Should the Brewers Have Brought in Jacob Misiorowski to Close Out World Series Game 4 vs the Rays

Baseball will make you a genius one second and a dunce the next, and on Tuesday night it was Pat Murphy's turn in the barrel.

Rich opened by acknowledging just how many right buttons the Brewers manager has pushed this October. Murphy is a big Springsteen guy, with Springsteen lyrics tattooed on him, and Springsteen called him up to wish him luck. "He's just a regular guy getting his shot," Rich said, and he has been rewarded with production from players "that you've basically never heard of," including cast-offs from the Red Sox "hitting home runs like it's non-stop." David Hamilton got his shout, too: "What a beast he's been." Rich's son Cooper at home was locked in on rookie Cooper Pratt, who finished with four hits, the last of them a home run.

That put Milwaukee on the doorstep. After sweeping the Dodgers, the Brewers were one win from sweeping Tampa, going 11-1 and bringing the trophy back to Milwaukee "because they're on a mission from Bob. Uecker."

Then the Rays flipped the script. "In the same way that the Brewers just with a barrage of hit after hit after hit after hit in their eight run inning in game three, that's the way the Rays saved their season," Rich said. He walked through the play that cracked it open: Joey Ortiz threw low on a long throw across the diamond, a ball Rich said Jake Bauers would normally dig out, and the floodgates opened.

That brings everyone to the question of the day. Jacob Misiorowski was sitting in the bullpen. Rich ran through the history of starters finishing off World Series games: the Dodgers using Clayton Kershaw, Madison Bumgarner, Chris Sale. "And you got the Miz in the bullpen. That didn't even cross my mind," Rich admitted.

Murphy was asked about it after the game, and his answer amounted to this: he was not burning his Game 5 starter to wrap up Game 4 while up 3-0. "You can kind of see both sides of it," Rich said. The cost of not doing it is real, though. Aaron Ashby pitched multiple innings and probably can't go tonight, so the pen is a bit burned. Bring in Misiorowski "to throw 105 nine times and you might have a trophy," Rich said, and you're wiping champagne out of your eyes.

"The guy who's pushed every possible button. Now people are like why didn't you push that button? Baseball, man."

Rich was quick to add the obvious counterpoint. "The Miz tonight can erase every syllable I just said." Win it, and Misiorowski and the Brewers are showing off the Commissioner's Trophy at midfield for the Packers and Panthers Thursday night game, with the place going nuts. "If you're the Panthers, you're like, 'Damn it.'"

Then Rich turned to Chris with something he had saved from the night before. "The Red Sox were down 3-0 to a 100-win team at home for game four after giving up 10 or more runs in game three," Rich read. "Game four went to extra innings, and they scored two runs to win the game in the 12th."

That is exactly what just happened. "Well, that would mean tonight has to go 14," Rich joked. Chris, invoking Kevin Millar's famous warning to Dan Shaughnessy ("Don't let us get one"), pointed out the Rays got one. Rich's response was simple. A comeback like that had never happened before and hasn't happened since, because "it's so tough to do," and the Brewers "are too damn good, man."

Rich also highlighted a favorite moment from extras. He had seen a Threads post two days earlier arguing baseball should replace ABS with William Contreras, he's that good. Then Contreras tapped his helmet on a ball, and he and Yandy Díaz watched the replay together without a word, saw it go against him by about a tenth of an inch, looked at each other and went right back to it. "It's just been a fun World Series," Rich said.

The picks for tonight split the room, with one voice taking the Rays and calling for a Game 6, and another going the other way. As Rich remembered Ed Goren telling him, "You need six."