Astros catcher Erik Kratz pitches for the first time ever
Position players pitching is one of baseball’s great joys. There’s even a twitter account dedicated to alerting the world when a position player is on the mound. Which is a great service, since it doesn’t happen often – typically, it happens in a long extra-innings game when a team has run out of pitchers, or when a team is getting beaten so badly that it no longer makes sense to send out a real pitcher. Tuesday night, when the Houston Astros where getting thrashed by the Seattle Mariners (they lost 11-1), it happened for the first time this season. Astros catcher Erik Kratz pitched the eighth inning.
It was the first time Kratz had pitched in a major league game, but he managed to keep his cool. The first batter he faced, Chris Iannetta, singled, and then made it to second on a wild pitch to De-Ho Lee. Kratz got Lee to ground out for his very first major league out as a pitcher. Hopefully someone kept that ball.
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Things didn’t go as well when Kratz pitched to Seth Smith.
That’s not just a wild pitch, that’s a WILD pitch, and it let Iannetta get to third. He’d come around to score when Kratz served a single to Smith, which was followed by another single to Norichika Aoki. A passed ball and a ground out would score another run.
Kratz gave up three hits and two runs, but just one was earned. His ERA sits at a robust 9.00. He had a great sense of humor about the whole thing, though.
All things considered, Kratz didn’t pitch too badly! But he probably should hang on to his day job.
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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at [email protected] or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher
