Good Riddance to Randy Johnson!

by
January 9, 2010

Randy Johnson’s retirement prompted me to create this word cloud. It shows all his strikeout victims over the years, with larger fonts indicating higher strikeout totals. While Ricky Henderson leads the way with 30 K’s, Dean Palmer’s 25 strikeouts are more atrocious considering he had 42 at bats against Johnson. Sort of fun to scan through the list and see names from a LONG time ago (eg. Danny Tartabull). It puts into perspective how long Randy Johnson dominated the game of baseball. Apologies that you can’t zoom into closer and get a sharper image on the smaller fonts. Wordle’s export function doesn’t allow for that unfortunately.

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Kevin Dame is a writer and visual designer who brings sports information to life in new and meaningful ways. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter @kevintdame.
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Millsy
13 years ago

What are the numbers on Joe McEwing?  He only had one ‘full’ season of at bats in MLB, but has some fairly large font on there.  Was he dominated even more than Palmer?

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Dave Studeman
13 years ago

Very cool, Kevin.  Just wondering: does the coloring mean anything?

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Kincaid
13 years ago

The coolest part is zooming in and all of a sudden noticing that every little space between names is filled with more names than you could ever see in the smaller image.  It’s just mindblowing to see all those names laid out like that in one place.  That’s something like 83% of the batters he’s ever faced that he struck out.  Unbelievable.

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Ahmet Hamdi
13 years ago

Awesome … now if there was K/PA Against percentages … I need to figure out how to use this Wordle thing for more than one thing.

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Ryan
13 years ago

Pretty neat to see some of those names from a couple decades ago.

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BobbyRoberto
13 years ago

Brian,
When we’re talking Alex Gonzalezes, does it matter which one?  grin

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Michael
13 years ago

Seeing Chili Davis’ name so huge brings back memories: there used to be this one lady who came to the Kingdome to cheer on her Angels. Every single time Chili Davis would come to bat, she’d shriek, “HOT CHILI!! HOT CHILI!!”

Well, more often than not, when he was facing the Unit, my buddy and I would be able to taunt, “COLD CHILI!” as he took the walk of shame back to the dugout.

I feel honored to have witnessed both of Randy’s no-hitters in their entirety (one in person, one courtesy of TBS) and to have shaken his hand. People have clouded it by obsessing over steroids, but the ‘90s were a golden age of baseball, and Johnson is part of the reason why.

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Dan Novick
13 years ago

I zoomed in and got a pretty clear image. Not perfect, but readable.

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Brian Cartwright
13 years ago

Which Alex Gonzalez?

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Kevin Dame
13 years ago

Hi everyone, some comments:

Joe McEwing played 8 or 9 years in the league actually.  He had 44 AB against the Unit and struck out 11 times.

Dave, the colors don’t mean anything but they could.  I thought it would be cool to have a different color for right and left handed hitters, but the list of players I have doesn’t show this info…

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Bob Wall
13 years ago

Actually, my son and I were looking at this, as it is an amazing way to show data, and share a little baseball.  We thought if the colors represented first years faced and they changed in 5 year increments or something like that that would be really cool.

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Jason B
13 years ago

Brook Jacoby? Tom Brunansky? Greg Gagne? Mickey Tettleton?  Blasts from the past, indeed!  Well done.  =)

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