Jackson Chourio's Four-Hit Night Puts the Brewers One Win From Their First Title: World Series Game 4 Preview

The Milwaukee Brewers are one win from the first World Series championship in franchise history. Jackson Chourio went 4-for-5 with a double, two runs scored and a stolen base, Robert Gasser threw six scoreless innings, and Milwaukee scored a World Series record eight two-out runs in the fifth inning to rout the Tampa Bay Rays 10-1 in Game 3 on Monday night. The Brewers lead the series 3-0, and no team in World Series history has ever come back from that deficit. Game 4 is Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET at Tropicana Field on FOX, with Griffin Jax starting for Tampa Bay and Milwaukee expected to lean on its bullpen.

How Game 3 got away from Tampa Bay

For four innings it looked like a tight game. Freddy Peralta, facing the franchise he pitched for over eight seasons, kept Milwaukee in check early. Then the fifth inning happened. With two outs, the Brewers strung together a run of hits, reported as seven in a row, and the Rays' defense cracked under the pressure. Brice Turang's ground ball ticked off the glove of shortstop Taylor Walls for a two-run single, and a decision by Junior Caminero to throw to second instead of first on another play extended the inning. Chourio capped the eight-run rally with an RBI double, and Peralta was gone before the inning ended.

Gasser was the other half of the story. The left-hander allowed one hit over six scoreless innings, the kind of start that turns a World Series game into a formality. Brandon Woodruff, who had been lined up to start Game 4, instead pitched the ninth inning to close it out. Milwaukee finished with 16 hits.

Chourio's night carried historical weight. At 22, he became the youngest player with a four-hit World Series game since Joe Garagiola in 1946, and he joined Ty Cobb as one of the two youngest players to record four hits and a stolen base in a World Series game.

The series so far

Game 4 pitching: Jax versus a Brewers bullpen

Tampa Bay is turning to Griffin Jax in a win-or-go-home start, per USA Today's Bob Nightengale. Jax made a start in the ALCS, allowing three runs over four innings in a 3-2 loss, and the Rays will likely ask him for a short outing before turning to a bullpen that needs to cover the late innings without the margin for error that it has had in earlier rounds.

Milwaukee had not named a starter as of Tuesday morning. Woodruff's ninth-inning appearance in Game 3 scrambled the original plan, and the reporting points to a bullpen game. Dustin May, Kyle Harrison and Shane Drohan are the names mentioned as possible starters or bulk options, and the Brewers' late-inning relievers (Aaron Ashby, Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill) were rested by Monday's blowout. That matters: Milwaukee can match up aggressively from the middle innings on, with its best arms available on full rest.

What decides Game 4

Tampa Bay's lineup has to wake up. The Rays managed one hit in six innings against Gasser in Game 3 and have scored only seven runs across three games. Their best path is early pressure against whichever Brewer opens, forcing Milwaukee into its bullpen before the matchups line up.

Milwaukee's top of the order is rolling. Chourio has become the engine, and Turang and the rest of the lineup have found ways to extend innings with two outs. A team that scores eight runs after two are out is not relying on the long ball, which makes the offense harder to neutralize with a single matchup reliever.

The Rays' defense has to be clean. Tampa Bay's fifth inning in Game 3 was a defensive collapse as much as a pitching one. In an elimination game, giving a hot lineup extra outs is fatal.

The betting angle

Teams up 3-0 do not always close in Game 4, but they have never lost the series. The more useful question for bettors is game-level value. A Brewers bullpen game against a Rays starter who profiles as a short-outing option suggests a game that could be decided by relievers from the fourth inning on, which tends to favor the team with the deeper, more rested bullpen. That is Milwaukee.

The total deserves caution. Both teams are likely to use multiple relievers, which can suppress scoring, but Game 3 showed how quickly a tired defense can let an inning snowball.

Verdexed's official view for Game 4 is published with the daily picks at /blog/mlb-picks-2026-10-27 and on the MLB predictions page.

Looking ahead to fantasy 2027

For dynasty and keeper managers, this October is a reminder of Chourio's ceiling. Speed, contact and growing power at 22 make him one of the most valuable young outfielders in the game, and his postseason will push his price higher in early 2027 drafts. Gasser's October also deserves attention: a left-hander who can miss bats and limit hard contact is a mid-round target if he enters 2027 with a rotation spot locked in. On the Tampa Bay side, Caminero remains a cornerstone bat despite a rough Game 3 in the field.

What's next

If Milwaukee wins Tuesday, the Brewers claim their first championship and the offseason begins Wednesday, with free agency, option decisions and the hot stove right behind it. If Tampa Bay survives, Game 5 follows and the pressure shifts to a Brewers rotation that has been deployed aggressively. Either way, Chourio has been the defining player of the series.