VooDoo Sabermetrics: Randy Johnson

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our twelfth edition of VooDoo Sabermetrics. This week's All-Star is San Francisco Giants future Hall-of-Fame lefty Randy Johnson. We figured now was as good a time as any (is any time ever not the time to VooDoo?) considering he just captured his 300th career victory last Thursday.

Sooze, Babes Love Baseball

Jolliness - My goodness. Judging from the incredibly gay (gay as in festive, chipper and carefree) photo to your right, I'd say Randy Johnson is a pretty jolly guy. In fact, he seems down-right gleeful.

And why not? The guy has five Cy Young Awards, a perfect game, a no-hitter, ten strikeout crowns and as many All-Star selections, at least one win against every single big league team ever, and now 300 wins under his belt. If a career like that can't buy happiness, I don't know what would.

The Big Unit gets nine out of ten Billy Ray Cyruses on Sooze's incredibly fashionable Jollity Scale.

Extra P., Bus Leagues Baseball

Name Quality (nicknames included) - Randall David Johnson. Randy Johnson was already a perfect name for a male porn star. Those guys don't have to be good-looking, they just have to be able to consistently bring the heat on demand. If you can go deep into the late innings, so much the better.

In addition, Johnson has worn the requisite mullet and bad facial hair, too. He's always been six or seven tattoos away from a three-way with Asia Carerra and Jenna Jameson. Then you throw in the fact that he's 6'10", and the maxim "big feet, big Johnson" comes to mind. Then the whole thing was taken into the realm of the absurd by the application of the nickname "The Big Unit". This guy has it all. We may never again see a more effective convergence of appearance, ability, name, and nickname.

Bonus points: his dad's name is Rollen Johnson. Yowza.

From the all-knowing Wikipedia: "During batting practice in 1988, Johnson, then with the Montreal Expos, collided head-first with outfielder Tim Raines, prompting his teammate to exclaim, 'You're a big unit!'. The nickname stuck."

It gives me great joy to declare Randy David "Big Unit" Johnson a resounding and absolute ten out of ten. For everything.

Adam Jacobi, BHGP and The Sporting Blog

Spirit Element - Xenon. Long the fodder of cheap sci-fi on account of its strange appearance (in this case, it's more than fair to equivocate a mullet with pronouncing an X like a Z), this element suffers from a case of poor classification. In this case, it's a mistaken label of "inert" due to its structural inability to interact with unalike [unalike?!--ed.] [shut up, it works.] [nice work, Merriam.--ed.] elements. For proof, look no further than the awkward, passionless gropes of congratulation in the dugout today. It's not a question of mean, nice, or morality, he's just put together that way.

Oh, and how he's put together. The largest of the, ahem, noble gases, xenon burns at an exceedingly high temperature, producing the kind of brilliance people pay millions upon millions to harness. Their rarity is part and parcel of this, as they're no more than a trace component of their environment; xenon is almost unmeasurable in our atmosphere, and if you know of another 6'10", moustached, mulleted lefty EVER, by all means, let us know.

Tuffy, SPORTSbyBROOKS and BC Sports Treehouse Fort

Hardness Scale (Like the Mohs Hardness Scale but with more Tuffy) - Ol' Randy Johnson's craggy face has become an institution worthy of being put on money (or making an obscene amount of it) during his 87-year career. He's withstood numerous rain storms, dive-bombing birds, and Lou Piniella.


Therefore, Randy Johnson is a stupefying 9.4 on Tuffy's Hardness scale, just like New Hampshire's legendary Old Man of the Mountain. There's no way he could ever collapse. He'll always take his place on that mound and never fall apart into a million pieces.


Oops. Well, even as a pile of rocks, he's better than most old monuments.

Monday Morning Punter, With Leather

One-Liner - "For the past 2 decades, the beak-nosed Johnson has been the other sharp object up hitters' asses, and if subsequent 300-game winners will be as rough on our eyes as they are on opposing lineups, perhaps we're better without."


Matt Sussman, The Layoff Beard, Deadspin and Blog Critics

Sim City Advice - In picture format, of course.


So there you have it. Randy Johnson, in all his moustached, mulleted glory. Tune in next time, you never know who our next victim subject will be! - Theme song from the 1980s hit television show MacGyver... mainly because Randy Johnson is also a laid-back, extremely resourceful secret agent.