The rise and fall of Phillip Humber

There have been 23 official perfect games in major league history.

Few appear to have been as unlikely as the one thrown earlier this season by former Twin Phillip Humber. When he threw his gem, he appeared to have finally emerged as a legitimate major league starter.

Phil Humber after his perfect game
on April 21 in Seattle. At the time,
his ERA was 0.63; today, it's 6.50.

Not so. After his embarrassing outing Tuesday against the Twins -- 10 batters faced, one retired, eight runs allowed, a batting average allowed of 1.000 (the one out was a sacrifice fly and thus not an official at-bat) -- Humber has an ERA of 6.50. Six and a half runs per nine innings -- in a season in which he threw a perfect game.

Which raises the question: Is he the worst pitcher ever to have a perfect game?

Granting that all perfect games are flukes, there is a real connection between them and the quality of the pitcher.

The vast bulk of perfectos come from quality pitchers. Six of the 23 were authored by Hall of Famers (Monte Ward, Cy Young, Addie Joss, Sandy Koufax, Jim Bunning, Catfish Hunter), and Randy Johnson and Roy Halladay (and maybe Felix Hernandez) will someday join the list. Then there are such perfect-game pitchers as David Wells, Dennis Martinez and David Cone -- distinguished pitchers but unlikely to be chosen for Cooperstown.

Only a handful of true mediocrities throw perfect games. Lee Richmond, who threw the first perfecto back in 1880, was 75-100, 3.06; he had two 30-plus loss seasons. Charlie Robertson (1922) was 49-80, 4.44 in an eight-year major league career. Dallas Braden has started three games since 2010 because of injuries; he's 26-36, 4.16  for his career. Don Larsen was 81-91, 3.78.

And Humber is 16-15, 4.88.

Humber and Braden are both active (at least theoretically in Braden's case; he had rotator cuff surgery in late August, and his career appears to be in genuine jeopardy), so they could still rise or fall. But right now I'd have to say Humber is the worst perfect game author in history.

And really, there's no shame in that. Somebody has to be the worst of the 23. But an ERA of 6.50 -- yeah, that's embarrassing.

Perfect Phillip Humber

Philip Humber will never throw a better game than he did
Saturday in Seattle: 27 men up, 27 down on a mere 96 pitches.

Philip Humber, who threw a perfect game Saturday for the Chicago White Sox, may be a familiar name to Twins fans. He pitched briefly — less than 21 innings — and poorly — 6.10 ERA — for the Twins in 2008-09 after being part of the Johan Santana trade.

His has been a star-crossed career, and a warning for those eager to see the Twins take a college pitcher with the second overall pick in June. Humber, who starred at Rice University, was the third man taken in the 2004 draft. But he quickly blew out his elbow and needed Tommy John surgery, and his stuff has never recovered.

The Twins cut him loose after the 2009 season. He got some time in with Kansas City, was released there, signed with Chicago, stepped into the rotation there last season because  of injury, had a big first half (8-5, 3.10) and faded badly in the second half (1-4, 5.01).

His success last season, I figured this winter, was a mirage. Today suggests otherwise. Seattle does not have a strong lineup, but perfection is perfection.

And I still cannot blame the Twins for pulling the plug on Humber.

Dissecting the Bill Smith era: The Santana trade

Johan Santana won two Cy Young awards
while with the Twins (2004 and 2006). He now
gets $25 million a year from the Mets and did
not pitch in 2011.

When: Feb. 2, 2008
What: LHS Johan Santana to the New York Mets for CF Carlos Gomez and RHPs Phil Humber, Kevin Mulvey and Deolis Guerra.
Value: Santana has earned 49 win shares and 14.4 WAR since the trade. Gomez has 30 WS, 4.1 WAR; Humber 13 WS and 3.4 WAR; Mulvey 0 and -0.5. Guerra has not reached the majors.
Twins motivation: Avoiding Santana's walk year; secondary motivations, trimming payroll, adding an outfielder.

Underlying the decision to trade Johan Santana during the 2007-08 offseason was the minor circus that accompanied Torii Hunter during his 2007 walk year. It seemed to team management that every road trip brought the same story: Where will Hunter play next? And Hunter was only too willing to fuel the speculation.

Correctly or not, Ron Gardenhire and Co. felt that was a factor in the team's decline in 2007. When, in the immediate wake of that disappointing season, Santana indicated that he was not likely to re-sign with the Twins, the brass felt it best to trade him immediately.

The Twins say
Deolis Guerra was
effective after being
moved to the bullpen
last season in
Double A.

It's an arguable decision. The Twins could have kept Santana for 2008, offered him arbitration and pocketed a pair of draft picks when he left. On the other hand, the media circus that accompanied the winter meetings that offseason, when there was a fresh rumor every few hours, suggests that the issue of Santana's future would have dominated the 2008 season.

Just going off the results, however, hanging on to Santana for 2008 might have worked better for Minnesota. Gomez never fully earned Gardenhire's confidence and ultimately lost his starting spot in the outfield to Denard Span. Humber washed out with the Twins and then Kansas City before emerging last season as a respectable starter for the White Sox. Mulvey's career appears to have stalled. Only Guerra remains in the Twins system, and he looks less like a useful piece each year.

Theoretically, the four players the Twins got in the Santana trade were more than the equivalent of a (low) first round pick and a sandwich pic. It simply didn't turn out that way.

Gomez and Mulvey were more valuable to the Twins in terms of what they got in future trades than for what they did in Minnesota.

Yankees eat some Humber pie

Two former Twins: catcher A.J. Pierzynski and
pitcher Phil Humber.

Monday offered one of those confluences that tend to plague me: A night off work for me fell on a night off for the Twins.

So I watched the ESPN broadcast of the White Sox-Yankees, secure in the knowledge that one of them had to lose (and tormented by the fact that one had to win).

It's  been well over 12 hours since the final out, and I still can't quite get my brain around the notion that Phil Humber — sour fruit of the Johan Santana trade, he of a 6.10 ERA in 20 scant innings with the Twins — no-hit the Yankees into the seventh inning. Nor can I credit the fact that after four starts with the Sox that he is 2-2 with a 3.20 ERA.

Can he keep this up? I have my doubts, but I'm the guy who greeted the spring training news that he would step into the Sox rotation for the recovering Jake Peavy by referring to him as "throwing batting practice."

As unlikely as I find the notion of Phil Humber getting outs, his performance may not have been the biggest surprise of the game for me. The Yankees made two uncharacteristic defensive mistakes, each of which led to Chicago runs. (And since the game ended 2-0, those miscues, neither of them an error, lost the game.)

One: Center fielder Curtis Granderson made an overly aggressive dive attempt on a leadoff single and turned it into a double. Two ground balls later, the Sox had their first run in something like 28 innings.

Two: In the ninth inning, Alexi Ramirez hits a little pop-up over the pitcher's mound. Rafael Soriano does what he's trained to do: Point to it and get out of the infielders' way. (Major league teams don't want their pitchers trying to backpedal up and down the mound; that's a good route to ankle injuries.) Only Derek Jeter never got there. Base hit.

The ESPN boys immediately blamed Soriano, I assume because the broadcast rights contract requires that nobody ever criticize Jeter for anything. (Rick Sutcliffe spent much of an inning earlier denouncing a new book that is apparently critical of Jeter's "leadership" on the basis that Jeter had nothing to do with the book, as if that has any relevance to the truth or falsity of the content.)

It's just one game and two plays, but it sure didn't look like the Yankees who won the World Series in 2009 by playing it safe on defense and letting the other team make the mistakes — and knowing that the thunder in their lineup was sure to generate runs.