Philip Humber Hurls Perfect Game For White Sox

Only 21 pitchers have thrown perfect games. None has thrown more than one. But how did they do in the start after perfection?

In examining this, I have limited my research to 15 of the previous 20 games. I have eliminated these five from consideration:

Margalus lists and breaks down the pitches Humber threw, and he includes pictures and .gifs of the fateful last swing. Conclusion of that last swing: Anyone who says with a rigid certainty that they’re sure it was or wasn’t a swing ... probably worth ignoring. It was that close.

If the Mariners continue on their current pace, will they be the worst-hitting team to ever have a perfect game thrown against them? To the stat cave! Wait, my mom’s using it to do laundry. To Baseball Reference!

Here’s a list of the teams who were on the wrong side of perfect-game history, ranked in reverse order of OPS+. I used OPS+ because it accounts for a) the home park of the team, and b) what other teams are hitting around the league. A team with a 100 OPS+ is a league-average team:

Another unusual note: Humber had the second-fewest career starts (29, before Saturday) of anyone to throw a perfect game. The fewest? Fellow White Sox pitcher Charlie Robertson had just four before he threw his perfect game against the Detroit Tigers on April 30, 1922; Humber’s gem was nine days short of 90 years after Robertson’s.

So after several attempts to stick in the major leagues and fulfill that first-round draft potential -- which led to a top-100 prospect ranking according to Baseball America in both 2005 and 2007 -- Humber reached a pinnacle shared by just 20 other pitchers in major league history.

In doing so, Humber threw just 96 pitches, a very efficient pitcher’s outing, and here’s how the final three outs were recorded:

Humber has thrown just 80 pitches (57 strikes) through eight innings.