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The Milwaukee Brewers host the Tampa Bay Rays on October 23, 2026. First pitch from American Family Field is scheduled for 8:00 p.m. EDT. The game will be broadcast on FOX.
The Brewers are favored by -160 on the moneyline and by -1.5 on the run line. The Rays are +135 on the moneyline and +1.5 on the run line. The total is set at 6 runs.
Find my MLB picks and Rays vs Brewers prediction below, as well as probable pitchers, weather report, and more.
Rays vs Brewers Prediction
- Rays vs Brewers Pick: J.Caminero Homer (+570, 0.2 Units) | Bet to +500
My Rays vs Brewers best bet is a prop pick on Caminero. Make sure to find the best odds by checking our live MLB odds page.
Rays vs Brewers Odds
| Rays Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
+1.5 +154 | 6 -119o / -100u | +135 |
| Brewers Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
-1.5 -187 | 6 -119o / -100u | -160 |
- Rays vs Brewers moneyline: Rays +135, Brewers -160
- Rays vs Brewers over/under: 6 (-119o / -100u)
- Rays vs Brewers spread: Brewers -1.5 (+154 ), Rays +1.5 (-187)
Rays vs Brewers Probable Pitchers
| Nick Martinez (RHP, TBR) | Stats | Jacob Misiorowski (RHP, MIL) |
|---|---|---|
| 1-0 | W-L | 0-0 |
| 2.9 | fWAR (FanGraphs) | 6.6 |
| 3.10 / 3.97 | ERA / xERA | 1.80 / 2.12 |
| 3.96 / 4.47 | FIP / xFIP | 2.17 / 2.29 |
| 11.5% | K-BB% | 31.3% |
| 35.5% | GB% | 44.1% |
| .265 | BABIP | .237 |
| 98 | Stuff+ | 128 |
| 107 | Location+ | 100 |
Rays vs Brewers MLB Betting Preview
Tampa Bay Rays Betting Preview
While something is exciting about rooting for the plucky underdog, my favorite World Series are the true World Series, featuring the deserving teams with the best record in each league, who ground through 162 games and now three rounds of postseason to get to the final championship round. That is exactly what we’re fortunate enough to have this year.
I only spent most of Wednesday writing and researching Drew Rasmussen and even had his strikeout prop as the endorsed play for this article before the Rays were infected with Fancy Play Syndrome and decided to start Nick Martinez instead — it appears the Rays are willing to lessen their odds of winning the two Jacob Misiorowski starts by starting the worst of their four starters, which they believe may give them better chances of winning subsequent games.
Nick Martinez led all qualified starters with a 3.6 BB% (Rasmussen is 2nd if it means anything), but still posted a mere 11.5 K-BB% because he posted the lowest strikeout rate (15.1%) among qualified starters by a full percentage point.
To be fair, his command was also excellent, leading the league in BotCmd (62) and tying for 8th in Location+ (107), allowing him to generate just a 32.9 HardHit% and 6.8% Barrels/BBE, despite the lack of swing and miss (8.2 SwStr%).
That still led to estimators ranging from a 3.96 FIP (3.98 xERA) to a 4.92 dERA. That does not include pitch modeling, which is quite a bit better (3.55 Bot ERA, 104 Pitching+), almost entirely due to that elite command (48 botStf, 98 Stuff+).
Martinez’s two post-season starts, one each against the Yankees and Guardians, did not suggest much different, though he did walk three of 34 batters to go along with his six strikeouts. It was a 4.29 SIERA and 4.11 xFIP with a much better .251 xwOBA allowed, though we can hardly take that at face value in such a small sample.
This is to say that nothing Martinez has done this postseason has changed my evaluation of him as a league-average pitcher at best and perhaps worse when he’s not nearly perfect with his command. Pitchers like Martinez can't afford many mistakes — while he threw six different pitches this year, only four were thrown more than 4% of the time to batters from either side of the plate.
LHBs saw 29% changeups, 26% sinkers and 22% cutters with a smattering of four-seam fastballs (14%); RHBs saw 39% sinkers, 22% cutters, 21% changeups and 11% four-seamers.
PitchingBot liked all of those offerings, giving them well above average 55 to 60 overall grades, while Pitching+ only valued the sinker (114) as an elite pitch, with the others ranging between 97 and 104 overall.
As a result of the elite sinker and heavy changeup usage, Martinez actually had a small reverse split this year with LHBs running a .286 wOBA/.297 xwOBA and RHBs .307 wOBA/.321 xwOBA.
Having the Brewers run out the same lineup against both RHPs in the NLCS, even despite Yamamoto’s reverse split, makes me confident we will see the same composition in Game One against the Rays.
This includes six LHBs, whom Martinez struck out slightly more (15.8%) than RHBs (14.2%).
This particular configuration averaged a 111 wRC+ at home this season with each of the first six batters (Jackson Chourio through Garrett Mitchell) averaging better than 110.
They also averaged a 113 wRC+ and .150 ISO against RHP with Christian Yelich (99) the only one of the first seven batters below a 109 wRC+.
Lastly, they’re averaging a 125 wRC+ this postseason, led by David Hamilton’s 242 and William Contreras’ 212. Amazingly, Chourio (48) has been the team’s least productive October hitter, despite coming up with some of their biggest hits.
While Contreras and Brice Turang were both top 10 qualified hitters against cutters (both above 3 wFC/C), by pitch run values and usage, the first four projected batters in the Milwaukee lineup (Chourio through Bauers) plus Mitchell project barely positive run value numbers matched up against Martinez, with Cooper Pratt and Sal Frelick the only firm negatives, mostly due to poor numbers against sinkers.
The Brewers stole the 5th most bases in the majors this year (162) with their nine projected starters the top nine on the team, all with at least 7. None were among the 14 batters who accumulated at least 3 Runs via Stolen Bases (Statcast) this year, though.
Martinez was neutral at holding runners this season (0 Net Bases Prevented via Statcast) with runners taking off on 1.5% of 810 opportunities. Liam Hicks threw out only 20% of runners (10 of 50), but that was against an expectation of just 15%, which makes him just one of 20 catchers this season to accumulate at least 3 Catcher’s Caught Stealing Above Average.
Nevertheless, running on this combo could be a focus for the Brewers.
Considering the Rays used the same personnel against other reverse split RHPs this postseason (Cam Schlittler, Gavin Williams), we can be somewhat confident about the defense they’ll run out on Friday, giving them a respectable 9 FRV (Fielding Run Value) this year on the field. On a team level, the Rays ran similar, middle-of-the-league Runs Prevented (10) and OAA (6) numbers.
BARTOLO ranks the current Tampa Bay bullpen (including starter Ian Seymour) 5th best in the majors with a 3.79 wFIP.
During the postseason, Tampa Bay has featured the best bullpen of 12 teams, running a 2.83 FIP, 3.38 xFIP and 3.15 SIERA.
Milwaukee Brewers Betting Preview
The more difficult part of this analysis involves Jacob Misiorowski, who has authored the most dominant season we’ve seen since peak Pedro or Randy, pitchers so great, we can recognize them by first names.
The “Miz” struck out 37.9% of the batters he faced over 174.2 innings, walking just 6.6% with a 33.3 HardHit%, allowing just 3.6% Barrels/BBE.
He led all qualified major league pitchers with a 31.3 K-BB% by more than five points. His barrel rate was 1.3 points better than the next best pitcher, who generated more than 10 points higher ground ball rate. On pure count, Misiorowski’s 13 barrels allowed were seven fewer than the next best qualified pitcher.
The only qualified pitchers with a better K-BB% in a full season in MLB history are Gerrit Cole (2019) and Pedro Martinez (1999).
While he hasn’t allowed a barrel through 8.1 postseason innings either, 12 of his 22 batted balls have reached a 95 mph exit velocity, while his 18.9 K-BB% is behind 18 other postseason pitchers.
A MLB.com article featured on BaseballSavant.com this week does a tremendous job encapsulating what we’ve witnessed from Misiorowski this postseason in starts against the Padres and Dodgers, lasting just 4 and 4.1 innings, respectively.
His velocity sat at or even above his season velocity in each start, yet he generated just a 7.4 SwStr% against a regular season rate of 18.7%.
What happened? As the article points out, Misiorowski is not elevating his fastballs above the zone nearly as often and has a 54% foul ball rate on swings this postseason. That’s driving the pitch count up.
RHBs are swinging under his fastball 11 percentage points less in October and LHBs have been late 20 percentage points less. Too often, his fastballs are finding the middle of the zone. And when it's not, it's probably where we find our most stunning postseason stat. Hitters whiffed on 56% of chased fastballs against him this season — that’s down to one single whiff on 15 fastballs outside the zone this postseason and the average velocity on those fastballs is still 101.5 mph.
Part of it has to do with facing better, more patient hitters against the Padres and Dodgers, but I also can’t help but think about the parallels between Misiorowski and another second-year breakout who struggled this postseason: Parker Messick.
Like Messick, Misiorowski, including postseason, has now thrown more than 50 innings more than they did in 2025. Neither has lost velocity this postseason, which means fatigue may be showing up more in command.
Maybe the extra time off will help Misiorwoski get his vibe back and he’ll be the guy whose worst 2026 season estimator was a 2.35 SIERA. Even if not, that SIERA is only up to 3.04 this postseason and still his worst. It’s been more about the length of his work than the quality of it with all those foul balls.
The Miz will throw his fastball 63-64% of the time against batters from either side of the plate with neither side seeing any other pitch more than 17% (RHB sliders). There are some cutters (LHBs 15%, RHBs 13%) and some curves (14%) and all of those pitches grade out well, but it’s the fastball (68 PB, 136 P+) that’s running this show, leading to a 2.37 Bot ERA and 129 Pitching+ this season, both best in the league by wide margins.
Misiorowski held RHBs to a .261 wOBA and .265 xwOBA this season, but LHBs were squashed like bugs (.179 wOBA, .194 xwOBA).
While the middle of the order may have moved around, the Rays have pretty much had a set personnel against RHPs this postseason, even facing a couple of RHPs with reverse splits. I’m expecting to see exactly the six LHBs BARTOLO projects in a similar order.
That particular configuration of the Tampa Bay lineup has averaged a 113 wRC+ on the road this season with only Taylor Walls below 96.
They’ve averaged a 120 wRC+ (.169 ISO) against RHP, again with only Walls below 103.
However, against high-level pitching this postseason in just nine games, these nine have averaged a 77 wRC+ with only Yandy Diaz (151), Richie Palacios (141) and Junior Caminero (127) producing at an above-average rate.
Caminero is the player I want to focus on here. At 1.44 wFA/C, he’s easily the best fastball hitter on the team and the only projected Tampa Bay bat who matches up positively against Misiorowski on a pitch run value scale. His flat swing path and league-leading bat speed (79.5 mph) are why he has done so well against fastballs and even elevated high velocity.
The Guardians did have success feeding Caminero breaking balls and hard four-seamers elevated out of the strike zone. He will chase and swing through a lot of those. This is something regular-season Misiorowski would be able to exploit, but something the postseason version of Miz could struggle with. It may even be the key to this series.
Among his other accomplishments, it's almost not fair that Misiorowski was great at holding runners. His 6 Net Bases Prevented was tied for 12th best in the league and William Contreras was tied for 5th with 5 CSAA, nailing 28% of runners against an expectation of 19%.
The Rays stole the 2nd most bases in the league (64), with Chandler Simpson’s 46 leading the way. He was one of 14 runners to accumulate 3 Runs via Stolen Bases. Walls (21), Palacios (17) and DeLuca (17) were also threats, but it’s going to be difficult for the Rays to have success in that department here.
The Brewers were a top-10 defensive unit this year with 15 Runs Prevented and 18 OAA, though this particular lineup composition has only accumulated 6 FRV with David Hamilton (-8), Jake Bauers (-7) and Contreras (-5) the biggest obstacles, but Brice Turang (14) nearly making up for them on his own.
BARTOLO projects the Milwaukee bullpen 2nd best in the league with basically everyone on the staff aside from Misiorowski part of it, though I expect Logan Hernderson to start Game 2 and not be used in relief here. Everyone else is up for grabs, though.
During the postseason, the Brewers have posted a 2.98 FIP, 3.86 xFIP and 3.61 SIERA in relief of their starters, good for 4th best among postseason teams.
Rays vs Brewers Pick, Betting Analysis
Somewhere around 60 degrees seems to be the cutoff for roof opening and closures at American Family Field and since that appears to be the forecast for Friday with a light wind blowing in from the center without any rain, it's going to be difficult to project far ahead of time.
The run environment runs 8% below average with the roof closed, but only 2% below average plus or minus any weather effects with the roof open. Weather sources suggest anywhere from a 1% to 7% drop with this forecast, which might bring us right back to a roof-closed run environment (or close to it) either way.
Umpire Gabe Morales suppresses run scoring another 1.6%, which means regardless of the roof status, this will likely remain a negative run environment.
We can’t just ignore what Misiorowski has done this season in favor of two postseason starts. I will weigh them a bit more heavily for being most recent, but even then he comes in below two and a half runs per nine, nearly two runs better than Martinez, who only enjoys a very minor shift downward (complimentary) for his solid postseason performance.
Milwaukee’s 23-point higher postseason team wRC+ and 48-point higher projected lineup postseason wRC+ somewhat nullifies the Tampa Bay projected lineup’s 7-point wRC+ season edge against RHP with both lineups having comparable home/road wRC+ numbers.
Defenses should be comparable (slight edge Rays), though the Brewers do project for a large enough BRR (Base Running Runs) edge (13) to make a slight difference, along with their small home field edge.
BARTOLO does rank the Milwaukee bullpen three spots higher, but with only a 0.17 run wFIP difference that just about disappears once you remove Logan Henderson. The Tampa Bay relief corps has been about one-third of a run better in postseason play.
Whoever got in on Milwaukee at the original price when Rasmussen was expected, congratulations, you can either cash in now or have tremendous closing line value.
I re-adjusted the full game and F5 lines to around -200 and -250 respectively, in favor of the home team with Martinez substituted in. The market (sportsbooks at least) appears to have resettled to just under -200 in both cases. I’m completely aligned with the current total of 6.5.
In a normal situation, I would endorse the Milwaukee F5 line at better than -200, but have no reason to play it here, having caught the early full-game prices on the prediction markets before the market caught up to the pitching swap.
I’ll leave it as a lean here, but won’t track it in the app.
The Rasmussen K prop would have been my official play and at the same price, I’ll probably play it again on Saturday with the same notes.
Milwaukee F5 actually conflicts a bit with what my new play here is going to be and one I would have played regardless of the Rasmussen/Martinez situation.
While AFF does suppress run scoring and boost strikeouts, it doesn’t hurt home runs with LHBs hitting them at 3% above average and RHBs 2% above average with the roof closed. With the roof open, those numbers jump to 1% and 18% on average.
That’s a large boost for RH power, even if the weather does give some of that back.
I know Misiorowski only gave up 14 home runs this season, but 10 of those were at home and five of them to RHBs in 50 fewer PAs than LHBs.
Postseason Miz has not allowed a home run, but by leaking his fastballs over the middle of the plate more often, we come back to the six hard-hit batted balls in each of his two outings on a combined 22 batted balls.
Caminero is the batter most likely to take advantage of Misiorowski’s fastball misses, not with foul balls, but loud contact.
FanDuel is offering the best price on a Caminero HR at +570, which would translate to something around 22-24 home runs to break even over a full season. We’re getting a guy who dropped nearly twice that many this season (42) mostly because of the matchup.
To sum it all up for clarity:
Original Play: Rasmussen over 5.5 Strikeouts (+100 or better), which I'll likely repeat for Saturday
Best Play: Brewers before the market adjusted to the pitching change (-170 or better)…some prediction markets still haven’t as of Friday evening.
Lean: Brewers F5 -200 or better (if you weren’t able to get the Brewers full game before the line moved)
New Official Play: Junior Caminero HR +570
Pick: Junior Caminero HR +570, 0.2u | Bet to +500
