PITTSBURGH – The Milwaukee Brewers are back in town, but three Pirates pitchers are stuck with ‘em for the rest of the season.

On April 22, the Brewers dealt the Pirates the great grandmother of all losses, 20-zip, the worst in team history. And trust me, 20 are a lot of runs and 124 years are a lot of history.

D.J. Carrasco, Octavio Dotel and Joel Hanrahan combined to allow 12 earned runs in the Milwaukee Massacre, all of them after the outcome had been decided for all intents and purposes. Three months later, they’re still hacked off about it.

 “Don’t remind me,” Carrasco pleaded before the series opener on Monday night. “I hate that game. A lot of us hate that game. It wrecked some our seasons and we can’t get it back.”

“How can I forget that game?” Hanrahan said. “Every time I look at my numbers, it stares me in the face.”

Said Dotel, “Milwaukee is killin’ me, man!”

The three are convinced that the Brewers stole their pitch signs that afternoon. The way every Brewers batter was locked in – and I do mean every Brewers batter -- they’ll get no argument here.

Regardless of how it happened, their statistics took a royal whuppin. Carrasco allowed four runs in one inning. Dotel was tagged for four runs (two earned) in one inning. And Hanrahan was lit up for six runs in one inning. If the three were starters, they could pitch enough innings make up for one lousy performance. But as relievers, they can’t put up enough zeroes to cover their tracks entirely.

Here’s the rub: If a position player had finished the game after it had been decided, some of their numbers would look a lot better now. And their trade values would be even greater, one could argue.

The Pirates trailed by a touchdown and extra point when Carrasco took the ball in the fourth inning. They were behind by a 10-0 when Hanrahan entered the game in the seventh inning. They were behind 16-0 when Dotel was asked to mop up in the ninth inning.

“We’ve been blown out a bunch of times this season, but we haven’t (had a position player pitch) once,” one pitcher told me. “You don’t do it only for stat purposes but to save wear and tear on the pitchers. It’s done in other places, but that’s not how they do it here.”

In defense of pitching coach Joe Kerrigan and manager John Russell, the game was played early in the season and the bullpen needed work at the time. Dotel and Hanrahan hadn’t pitch for three days when they took the mound, while Carrasco sat out the previous one. Plus, if Russell had packed it in early, the organization would have been subject to more it-doesn’t-try-to-win talk as well.

What can’t be denied is that one rotten inning wrecked some good seasons.

Carrasco entered the current series with a 4.14 earned run average. Subtract the Milwaukee Massacre and he would own a 3.49 ERA, nearly two-thirds of a run less than it is now.

Dotel would have a 4.37 ERA, not the 4.75 one that has at the moment.

In fact, if Dotel could throw the Brewers out the league, his numbers would be All-Star material. His ERA is supersized 15.88 (10 earned runs in 5 2/3 innings) against them, but a slim 2.67 against everyone else.

“What am I supposed to do when they want me to pitch against them?” he said. “I can’t hang up the phone in the bullpen.”

Nobody got skewed more than Hanrahan, though. If he had called in sick that day, his ERA would be a glitzy 2.63 right now. Instead, it’s 3.96 at the moment.

The difference: a fat, juicy 1.33 runs per nine innings.

“What can you do?” he shrugged. “People on the outside look at ERAs, but the ones on the inside know the story.”