ST. PETERSBURG -- The Brewers dragged another crop of opposing pitchers to hell.

Now they’re on the precipice of baseball heaven.

With the sort of relentless approach that has carried them through the best season in franchise history, the Brewers strung together seven consecutive hits in a World Series game. No team had done that before. They scored eight two-out runs in a World Series inning. No team had done that before, either. They won Game 3 on Monday night with a seemingly endless fifth inning that gave Milwaukee a 10-1 win over the Rays at the friendly confines of Tropicana Field, where a “Let’s go, Brewers” chant broke out in the eighth.

Those thousands of fans who made this feel like a home game? They saw this before if they followed the Brewers’ 103-win regular season, saw them dismantle baseball’s hottest second-half team (Padres) in the NLDS and then sweep the two-time defending World Series champions (Dodgers) in the NLCS. The Brewers have done this before. They have matched a record shared by the 2019 Nationals, the 2014 Royals, the 2005 White Sox and the 2004 Red Sox, with eight consecutive postseason victories, and would win the World Series if they can become the first team to get to nine on Tuesday night in Game 4.

The whole baseball world is getting to see the Brewers’ “drag ‘em” mentality on full display.

“At its finest,” said Jason Lane, who heads Milwaukee’s hitting program.

His title -- offense and strategy coordinator -- sounds more like something from a football program than a baseball team. That fits. The Brewers don’t just beat teams, they drive them into the ground.

“It’s guys staying within themselves, taking what the game gives them and passing it on to the next guy,” said , whose baserunning played as big a role in the breakaway fifth as did all of the hitting. “Then it’s the next guy going out there and having the will to compete and find a way to help the boys. We’ve taken it to that level.”

“Our offense is built to kind of chip away and wear on pitchers,” said.

You think? Before there was Game 3 there was Game 2 in Milwaukee, where the Brewers came back from a 4-0 deficit to win, 5-4, while coaxing 184 pitches from Rays pitchers. That’s the second-most pitches seen by any team in any game this postseason. Frelick, of all people, hit the only homer.

“That's dragging them,” manager Pat Murphy said. “It says a lot for our guys that they've adopted that.”

Frelick had a lot to do with them adopting that mantra earlier this season, but it started with someone who never played with or coached the Brewers. Lance Berkman, a former teammate of Lane, was talking about his hitting philosophy in a video that happened across Lane’s Instagram feed early last season. Lane shared it with Frelick, and it took off from there.

“[Berkman] referenced this at-bat against [John] Smoltz in the playoffs, where he chased a couple pitches and was 0-2,” Lane said earlier this year. “He would envision himself being down in a pit, and he tried to drag the pitcher down with him.”

It resonated with Frelick, who took the concept to the next level by asking himself, “How can I drag this pitcher to hell with me?”

“I think the most satisfying thing personally might be watching somebody have one of those at-bats while you're on deck,” said. “One, because it's super impressive to watch, and obviously that's kind of the game plan. Two, because you know you're about to step in the box and the guy on the mound is probably a little bit gassed. There's definitely a little bit of a mental edge there that you can gain.”

The Brewers had that edge on Monday against old friend Freddy Peralta, who has been brilliant since a trade to the Rays and was their ALCS MVP against the Guardians. But the Brewers wore down Peralta, starting with a 22-pitch first inning. In the third, they broke through with a pair of first-pitch RBI singles from Yelich and , who is hitting .419 in 11 games this postseason.

Then, in the fifth, they dragged Peralta and the Rays all the way to hell.

The final tally from that inning alone: Twelve batters, eight hits, one walk and eight runs -- with a dose of hustle from the captain, Yelich, who walked with two outs and then made it to second base when Contreras hit an infield single to Rays star third baseman Junior Caminero, who fielded it on backhand in the hole and tried for the out at second. The call was out. The Brewers challenged and won. The bases were loaded. The inning went on.

And on.

And on.

“Don't let that go under the radar, how impressive that is,” Frelick said. “That's a 14-year vet -- All-Stars, MVP, [Silver] Sluggers -- and nobody takes more pride in running the bases than him. He sets the standard here.”

Yelich only took what the Rays gave him. Since the defense played back, he extended his secondary lead and anticipated going all-out on any contact. The Brewers work on that all the time, Frelick said.

“I noticed his big walking lead because the angle from our suite was looking right at him,” Brewers owner Mark Attanasio said. “I thought he was maybe going to score on a double. I didn’t think he was going to beat the ball to second base.”

“As soon as Yeli did that,” Frelick said, “I think we all kind of had a feeling that that inning might blow up.”

Whoever the Rays tried, the Brewers hit. With Peralta out and left-hander Cam Booser in, Brice Turang scorched a two-run single off shortstop Taylor Walls’ glove. Walls called it “a knife in the chest.” Garrett Mitchell, Cooper Pratt and Frelick added successive run-scoring hits and the Rays called for right-hander Cole Sulser. He gave up run-scoring hits to David Hamilton and Jackson Chourio.

It was Chourio’s second hit of the inning and fourth of the game, one shy of the World Series record shared by Paul Molitor (Game 1 in 1982) and Albert Pujols (Game 3 in 2011). He didn’t get a fifth. That was about the only thing that went wrong.

“It got ugly quick,” Walls said.

It was the extreme end of what the Brewers did during the regular season, when they ranked next-to-last in the Majors in home runs but led the way in on-base percentage and ranked second in runs scored. They ranked last in swing percentage and first in hitting to the opposite field. They’ve been a lot to handle for opposing pitchers all year.

If they do it one more time, they would be World Series champions.

In all best-of-seven postseason series, teams with a 3-0 lead have gone on to win the series 42 of 43 times (98%), with 33 of those series ending as sweeps, including the Brewers sweeping the Dodgers in the NLCS. Only two teams have ever forced a Game 7 after trailing 3-0, and only the 2004 Red Sox, in the ALCS against the Yankees, have come all the way back to win. In the World Series specifically, no team has made it as far as Game 6 after being in a 3-0 hole.

No team has ever swept the LCS and the World Series since the LCS round expanded to seven games in 1985. The Brewers will try to be the first.

“Debbie [his wife] was just saying this: It’s just all very hard to take in,” Attanasio said. “It’s beginning to be real now.”