When looking at “sexy name” players, Josh Willingham don’t often come to mind.  That doesn’t mean teams forgot about him, and in fact, when it came to his career, he was well looked at by most teams.  As of November 24, 2014 Josh Willingham will hang up his cleats after an 11-year career.

Drafted back in 2000 by the Florida Marlins in the 17th round, Willingham has made a nice name for himself considering where he was drafted.  Willingham made his debut in 2004 as a bench player and didn’t see regular playing time until 2006.  In his career Willingham played for 5 teams: the Marlins, Nationals, Athletics, Twins, and the Royals.

Now we get to the numbers and take a look at his career.  It is safe to say that Willingham was a strike out risk for the teams he played on having a career 22.4% strikeout rate, but it was offset by the often overlooked 12.0% walk rate.  To emphasize how good that is the 2014-walk rate was 7.0% and the average walk rate for the last 6 years is 8.2%.  This high walk rate also is a major reason that Willingham will end his career with a staggering .358 OBP and again that blows both the 2014 average and last 6 year average out of the water. 

His ability to walk was matched with very solid power numbers.  His career isolated power sits at a very impressive .212, which is almost 70 points higher than 2014’s average ISO.  This meant not only did he hit home runs, 195 in total for his career, he was able to accumulate a good amount of extra base hits.  He ended his career with 426 total extra base hits and hit one every 11 plate appearances and yes, this is a very acceptable total for a guy striking out as much as he was.

In the end Willingham has a career slash line of .253/.358/.465 with 195 homeruns and 632 RBI’s.  He finished 22% better than the league average in wRC, a stat to show off his overall offensive value, and a very impressive weighted on-base average of .359.  Josh Willingham leaves the league with a career WAR of 17.1 and an offensive WAR of 116.5.  While he won’t go down in history as one of the greats Willingham had a better career than most people recognized.  Willingham was a rare breed of player that was able to hit for power and take a walk and in this day and age his talents will be missed.