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Billy Shantz

Wilmer Ebert Shantz

Position: Catcher
Bats: Right, Throws: Right
Height: 6' 1", Weight: 160 lb.

Born: July 31, 1927 in Pottstown, PA
High School: Pottstown HS (Pottstown, PA)
Signed by the Philadelphia Athletics as an amateur free agent in 1948. (All Transactions)
Debut: April 13, 1954
Teams (by GP): Athletics/Yankees 1954-1960

Final Game: June 29, 1960
Died: December 13, 1993 in Lauderhill, FL
Cremated
Relatives: Brother of Bobby Shantz
    About biographical information

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View team uniforms at Dressed to the Nines a Baseball Hall of Fame on-line exhibit / Report an error

Standard Fielding

Adv Fielding w/ run summary
Year Tm Lg Age Pos G GS CG Inn Ch PO A E DP Fld% Rtot Rtot/yr RF/9 RF/G lgFld% lgRF9 lgRFG PB WP SB CS CS% lgCS% PO Awards
1954 PHA AL 26 C 51 49 43 407.1 203 170 28 5 1 .975 4 12 4.37 3.88 .986 5.40 5.36 5 7 7 18 72% 48% 4
1955 KCA AL 27 C 78 61 52 544.0 291 261 27 3 8 .990 -1 -2 4.76 3.69 .988 5.58 5.54 3 16 15 11 42% 47% 4
1960 NYY AL 32 C 1 0 0 1.0 1 1 0 0 0 1.000 0 0 9.00 1.00 .990 6.30 5.90 0 0 0 0 0
3 Seasons C 130 110 95 952.1 495 432 55 8 9 .984 3 4 4.60 3.75 .987 5.50 5.47 8 23 22 29 57% 47% 8
3 Seasons TOT 130 110 95 952.1 495 432 55 8 9 .984 3 4 4.60 3.75 .987 5.50 5.47 8 23 22 29 57% 47% 8
Note: Fielding stats are a combination of official records and RetroSheet records. Both are likely to have substantial errors and will not match perfectly.
View Complete Notes on Fielding Data
Leagues historically made no effort to balance team, league, and player fielding stats. Since 1990 or so, computers have made this feasible, but prior to that there are hundreds or thousands of discrepancies each year in games played (even whether a player played a position), putouts, assists, double plays and errors.
  • Pre-1948 SB & CS data for catchers is estimated from catcher assists, games started and opposition stolen bases.
  • From 1948 on SB, CS, Pickoff, & WP data for catchers and pitchers is taken from play-by-play accounts in the retrosheet files. There are several hundred games without pbp from 1948 to 1973 and for those we may not have any data.
  • CG & GS come from the retrosheet data and should be complete and pretty accurate from 1918 on.
  • Innings played (like SB and CS) come from the retrosheet play-by-play data and should be considered mostly complete from 1948 to 1973 and complete from then on.
  • Stats (PO,A,G, etc) for LF-CF-RF positions (since 1918) is taken from play-by-play or box score data as available.
  • Stats (PO,A,G,etc) for C,P,1B,2B,3B,SS,OF positions is taken from the official reported totals and may have been corrected at various times since their publication.
  • For detailed information on which games retrosheet is missing play-by-play from 1948 to 1973, please see their most wanted games list
  • For detailed information on the availability of data on this site by year, see our data coverage page

Sabermetric Fielding

Year Tm Lg Age Pos Rtot Rtot/yr Rtz Rtzhm Rtzrd Rdp Rof Rctch Rdrs Rdrs/yr Rpm Rdp Rbnt Rof Rhr RerC RsbC RsbP
1954 PHA AL 26 C 4 12 4
1955 KCA AL 27 C -1 -2 -1
1960 NYY AL 32 C 0 0 0
3 Seasons C 3 4 3
3 Seasons TOT 3 4 3

Appearances

Year Tm Lg Age G GS Batting Defense P C 1B 2B 3B SS LF CF RF OF DH PH PR
1954 PHA AL 26 51 49 51 51 0 51 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1955 KCA AL 27 79 61 79 78 0 78 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2
1960 NYY AL 32 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 Seasons 131 110 131 130 0 130 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2
Appearances table is calculated solely from full RetroSheet play-by-play data available from 1973 on. A combination of RetroSheet (starting with the 1918 season) and non-RetroSheet data is used for other seasons.

Advanced Fielding -- C*

Pitching Stats Putouts Assists Errors Double Plays
Year Tm Lg Age PA ERA RAvg Fld F2O% XI FC Tot Cgt Frc Tag SO Tot 1B 2B 3B K23 Tot Cch Fld Thr ROE Tot 263 n23 GB bFld bF2O%
1954 PHA AL 26 1816 5.28 5.83 37 97% 0 1 171 31 1 6 133 28 4 1 0 1 5 1 1 3 0 1 0 0 0 3 67%
1955 KCA AL 27 2441 5.27 5.90 37 97% 0 0 263 25 4 16 218 28 6 1 0 3 3 0 1 2 1 8 0 1 2 3 100%
1960 NYY AL 32 4 0.00 0.00 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 Seasons 4261 5.27 5.87 74 97% 0 1 435 56 5 22 352 56 10 2 0 4 8 1 2 5 1 9 0 1 2 6 83%
MLB Averages 3.91 4.41 96% 87%

Advanced Fielding -- C Baserunning*

Year Tm Lg Age PB WP SBO SB CS CSctch CS% SB2 CS2 SB3 CS3 SBH CSH PO PCS RBA RK SBlev CSlev
1954 PHA AL 26 5 7 724 7 18 18 72% 6 15 1 3 0 0 4 0 33 26 0.57 0.93
1955 KCA AL 27 3 16 978 15 11 10 42% 13 10 2 0 0 1 4 0 44 17 0.91 1.18
1960 NYY AL 32 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 Seasons 8 23 1705 22 29 28 57% 19 25 3 3 0 1 8 0 77 43 0.80 1.02
MLB Averages 43% 1.18 1.17

* Many Detailed Statistics are based on play-by-play accounts accumulated by RetroSheet. These totals may be incomplete (3.6% of all plays from 1918 to 1973 are missing or have incomplete accounts, click link for year and team summary) for some players prior to 1974 and even complete seasons may not match the official totals due to errors in both the official totals and the play-by-play accounts. Pre-1954 seasons have a substantial numbers of games missing play-by-play accounts and should be viewed as essentially incomplete.

Appearances on Leader Boards, Awards, and Honors

Stats are Year-Value-Rank · Glossary

Passed Balls s c a p y
1954 AL  5 (3rd)

Total Zone Runs as C s c a p y
1954 AL  4 (2nd)

Fielding % as C s c a p y
1955 AL  .990 (3rd)

             

Other Resources & Links

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Viewed 5,123 times through June 1, 2012.
Name and misspellings: Wilmer billie Billy Ebert schantz Shantz

Player Page Tricks and Tips

Sum any set of rows by clicking anywhere (not red or blue) on the first and last rows of your selection. We will then compute the totals for the player between and including those two seasons.
Default Setting for this feature: Turn On / Turn Off
Summation of season totals only works for the initial case when the table is in year order. On a sorted table the results may get a bit goofy.

HIGHLIGHTING: Adding a range or series of player's career seasons or career game numbers (like '#1972:batting_standard', '#1970-1980-sum:batting_standard', or '#1998,1999,2001,2002,sum:pitching_standard') onto the end of a player page url causes the seasons to the highlighted and summed. After changing address bar, reload the page to see highlighting. This will work even in links e-mailed to others. Note that for tables with multiple pages the first table is the default. If you want to create a sum for a table other than the first one, select the rows and after the summation window appears click on "permanent link" link.

The play-by-play information both shown and used to create certain data sets was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by RetroSheet.