27 Things That Will Decide the 2026 World Series: 6th Inning

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Step by step, we're navigating together the final several hours before Game 1 of the 2026 World Series. Yesterday, I identified 15 things that will contribute to the outcome of this series. Today, I'll supply 12 more. It's time to talk matchups, matchups, matchups, y'all.

16. The Rays' (Faltering) Platoons
One thing you must know about Kevin Cash's lineup is that the three hitters at the top are essentially locked into place (Yandy Díaz, Jonathan Aranda, Junior Caminero), but after that, things get much more messy. At various points this year, the team has platooned at as many as four spots:

Catcher: Liam Hicks (L), Nick Fortes (R)
Second Base: Richie Palacios (L), Ben Williamson and/or Jorge Mateo (R)
Center Field: Johnny DeLuca (R), Cedric Mullins (L)
Right Field: Victor Mesa Jr. (L), Ryan Vilade (R)

At the moment, though, I would only call one of those four platoons intact—and even it is showing some fissures. Hicks, who often bats cleanup for them against right-handed starters, started eight of their nine AL playoff games, appeared in all nine, and played the whole game in seven. Fortes is strictly a backup at this point, but given the Brewers' stable of left-handed pitching options, we'll see him at least occasionally during the series. DeLuca is the starting center fielder now, too—which just happened within the last few weeks. Mullins made 122 starts in center, but is now confined to occasional duty as a defensive sub or pinch-runner. Sem Miller's terrific preview of the World Series through the lens of small things that might matter mentioned that Mullins is maybe the best bunter in the game, but he might not take a plate appearance the whole series.

Mesa, too, has become a de facto full-timer, as Joe Sheehan observed in his own preview of the Series earlier this week. When he hit a crucial left-on-left homer against Max Fried in the ALDS, Cash (it would seem) decided to simply trust the more talented half of his right-field timeshare, and the results support that decision.

The only place where something like a real platoon persists is at second, with Palacios (22 plate appearances) coming to bat exactly twice as often as Williamson (11) during the ALDS and ALCS. Even there, some clutch at-bats from Palacios—most notably, a two-run double and a late single against a pair of lefty relievers in the pennant-clinching game—seems to both imply that Cash is already leaning toward Palacios more and suggest that he'll do so during this series.

For what it's worth, my stripping-down of hitters to the matchups in which they faced markedly above-average pitchers (introduced in an earlier part of this preview) suggest that Cash is mostly right to move out of platoon mode and hand the job to individuals here. He's giving a markedly better player a chance to thrive, in all but one case. Here are those platoon arrangements again, with their expected weighted on-base averages (xwOBA) against this subset of pitchers this year:

Hicks: .281, Fortes: .215
Palacios: .295, Williamson: .276
DeLuca: .250, Mullins: .264
Vilade: .199

Mesa didn't get enough playing time against those pitchers to appear in my query, but we can safely guess he's better against them than Vilade. The aforementioned homer against Fried was practically more than Vilade has done against good pitching all year. The only perplexing choice is the sudden pivot toward DeLuca. Mullins is a veteran with a solid reputation in the clubhouse. He was the starter almost right up to the end of the regular season. After an abysmal April, he put up a respectable .685 OPS the rest of the way, and as the number above indicates, he hangs in there against good pitching. If you clip out the middle of his season and look only from August 1 on, he did have a .599 OPS, but I'm not sure that benching Mullins is the right call. If this series goes on a while, Cash might just find his way back to his lefty-hitting center fielder at a key moment.

17. How to Get Out Mesa and Palacios
One way of thinking about a playoff series against a lineup like this one is by mentally accepting that Díaz, Aranda and Caminero are going to "get theirs". They'll hit for some power; they'll create some runs. In all likelihood, it's when you buckle and allow the rest of the lineup to hurt you that you'll get into trouble, so it's essential to have a plan to prevent that. Mesa and Palacios are two linchpins of the Tampa attack about whom we've talked very little so far; let's remedy that.

The plan is pretty simple against each, too: keep the ball away from them. Both hitters like to cut the plate in half and hunt hittable pitches on the inner portion, or even off it. Trying a back-foot breaking ball to Mesa is a bad idea. Even a left-on-left sinker isn't a very good plan, unless it's a vicious one that really gets into his kitchen. Mesa will chase the sinker off the inside edge, but he's capable of pulling his hands in and getting hits even on those pitches.

Someone with the power and movement of DL Hall or Aaron Ashby can probably punish that chase better, but even Robert Gasser is not as good a matchup for Mesa as he might first seem; there's too much danger of leaving a pitch over the inner half. No, to get him out, work away: fastball away from a righty, then changeup fading even farther away. Breaking stuff away from a lefty, maybe the one sinker in off the plate to keep him honest, then go back away. The good news here: Mesa will swing underneath the four-seamer. Even when on time for it, he's underneath it at an above-average rate, so if Jacob Misiorowski's fastball has its hop back in Game 1, he can live above the barrel.

That's not true of Palacios. He has an extremely flat swing and can get on top of the four-seamer from a righty pretty reliably. Misiorowski can get him out with the fastball up and away and a stolen strike or two on a backdoor curveball, but he should avoid throwing a slider or cutter coming in on him. The rest of the Crew (especially southpaws) need to hammer away at him on the outer edge, but once he's set up for it, he's much more jammable inside than Mesa is, especially with average-or-better velocity.

18. The Joey Ortiz-David Hamilton Question
Let's turn our attention to the closest thing to a true platoon the Brewers have run this year: David Hamilton and Joey Ortiz, at third base. First, we should note that Ortiz (.251 xwOBA) was much better against above-average pitchers than Hamilton (.220); that matters. As we've discussed already, Hamilton has been the better defender against bunts, but Ortiz is the better (or at least more reliable) defender, overall. Ordinarily, this would tip in Ortiz's favor.

However, there are four key things working for Hamilton:

Ortiz might just not be healthy. He was dealing with three different injuries by the end of the regular season, and his performance in October says he's not 100 percent.
Along those lines: Ortiz has been atrocious at the plate this month, looking much more like the guy who was so lost he lost his job earlier this year than like the one who turned things around so impressively in midsummer. Hamilton, by contrast, has been a dynamic offensive weapon.
The Rays bunt a lot, so that aspect of the two players' defense will be more important than in a typical matchup.
The Rays' starters will all be right-handed, unless they improbably give the ball to Ian Seymour in Game 4. They also don't defend the running game well, which opens the door for the speedy Hamilton to cause some havoc.

According to Bluesky user Sandy Kazmir's matchup matrix for the series, Ortiz projects better even against the right-handed Rays than Hamilton does. On the strength of that data; the aforementioned data point about hitting high-quality pitchers; and a general sense that Ortiz is due to heal up and break out a bit, I would lean toward Ortiz in the early games of this series. One bonus, if Pat Murphy goes that way: with Ortiz in the lineup, the Brewers would have great balance (four righties, five lefties) against the righty Rays starters. They'd also have Hamilton available to pinch-run (or pinch-hit for Ortiz) later in the contest.

We're heading into the home stretch now. It's less than 12 hours until first pitch. Join the conversation about the Series below, or in our game thread, which will get going early and go all night.