Indulging His Passions

That said, the 2018 Collegiate graduate’s gig as a baseball strategy and information analyst with the defending World Series champion and current National League West leader enables him to indulge his passion not just for his all-time favorite sport but for the esoterica inherent in it in a meaningful and fulfilling way.

 

“I love what I do, but if I had the talent and natural ability to play major league baseball, obviously, that would be a dream come true,” said Willingham, a righthanded relief pitcher for the Cougars as a junior and senior. “My fastball was maybe 78 miles an hour in high school. I wasn’t good enough to play in college, so I had to find other ways to stay involved.”

An Atlanta Braves fan growing up, Willingham began his baseball journey as a five-year-old in the Richmond Little League, started travel ball at 13, and ultimately worked his way through Collegiate’s program from Cub to JV to varsity.

 

His connection with the sport continued after he enrolled at the University of North Carolina, where he graduated in 2022 with a B.S. in statistics and analytics and minor in math and data science.

 

“I was always math-oriented,” he said. “I was always interested in applying math to different things. From middle school through high school, I had an interest in baseball statistics.”

 

His pathway to The Show began in earnest when he arrived in Chapel Hill and joined the Carolina Baseball Analytics team, a student-run volunteer group that worked closely with the Tar Heels’ coaching staff.

 

Upon graduation, he signed on as a junior baseball strategy and information analyst with the Dodgers, an organization that’s been on the cutting edge of analytics to enhance performance since analytics became an integral part of the baseball landscape. After two seasons, the Dodgers removed the “junior” tag from his title.

 

What does Willingham’s job actually entail?

 

As a member of the eight-person analytics team, he and his colleagues take the data collected from a variety of sources by the baseball systems team, synthesize, clarify, simplify it, and present it to specific coaches, who, in turn, present it to the players in their charge.

 

“We’re the translators,” Willingham said. “We give meaning to it and explain how it’s important to what we’re trying to do on the field. We take the technical sounding numbers and metrics and models and turn them into something that makes sense.”

 

For most of his time with the Dodgers, Willingham’s role has been with defensive positioning.

 

He’s worked extensively with Chris Woodward (first base coach/infield coach) and Dino Ebel (third base/outfield coach), so when players such as all-stars Freddie Freeman (first baseman), Mookie Betts (shortstop), or Teoscar Hernandez (outfield) shifts slightly from his usual spot, it’s likely on Willingham’s recommendation

 

“I’m always looking at spray charts, which are graphs showing where on the field each batted ball was hit (by a particular opposing player),” Willingham said. “Ground balls for infield. Fly balls for outfield. All of our infielders and outfielders will have a card in their hat or pocket that tells them where to stand for each batter. It’s cool to have these conversations with our coaches about where we want [our fielders] against a certain hitter and have the feeling that they’ll defer to what I think we should do.”

 

This season, Willingham’s role has expanded to pitching-game planning, where he works closely with Mark Prior (pitching coach), Danny Lehmann (bench coach), and Josh Bard (bullpen coach) to determine how pitchers should attack each opposing hitter. When the likes of all-stars Clayton Kershaw, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Shohei Ohtani take the mound with Will Smith behind the plate, chances are that Willingham has played a role in determining pitch selection.

 

“Does this guy hit fastballs well?” Willingham said. “Can he hit breaking balls? Will he be aggressive if we challenge him in the zone? Can we get him to chase pitches out of the zone? Things like that.”

 

Suffice it to say that he’s earned the trust of those with whom he works.

 

“I definitely give a lot of advice each game, each series,” he said. “Trust is super important. A couple of the coaches I’ve been working with directly for two years have gotten very comfortable with me. The trust is there.”

 

Baseball is a numbers game. There is a cold, paper-thin difference between a strike and a ball, a good season and a bad one. Finding clarity within the minutiae is where Willingham excels. What excites him about the ever-present world of baseball analytics?

 

“It’s finding any way to help us prevent an extra run or win an extra game,” he said, “and being able to watch games, knowing that our fielders are positioned where they are because of what I decided with the coaches and our pitchers are throwing certain pitches based on a game plan that I and some others helped determine. Over the course of a season, hopefully it makes a big difference.”

 

The job isn’t just a game-by-game or series-by-series endeavor.

 

“Leading up to the trade deadline and in the off-season, my group does a series of deep dives on players that we’re looking at or trading for or signing as free agents,” he said.  “We try to give our front office leadership a 100 percent clear picture of who each player is, what he does well, what he doesn’t do well, and what we can do to make him better.”

 

The job is also very much behind the scenes. For Willingham, it’s about taking quiet pride in playing an understated, often unsung role and making a difference.

 

“It’s definitely cool to see when the media references the Dodgers’ analytics team,” he said, “but I’ve never been one to really care about having my name and face out there.”

 

Willingham and his colleagues had an up-close-and personal view of the 2024 World Series and earned a ring, as did all members of the Dodgers’ organization.

 

He was in LA when Freeman hit a 10th inning, walk-off grand slam to win Game 1 against the New York Yankees.

 

“One of the most iconic moments in World Series history,” he said. “That was epic.”

 

He was in New York with the entire front office crew for Games 3, 4, and 5, the last of which was the clincher.

 

“One of the best nights of my life,” he said. “It was really cool to be the enemy at Yankee Stadium.”

 

Where does Willingham go from here?

 

“My dream is to stay in baseball long term and continue to move through the ranks into higher front office roles,” he said. “Now, I’m just taking it one year, one season at a time. I couldn’t be happier than where I am right now.”

~Weldon Bradshaw