The Rays are still alive in this World Series because Pat Murphy managed Game 4 like it didn't matter. It mattered. Milwaukee was three outs from its first title, and the manager spent the night playing for a game he was trying to make unnecessary.
Start with the walk-off itself. In the 12th inning Tuesday night at Tropicana Field, with the Brewers up 3-2, Junior Caminero led off and reached on a throwing error by Joey Ortiz. Shane Drohan then gave up four straight singles without recording an out. Liam Hicks, Jonny DeLuca (who scored pinch-runner Cedric Mullins with the tying run), Chandler Simpson, and finally Ben Williamson, who clipped Drohan's first pitch into right field to win it 4-3 and force a Game 5. Williamson entered 1-for-15 in the postseason and was the last position player left on the Rays' bench.
There's a real defense for this. Ortiz's throw short-hopped first base. Hicks hit a routine double-play ball that squirted through because the Brewers were shifted. Murphy said as much: Drohan "threw strikes," the first batter hit a grounder, and if it's turned two "we're not even talking about it." That's all true. Errors and shift-busted grounders are the normal texture of a 12-inning game, and no manager controls where the ball lands once it leaves his pitcher's hand.
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But none of that explains why Drohan was on the mound in the first place. A rookie who'd pitched once in the previous month stood there with a championship on the line because of a string of decisions Murphy made all night.
He went to his closer, Trevor Megill, in the eighth for a single batter, Yandy Diaz, got the strikeout, and then was done with his best weapon while four more innings waited. He pulled Aaron Ashby after the lefty had just set the record for scoreless relief innings in a single postseason, citing a velocity dip, at a modest pitch count. And he left Jacob Misiorowski, his hardest-throwing arm, sitting cold in the bullpen, saving him for a Game 5 he could have made unnecessary that night.
That's a manager playing for the next game at the expense of this one. Burn the closer early, yank the hot hand, and the math leaves you with the least-trusted arm on the roster. Murphy arranged the evening so Drohan was the only man left, and that's why it fell apart.
Matching Megill on Diaz was fine percentage baseball. Pulling Ashby on a read was defensible. So was saving Misiorowski. Line them up in order, on the night he could have ended the series, and you get a conveyor belt that finishes with a cold rookie and a pie to the face.
The Rays didn't out-execute anybody in that 12th. Pat Murphy opened the door and watched them walk through it.
