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Saturday, January 09, 2010

Good Riddance to Randy Johnson!

Posted by Kevin Dame
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.

image




"The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly - to develop strategies of seeing and showing." - Edward Tufte.

Feel free to send comments, questions, and suggestions to Kevin via email.

Comments

Ahmet Hamdi said...

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.

Posted 01/09  at  02:48 AM
Ryan said...

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

Posted 01/09  at  03:05 AM
Michael said...

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.

Posted 01/09  at  03:09 AM
Dan Novick said...

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

Posted 01/09  at  03:15 AM
Brian Cartwright said...

Which Alex Gonzalez?

Posted 01/09  at  03:57 AM
Millsy said...

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?

Posted 01/09  at  09:29 AM
Dave Studeman said...

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

Posted 01/09  at  10:22 AM
Kincaid said...

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.

Posted 01/09  at  11:25 AM
BobbyRoberto said...

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

Posted 01/09  at  03:08 PM
Kevin Dame said...

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…

Posted 01/09  at  04:07 PM
Bob Wall said...

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.

Posted 01/10  at  12:15 AM
Jason B said...

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

Posted 01/11  at  04:32 PM
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