It should be noted that @RJ51Photos' half-season with the @Astros was the stuff of legend. #HOF2015 pic.twitter.com/koWc7fJfhq
— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) January 6, 2015He went 10-1 with a 1.28 ERA in 11 starts for a Houston team that won 102 games in '98. That offseason, he signed a four-year, $52.4 million contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Randy Johnson is one of the greatest free-agent signings in #MLB history: Four year deal, four Cy Young awards for #Dbacks..
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) January 6, 2015Johnson won those Cy Young awards from 1999-2002, during which he led the league in ERA three times, struck out 12.4 batters per nine innings, pitched 31 complete games in 139 starts (an incredible 22.3%), averaged 354 strikeouts a season, and helped bring his team a World Series victory in 2001, going 3-0 with a 1.04 ERA in the Fall Classic, including the final 1.1 innings after pitching 7 innings in Game 6 the day before.
He did all this, by the way, in his age 35-38 seasons.
Legend... established.
At age 40, he became the oldest pitcher in league history to throw a perfect game. He would go on to finish his career with two seasons with the Yankees in which the accumulation of innings and his age started to take its toll, eventually finishing his career with a second stint back in Arizona before his final season in the bullpen with the San Francisco Giants at age 45.
Among left-handed starting pitchers with at least 1,000 innings, Johnson outpaces all others in virtually every category.
| Pitcher | W | SO | ERA | FIP | ERA+ | bWAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lefty Grove | 300 | 2266 | 3.06 | 3.36 | 148 | 109.9 |
| Randy Johnson | 303 | 4875 | 3.29 | 3.19 | 135 | 104.3 |
| Warren Spahn | 363 | 2583 | 3.09 | 3.44 | 119 | 92.6 |
| Eddie Plank | 326 | 2246 | 2.35 | 2.45 | 122 | 86.5 |
| Steve Carlton | 329 | 4136 | 3.22 | 3.15 | 115 | 84.1 |
| Tom Glavine | 305 | 2607 | 3.54 | 3.95 | 118 | 74 |
| Carl Hubbell | 253 | 1677 | 2.98 | 3.55 | 130 | 67.8 |
Johnson finished with the second-highest wins above replacement, according to Baseball Reference (bWAR), among all lefties in MLB history. He had far and away the most strikeouts, the fourth-highest ERA+ (a number that adjusts a pitcher's ERA based on the type of park they pitched in and the league average ERA for that player's career), and of course, the magical 300-plus wins (I always get a little nostalgic for pitcher's wins when talking about the Hall of Fame).
The Big Unit also has the most strikeouts per nine (10.6) of any pitcher in Major League history with at least 1,000 innings pitched, and only one pitcher has more career strikeouts than Unit's 4875: Nolan Ryan.
If the 300 wins and 4,800 Ks didn’t seal the deal for @RJ51Photos, that one career homer must have. #HOF2015 pic.twitter.com/ouHpt1M0v2
— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) January 6, 2015So, for the 2.7% of the voters who did not see fit to put Randy Johnson on their Hall of Fame ballot, consider yourselves chastised. The Big Unit will go down as perhaps the greatest left-handed pitcher the game has ever seen and put together a career that is unlikely to ever be matched.
Congratulations Randy Johnson, and thanks for the memories.