The Milwaukee Brewers won the World Series four games to one against the Tampa Bay Rays, sealing the deal with a 4-1 win on Wednesday night.
The Brewers won the most games in baseball in the regular season, but they did last year too. It means nothing because the real champions are decided in October. They got the job done this year, and even their opponents were in awe of how good they were.
"I've said a couple of times to the guys in here," Rays ace Drew Rasmussen said after the loss, per WFLA's Aileen Hnatiuk. "That's the best team I've ever played at the Major League level. I think it's my sixth or seventh season, and it's the best team I've ever played against."
Rasmussen started on short rest in Game 5 with the Rays' backs against the wall. He has seen his fair share of elite lineups, and while the Brewers don't have the star power the New York Yankees or Los Angeles Dodgers do, they are a very complete team.
Their bullpen gave the Rays problems all series, and their offense never quit. They grinded out at-bats and chased elite starting pitchers early.
It was not just the Rays they did it against either. They faced Tarik Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow in the National League Championship Series, and won all four of those games. Everyone knows the star power in the Dodgers lineup, but even that was not good enough to beat the Brewers.
Rasmussen was amazing in the postseason until he faced the Brewers. He knows that the team the Rays lost to was more than just a good team that got hot. The Brewers were truly elite.