108

Coming into the season, Phil Humber was supposed to be a temporary fill-in until Jake Peavy was ready to pitch. Well, Humber pitched well enough to force Ozzie into using a six-man rotation when Peavy returned. And now that Jake is headed back to the DL, it’s a good thing that the White Sox have Humber.

It was especially good last night, as Humber pitched the Sox to a 5-1 win over the visiting Seattle Mariners. Humber lasted 7.2 innings before yielding to Chris Sale and gave up only one run on five hits. He threw 69 of his 106 pitches for strikes, lowered his ERA to 2.87, and improved his record to 5-3.

Humber had help from Carlos Quentin, who bashed his team-leading 15th home run and drove in two runs. Omar Vizquel also plated a pair and became the second oldest player to triple (behind Julio Franco). The other run came courtesy of Paul Konerko’s 14th homer.

Konerko’s home run was the 379th of his career, good enough for a tie for 61st place on the all-time list. Does Paulie have another 21 home runs in him this season so that he reaches the 400 mark? At his current pace of 14 in 63 games, Captain Crunch projects to 36 for the year, which would give him 401 for his career. That’s cutting it kind of close, but it wouldn’t take a superhuman effort for him to pull it off. By the way, 401 would leave him in 48th place, right behind Duke Snider. Along the way, Paulie would pass former White Sox great and current coach, Harold Baines, as well as former Sox player Albert Belle.

With the win, the Sox kept pace with the Surprising Indians, remaining 6.0 games behind the division leaders, and reduced the Magic Humber, err, Magic Number to 108. There’s one more game with Seattle at the Cell, so Go Sox!