Makeover Monday: Beyond the Box Score - Which Teams Outperformed Their Predicted Win %?

Reader Kevin Ruprecht, reached out to me last week with this tweet:

@VizWizBI Just read your article on the Cali vax rates and VotD. Would you mind taking this down/offer advice? http://t.co/oCMoCnIiV3
— Kevin Ruprecht (@KevinRuprecht) February 4, 2015

Kevin has been following my Makeover Monday series and wanted some advice/feedback. He and I are going to do a screen share session later today to talk about his viz, my makeover, and my thought process.  Thanks for asking Kevin!!

Kevin is new to Tableau, so it takes quite a bit of courage to post on a site as large as SBNation.com. We should all be cognizant that there are tons of people learning Tableau every day. We need to be thoughtful with our comments and the words we choose when we respond. Think about how you would feel if you were new to Tableau and someone commented negatively about your first viz. What would you want to hear? How would you feel?

In the end, we should all be kind to everyone we meet. We want to be an encouraging community.

Here's Kevin's original viz. Click on the image to go to the original article.

My initial thoughts:

• Where's the title? What is this about?
• Why don't the stats in the slope graph match the stats in the lollipop chart?
• What is BaseRuns?
• Which font did Kevin choose and why?
• There are some formatting changes that need to be made.
• What does "BR Filter" mean?

I read through the entire article Kevin wrote to help understand the full context of the viz. Given that, I created this alternative version.

Some of the changes I made:

1. Change the overall font to Helvetica Neue 
2. Added titles that describe what each chart is about 
3. Updated the "BR Filter" to something more understandable to the average reader 
4. Reformatted the slope graph, including: adding gridlines, changing the reference line, adding a secondary axis to aid in reading, reversed the colors 
5. Replaced the lollipop chart with a bar chart that shows details about the stats in the slope graph, making it a two-part story 
6. There are some other things as well, but those are the biggest changes.