The Big Unit 4/29/15

Hey baseball fans!

The Baseball Hall of Fame class of 2015 features three amazing pitchers: John Smoltz, the fan favorite in Atlanta who shined in the postseason, Pedro Martinez, the all-around star fireballer, and one of the best pitchers of the last 25 years, Randy Johnson.

Randy "The Big Unit" Johnson (his nickname is the Big Unit because of his height: six-foot ten!!!) pitched for mainly the Seattle Mariners and the Arizona Diamondbacks from 1988-2009. In his 22-year career and with the use of his fastball that could get to speeds of 100 miles per hour, the ten-time All Star won 303 games and only lost 166. His amount of career wins ranks 22nd on the all-time wins list, while his winning percentage ranks 28th. But the Big Unit wasn't only about racking up wins; he did other stuff as well. His career earned run average is at a very respectable 3.29, but his strikeout total is absolutely insane: 4,875, second on the all-time strikeouts list only to Nolan Ryan. He even led the league in K's nine times!

Randy pitched well for teams like the Mariners, Expos, and Astros, but his best stuff came when he was pitching home games in the Arizona desert. In the midst of his stay in Phoenix, specifically from 1999-2002, he won four consecutive Cy Young awards, tied for the most consecutive Cy Youngs won ever with Greg Maddux. Earlier in his career, Johnson won another Cy Young award, putting him in second place only behind Roger Clemens for the most Cy Young awards won in baseball history.

Besides being considered the best pitcher in the NL for four straight years, Johnson did a couple of other great things with the D-Backs. He pitched the 17th perfect game in MLB history on May 18, 2004, becoming the oldest pitcher to every throw a perfecto and the fifth pitcher to throw a no-hitter in both the American and National Leagues. Second, Randy was a great postseason pitcher and probably the best playoff stats he ever put up was in the 2001 World Series. He won three games, including the famous Game Seven, and had an ERA of 1.04! How insane is that? To top it all off, he won co-World Series MVP with fellow All Star,  Curt Schilling.

Randy Johnson received 97.3% of the Hall of Fame voter's votes in his first year of eligibility and will be eternally enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame this July. If he wasn't voted in first ballot, it would have been a travesty. Anyway, thanks for reading this post and I hope you enjoyed it. Click here to see a really funny Big Unit All Star Game moment and click here to see him do the virtually impossible to an unsuspecting bird. Check back soon for more of "all the buzz on what wuzz."