Perfection vs. Imperfection

On Saturday afternoon Philip Humber recorded the 21^stperfect game in MLB history, against the Seattle Mariners. Before this game occurred the majority of people outside of Chicago White Sox fans had never heard of Humber. After the perfecto Humber has a 12-10 overall career record, a 3.90 ERA, one complete game and one shutout in thirty starts and 228.2 innings. Why do these numbers matter? Humber will go down in history, he has done something only twenty other men have done. He has gone from a nobody to a somebody in the course of one day. But Humber is still not a great pitcher, he may become one, that only history will decide, but at this moment it does not make sense that Humber threw a perfect game, except that he was pitching against the Mariners.

Looking back at the other pitchers in this glorious club, you see Hall of Famers, great pitchers, all-stars and very good pitchers. Pitchers like Cy Young, and Randy Johnson are joined on the list by the likes of Sandy Koufax and Don Larsen. Humber does not belong on this list. Even the lesser pitchers David Wells, Kenny Rodgers and Mark Buehrle are all very good pitchers historically. So how did Humber sneak in?

Saturday afternoon, I was out enjoying the 70 degree weather that had graced Seattle that day. I was outside playing sports while the Mariners were playing. I did not see any part of the game, but when I checked my phone and saw that many of my friends were texting me about how the Mariners were about to, and did get perfect game’d (before the game was over, nobody made a direct comment regarding the perfection or lack of hits in the game) I was not in the least surprised. My first response as a Mariner fan was why did this not happen before. The Mariners have been an awful franchise for most of their existence, they are one of two teams to never make the World Series, and aside from a seven year stretch between 1995 and 2001 where the Mariners made the playoffs four times, they have missed the playoffs every year. Last year the Mariners had an all-time historically bad offense. This year they are not much better. They have been miserable at the plate for years but no perfect game against them until now. Before Sunday’s game (statistics were not updated when I wrote this article) the Mariners leading hitter was batting .275, they had one other hitter above .250, had a team BA of .223 and an OBP of .272. This team sucks at hitting. I have witnessed it in person as I went to two games at Safeco this week. One of which was the lowest attended home game for the Mariners ever in Safeco Field. There is not a single Mariner that I feel confident will get a hit when they are at the plate. Every single player in the line-up is either just awful, Miguel Olivo or Chone Figgins, too old, Ichiro and Brendan Ryan, or way too young, Dustin Ackley, Jesus Montero, amongst others. How are the Mariners supposed to win games when they can’t hit? On Thursday Felix Hernandez pitched eight shutout innings and the team still lost. Throwing a perfect game against these Mariners is much less of an accomplishment than what other pitchers have done.

I do not intend to demean Humber in anyway, or discredit what he has done, but the Mariners getting perfect game’d by a nobody is what should happen. The Mariners suck and have sucked for a long time. Rodger Clemens struck out twenty against the Mariners, they’ve been no-hit twice, they set the single season win total and didn’t make it to the World Series, they routinely lose their best players to other teams, and Felix Hernandez has 16 no decisions in games where he has pitched seven or more innings and given up zero or one run. Congratulations to Philip Humber but we here in Seattle have been expecting it for a long time now, we had just hoped it would be a pitcher who had some pedigree.

Notes from the week:

• These NHL playoffs are amazing, anyone who isn’t watching cannot call themselves a sports fan.
• Fenway celebrating 100 years is wonderful, but Yankee stadium was baseball mecca and if they can tear that down they can tear down Fenway to make something better. Yankee was a shithole, so is Fenway, and don’t even get me started on Wrigley. Time for new stadiums, just keep it classy and don’t forget to put the history in the new stadiums.
• Enough with the NBA regular season already, time for the playoffs. Spurs are gonna win it all, Pop just knows what he is doing.
• The Nats look good but it is still early, do people really see the Red Sox finishing last in the AL east and the Nats winning the NL east. Calm down and let some more games happen before you freak out.

-David Ringold