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.

[Join a Yahoo Daily Fantasy Baseball contest now]

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.

More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:

The StewPod: A baseball podcast by Yahoo Sports
Subscribe via iTunes or via RSS feed

- - - - - -

Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher