These are the best performances with Milwaukee Brewers position players pitching

Nine pitches, six strikes and a 1-2-3 inning against the best offense in baseball.

Milwaukee Brewers infielder Pablo Reyes is now on track to finish with the best earned run average of any Brewers pitcher this year at 0.00 ... tied with fellow third baseman Mike Brosseau, who has worked three scoreless innings this year and allowed just two hits and one walk.

Reyes, who threw from 77 to 36.7 mph in a blowout loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Aug. 24, and Brosseau have fared better than catcher Victor Caratini, who yielded three runs Auin another lopsided loss in Los Angeles.

Sure, it's not ideal that the Brewers needed two position players to pitch on back-to-back nights — an indication of the uncompetitive circumstances in what became losses by scores of 10-1 and 12-6. But it beats using three in a game, covering five innings, right?

Do you remember these particularly impressive performances from position players on the hill? We're not counting Brooks Kieschnick, Milwaukee's popular precursor to Shohei Ohtani who came to the team capable of both hitting and pitching.

Lyle Overbay (2014)

One batter, one out. Overbay relieved a struggling Wei-Chung Wang in the eighth inning against the Braves on May 19, 2014, after Atlanta had scored five times to take a 9-3 lead. He threw six pitches and retired Ryan Doumit with a pop fly. The Brewers still lost by that same score.

Jedd Gyorko (2020)

You'd be forgiven for forgetting everything about the 2020 season, but Gyorko did have a smooth 11-pitch outing Aug. 12 against Minnesota in a 12-2 loss, allowing a hit and nothing else.

Rick Dempsey (1991)

In his second pitching appearance of the year, Dempsey allowed just a walk over four batters and negotiated the ninth of a 14-5 loss at home against Texas. The catcher threw 18 pitches. He pitched earlier in the year against Boston in a 14-4 loss.

Jace Peterson (2021)

In his second pitching outing of the year, Peterson needed just 14 pitches to get past St. Louis in the ninth inning of a 10-2 loss Sept. 22. He allowed a hit and struck out a batter (sorry, Edmundo Sosa). He retired Lars Nootbaar and Tommy Edman on grounders.

Peterson allowed two earned runs in his previous outing Aug. 14 in Pittsburgh.

Martín Maldonado (2014)

On April 30 in a 9-3 loss to St. Louis, Maldonado needed 15 pitches to work a scoreless eighth, allowing one hit. After a leadoff single against Allen Craig, Maldonado retired Jhonny Peralta, Greg Garcia and Tony Cruz in succession.

Daniel Robertson (2021)

He had three career pitching appearances and one for Milwaukee, when he allowed a hit but nothing more over 10 pitches and four batters faced at Wrigley Field on April 23. The Cubs won, 15-2, but it wasn't Robertson's fault.

Mark Loretta (2001)

Loretta struck out two Reds batters in a scoreless eighth inning June 20, 2001 in what was the utility man's pitching debut. An error complicated the inning for Loretta, who nonetheless stranded two runners when he punched out Ruben Rivera looking. It was the first Brewers position player to see the mound in 10 years.

"I felt pretty relaxed, actually," said Loretta, who said he had not pitched since college at Northwestern. "I didn't really know where to stand. (Catcher Raul) Casanova put down a curveball sign, and I wasn't sure how to grip it. I had a lot of fun."

The Reds won the game, 11-3.

Terry Francona (1989)

Before he was a long-tenured big-league manager, Francona played several positions for the Expos and four other teams, including the Brewers in 1989 and 1990. He pitched only once, the eighth inning of a 12-2 blowout in Oakland on May 15, 1989, but he retired all three men he faced on just 12 pitches, throwing eight strikes and registering a strikeout of Stan Javier, who had two hits against the game's regular pitchers but struck out looking against Francona.

It was the only strikeout registered by any Brewers pitcher in the game.

He threw fastballs and knuckleballs.

"It was so slow, I couldn't believe he wasn't swinging," Francona said of Javier. "When I let it go, I thought he was going to crush it. I couldn't believe it.

"I'll bet they used a calendar," Francona said when asked what his radar gun readings likely were.

Sal Bando (1979)

Three position players working five innings? Dang.

When third baseman Sal Bando stepped to the mound against Kansas City at Royals Stadium on Aug. 29, 1979, the Brewers were already trailing, 13-4, in the fourth inning and there were two runners on with nobody out, to boot. Bando struggled initially, allowing two singles and a double around a series of groundouts, but he rebounded with not one but two scoreless innings thereafter. He admitted to throwing some spitballs.

George Bamberger said after two innings of work that Bando had told him, "I can only go one more. After that, I won't be able to comb my hair."

Bando, who was charged with two runs on three hits in three innings, allowed only one baserunner in the fifth on an error and worked a 1-2-3 sixth, though the Royals then led, 17-6. Eventually, Kansas City prevailed, 18-8.

Second baseman Jim Gantner pitched the seventh and worked a scoreless inning despite two hits. Catcher Buck Martinez worked the eighth and wasn't as fortunate, allowing a walk and then an RBI double to Hal McRae.

Gorman Thomas did homer twice, tying the franchise record of 36 home runs in a season.

Erik Kratz (2018)

In the same game where Hernán Pérez worked two scoreless innings, Kratz was on point, getting fellow catcher Austin Barnes to strike out and recording a double play off the bat of pitcher Caleb Ferguson to face the minimum in the ninth of the 11-2 loss to the Dodgers on July 22. Kratz, who became a popular fixture during the team's run to the seventh game against the NLCS against those same Dodgers, was making the second of his three pitching appearances that year.

The next one also came against the Dodgers, on Aug. 2 in a 21-5 loss, when he worked an inning and retired all three men he faced on 13 pitches. That included Barnes again and future Brewers catcher Yasmani Grandal.

Joe Inglett (2010)

Nobody can match the efficiency of utility man Joe Inglett's six-pitch performance on July 27, 2010.

In a 12-4 loss to the Reds, Inglett retired Brandon Phillips, Orlando Cabrera and Joey Votto, throwing just two pitches to each player.

Inglett threw 55 mph heaters but didn't want to talk about his outing afterward.

Trent Durrington (2004)

Technically, you actually can match Inglett's efficiency; Durrington threw only one pitch in his lone outing April 17 against the Astros, relieving Luis Vizcaino in a game that was already 14-5 in favor of the Astros in the eighth. Jose Vizcaino flew out immediately against the Australian utility man.

Durrington had pitched in the minors, but that would be his only big-league appearance on the hill.

Hernán Pérez (lifetime achievement)

When it comes to volume, you can't beat Pérez, who appeared in nine games as a pitcher for the Brewers. Over 9⅓ innings, he allowed 11 hits and six earned runs, including two bombs, but five of those runs came in a single outing.

On July 22, 2018 against the Dodgers in an 11-2 loss, he worked two scoreless innings, with a hit, walk, hit batsman (a 48 mph ... uh, changeup ... that hit Austin Barnes) and a strikeout. He got Manny Machado to ground out and retired Cody Bellinger and Matt Kemp in the eighth.

Pérez had two scoreless outings in 2019, a 1-2-3 inning June 4 in a 16-0 loss to the Marlins and an inning with two walks and a strikeout in a 12-8 loss to the Braves on May 17, ended on a double play ball from Dansby Swanson.

Against the Marlins, he threw 10 pitches and was the only one of six pitchers that day to allow fewer than two baserunners, let alone none at all.

In 2021, he threw two clean innings, including a 1-2-3 eighth against St. Louis in a 14-3 loss on April 13, with two strikeouts (Justin Williams and Lane Thomas). He threw a mere nine pitches, including seven strikes.

More: Hernán Pérez helps Brewers make the most out of an otherwise forgettable night

JR Radcliffe can be reached at (262) 361-9141 or jradcliffe@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JRRadcliffe.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Pablo Reyes and other Brewers moments in position players pitching