two days. Chandler Simpson stole his way into scoring position, Victor Mesa Jr. walked, and Richie Palacios looped a two-run double to right-center for a 2-0 lead. Jonny DeLuca’s sacrifice fly in the third made it 3-0.

Caminero, who hit 42 home runs in the regular season, had needed 33 October at-bats for his first postseason homer. He got it in the seventh, a two-run drive off All-Star closer Cade Smith that struck the left-field foul pole and made it 5-1. Caminero turned before first, pounded his chest, then stopped short of the plate and copied the crossed-arms pose of Randy Arozarena, the former Rays outfielder sitting in the stands. “I saw him and I told him, before I got to home plate, I said: ‘Look at me,’ and I hit a homer,” Caminero said.

Cleveland answered in the eighth. Tyler Wells and Ian Seymour loaded the bases, Seymour walked Patrick Bailey and hit Angel Martínez, and the deficit shrank to 5-3 with the go-ahead run on first. Kevin Kelly then struck out Brayan Rocchio on three changeups. Díaz faced Hunter Gaddis later in the inning and sent a changeup 416 feet to left at 111.9 mph, the second-hardest-hit postseason homer by a Rays batter since Statcast tracking began in 2015. That two-run shot made it 7-3, a four-run lead, and closer Bryan Baker finished the pennant.

“I’m really glad he backed it up, that’s for sure,” manager Kevin Cash said. “We know when Yandy goes, our offense seems to really take off.” Díaz, who led the league with 180 hits this season, put it simpler. “It feels like I’m on top of the world,” he said.

Freddy Peralta, the right-hander Tampa Bay got from the New York Mets on Aug. 2, worked 5 1/3 innings and allowed one run and five hits. He was named ALCS MVP. The Rays had fallen behind 1-0 and 2-1 in the series, then took the last three games, including 7-3 in Game 4 and 3-1 in Game 5, to win it 4-2. “We got one more bite!” Cash told the clubhouse, then added that they had a flight to Milwaukee.

Cleveland’s 78-Year Wait Survives Another October

The Guardians won the World Series in 1920 and again in 1948, when they beat the Boston Braves. They have not won it since. After Monday, that wait is 78 years, the longest active championship drought in the majors.

They have been back to the Series four times in that span, in 1954, 1995, 1997, and 2016, and lost each one. Chris Antonetti, Cleveland’s president of baseball operations, did not dress it up. “I’m 0-for-28,” he said. “Next year I want to make it 1-for-29.”

This group won the AL Central, came back from 0-2 down on the Chicago White Sox in the Division Series, and led the Rays 2-1 after a 3-2 win in Game 3 on Oct. 15. Then the offense went quiet. Tampa Bay won Game 2 by 3-1, Game 4 by 7-3, Game 5 by 3-1, and Game 6 by 7-3. Vogt asked himself whether ace Gavin Williams, who had struck out nine in five innings in Game 3, should have started Monday on three days’ rest. He did not.

Yeah, let it hurt. That hurts. I couldn’t be more proud of our group. It just hurts. It stings. Really felt like we had a team to go and just weren’t able to get there.

Stephen Vogt, Guardians manager, after ALCS Game 6

THE CLUBS LEFT STANDING

Cleveland is the franchise that actually has a championship in its cabinet, and it is the one going home. The two clubs still playing have never won at all. Díaz knows that wait from the other side. Cleveland signed him as an amateur free agent in 2013, and the Rays took him in a three-team trade before 2019. He beat the team that first brought him to the States, then promised another win starting Friday.

The First Never-Won World Series Since 1980

The Elias Sports Bureau’s count, published by MLB, is blunt. Since the 1921 season began, this is only the second World Series between two franchises that had never won, joining 1980, when the Phillies beat the Kansas City Royals in six games. Before that it had not happened since 1920, when Cleveland beat Brooklyn. Five more of those Series were packed into the first decade of the event, in 1903, 1905, 1906, 1907, and 1909. This is the eighth. It is the first of them in which both clubs have been waiting at least 25 years.

WHEN BOTH SIDES HAD ZERO TITLES

1. October 1920: Cleveland beats Brooklyn and wins its first championship.
2. October 21, 1980: The Phillies beat the Royals 4-1 in Game 6 at Veterans Stadium, and Philadelphia has a title at last.
3. October 23, 2026: The Rays and Brewers open in Milwaukee, still at zero, with a first-time winner guaranteed.

The 1980 Phillies had played in the National League since 1883 and were the last of the original 16 clubs without a championship, nearly a century without a title. Mike Schmidt was the MVP. Tug McGraw struck out Willie Wilson at 11:29 p.m. in Philadelphia. The Royals, an expansion club in their first Series, had to wait until 1985 to win one of their own.

A first-time champion is now locked in for the fourth time in 10 World Series, after the 2017 Astros, 2019 Nationals, and 2023 Rangers. Five current clubs have never won: the Brewers, Rays, Padres, Mariners, and Rockies. One of those names comes off the board in the next two weeks. Combined, Tampa Bay and Milwaukee will send only three players who have appeared in a World Series, Díaz (five games in 2020), Dustin May (two with the 2020 Dodgers), and Steven Matz (one with the 2015 Mets), eight games of prior experience in all. That is the thinnest such group since the earliest years of the event.

The argument around the matchup has already skipped past who won Game 6. It is about a parade that neither city has thrown for a baseball title. Milwaukee last saw October’s last round in 1982. St. Petersburg has never seen it end with a trophy. One of them will.

Tropicana Field Hosts a Pennant After Milton

The Rays did this in a building that was unusable 24 months ago. Hurricane Milton tore the roof on Oct. 9, 2024, and the club spent 2025 at George M. Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees’ spring park across the bay, a yard of about 11,000 seats. St. Petersburg paid $59.7 million to put the dome back together. The Trop reopened April 6, and Tampa Bay won 55 home games there, a total matched only by the Brewers.

Monday was a sellout of 40,230, yellow-and-blue towels, cowbells, and “Let’s go Rays!” B.J. Upton, a star on the 2008 pennant club, threw the first pitch. Arozarena and pitcher Tyler Glasnow, both from the 2020 Series team, sat in the crowd. After the final out, Caminero grabbed a giant flag, ran toward the seats, and shouted into a microphone, “This is for you!” MLB noted it was 18 years to the day since the Rays last won an ALCS in that building.

New ownership closed a $1.7 billion purchase on Sept. 30, 2025. Co-chair Ken Babby did not pretend it was tidy. “We bought a baseball team with no current home, no future home and paid $1.7 billion,” he said. “Folks asked me all the time: ‘Were you terrified?’ And I’d say, ‘Absolutely.’”

FROM A TORN ROOF TO A 2029 PARK

• Oct. 9, 2024: Milton shreds the Tropicana Field roof and forces a season in exile.
• 2025 season: The Rays play home games at Steinbrenner Field while St. Petersburg rebuilds the dome.
• April 6, 2026: The Trop reopens after a $59.7 million repair, and Tampa Bay wins 55 games there.
• August 2026: Tampa and Hillsborough County approve a $2.36 billion, 31,000-seat park on the Hillsborough College campus, with the Rays in for $1.37 billion plus overruns and a 2029 target.

The Trop lease runs through 2028. The new yard is planned near the Buccaneers’ stadium, with $8 billion to $10 billion in private mixed-use around 130 acres. For one more October, though, the pennant lives under the patched roof. Cash, in goggles not yet on, held up a finger in the clubhouse and said they had a flight to catch. The Rays are in their 29th season and now have a third pennant, after 2008 (a five-game loss to the Phillies) and 2020 (a six-game loss to the Dodgers in the pandemic year). This is the first time they get to leave for a World Series from home.

The Ace Milwaukee Traded in January

Peralta will walk into American Family Field as the other team’s pitcher. Milwaukee dealt him and Tobias Myers to the Mets on Jan. 21 for prospects Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat, a year-before-free-agency move the Brewers have made before. Peralta had just finished a 17-6 season with a 2.70 ERA in 33 starts and a fifth-place Cy Young finish. With New York he went 5-9 with a 4.99 ERA in 22 starts. The Rays took him on Aug. 2, and he went 5-2 with a 3.25 ERA in 10 starts, then won AL pitcher of the month in September.

PERALTA’S ALCS LINE

• The record: He went 2-0 in three appearances, two of them starts.
• The ERA: One earned run in 12 innings, a 0.75 ERA, with nine strikeouts.
• Game 2: Six scoreless innings in a 3-1 win, 29 pitches at 97 mph or higher.
• Game 6: 5 1/3 innings, one run, five hits, 33 pitches at 97-plus, and the MVP trophy.

Cash announced the award on the field as “Fastball Freddy.” Peralta joined Matt Garza (2008) and Arozarena (2020) as Rays ALCS MVPs. He sounded stunned. “Even in the moment, it surprised me, because I thought it was going to be somebody else,” he said. On the Mets stretch he was plainer. “This is crazy. I’m very happy to be here and grateful to be here because when I was in July, I had no idea where I was going to be.”

Milwaukee is always going to be in my heart, but it’s time to compete. I’m grateful to be here and excited to go home.

Freddy Peralta, ALCS MVP, after Game 6

Home, in this case, is the park he left in January. He is a free agent after the Series. For a week he is the problem Milwaukee created for itself.

Milwaukee Has Not Been Here Since 1982

The Brewers finished 103-59, the best record in baseball, and earned home field over the Rays at 98-64. They swept the two-time champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS, winning Game 4 on Oct. 15 by 6-4 after trailing by four, the first club to sweep a team that had swept it the year before. Jake Bauers was NLCS MVP. It was Milwaukee’s first National League pennant. The franchise, born as the 1969 Seattle Pilots, was still in the American League the last time it played in a World Series.

That was 1982, Harvey’s Wallbangers, Robin Yount and Cecil Cooper, a 95-67 club that rallied from 0-2 down on the California Angels in a best-of-five ALCS. They led St. Louis three games to two, then lost the 1982 World Series in seven, dropping Game 6 by 13-1 and Game 7 by 6-3. Forty-four years passed. No current Brewer was alive for that Game 7. Owner Mark Attanasio planned to hand the NL trophy to Bud Selig, who brought the club to Milwaukee in 1970.

The Brewers took two of three from Tampa Bay in their only regular-season series. They have been idle since Oct. 15. The Rays played on Oct. 19. Game 1 of the 122nd World Series is Friday, Oct. 23, at 8 p.m. ET at American Family Field, the first Fall Classic game in that park. Games 3 through 5, if needed, are at the Trop on Oct. 26, 27, and 28. A Game 7 would fall on Oct. 31, back in Milwaukee.

THE FIRST WEEK IN MILWAUKEE

• Friday, Oct. 23: Game 1, Rays at Brewers, 8 p.m. ET.
• Saturday, Oct. 24: Game 2, Rays at Brewers, 8 p.m. ET.
• Monday, Oct. 26: Game 3, Brewers at Rays, 8 p.m. ET.

Asked about the Series before he got to the champagne steak he keeps in the clubhouse, Díaz did not wait for October 23. “It’s going to be a great series,” he said, “but we’re winning.”