Mathias Winterrath

Mathias Winterrath also listed Matthias

• Bats Right, Throws Right

• Born October 4, 1967 in Berlin, Berlin Germany

Biographical Information

Mathias Winterrath played and coached in Germany and made the country's Hall of Fame.

Winterrath debuted with the Cologne Dodgers in 1980 but statistics are unavailable for much of his playing career. He was 2 for 5 with a double and two walks for Germany in the 1983 European Junior Championship. In the 1987 European Championship, he debuted for the senior national team while still a teenager. He 0-for-9 with a walk and 6 strikeouts, fielding .700, not quite ready for that level of competition. By the 1989 European Championship, he more than belonged, batting .370/.433/.593 with 9 RBI in 8 games. He easily led Germany with six doubles (no one else had more than two), tied for second on the team in hits (one behind Stephan Jäger) and led them in slugging (.007 ahead of Jäger) and RBI (two ahead of Jäger and Wolfgang Loos).

The Berlin native was with Germany in the 1990 B-Level European Championship but did not bat. When Germany won the 1992 B-Level European Championship, he hit .400/.520/.500 with 7 runs and 7 RBI in 5 games. He was named the Bundesliga-1 MVP that year. In the 1993 European Championship, he batted .188/.188/.250 with four RBI in six contests; only Wilgen Reyes had more RBI for them. Bundesliga-1 stats are first available online (as of 5/6/2024) for the 1994 season, when he produced at a .316/.387/.526 rate for the Cologne Cardinals. He tied for 8th in doubles (12) in the Bundesliga-1 north and was 9th in RBI (25). In '95, he hit .416/.505/.551 with 27 RBI in 28 games. He was 6th in average (between Stefan Hagenah and Oliver Fimmers), 6th in RBI, tied for 3rd in hits (37), tied for 8th in doubles (9), had the second-lowest K rate (1 K in 90 AB), was 9th in slugging, ranked 7th in OBP and was 7th in OPS.

With Germany in the 1995 European Championship, he hit .400/.455/.650 with 8 RBI in 7 games. He again led Germany in RBI, one ahead of Georg Bull. He slipped to .344/.392/.422 for the 1996 Cardinals. His batting line for the 1997 Tier Cardinals was .370/.480/.543 and he scored 28 times in 28 games. He also handled 167 chances error-free. He tied for 4th in the Bundesliga-1 South in runs and led in fielding percentage, .007 ahead of Klaus Knüttel. He batted .368/.400/.421 with 7 runs in 7 games in the 1997 European Championship, his last European Championship as a player. He tied Marc Marsch for second on the team in runs, 3 shy of Tarek Shaer.

Next playing for the Paderborn Untouchables, he hit .364/.422/.446 with 26 RBI in 1998. His 1999 whereabouts are unclear. He returned to the Dodgers for 2000 and batted .341/.412/.443. He was 7th in the Bundesliga-1 north in fielding (.984), between Martin Helmig and Bell. In 2001, he was down to .280/.385/.320. He eked out a .159/.216/.159 line for them in 2002 but threw out 11 of 21 who tried to steal. Only Bull was better at throwing out runners in the loop. He was 0 for 2 with a walk and a HBP for the 2003 Solingen Alligators then made one last appearance as a player, with the 2007 Bonn Capitals, going 1-for-5 with two walks. He coached for Solingen and Bonn and for the German junior national team. Through 2010 (the last time the German federation updated the listings as of 2024), he was among the German national team career leaders in average (.324, 8th, between Jäger and Bull), RBI (31, 6th), hits (36, tied Sascha Lutz for 9th), runs (25, 11th), slugging (.459, 10th, between Frank Jäger and Rene Herlitzius), OBP (.381, 11th, between Walter Schmid and Hans-Peter Jäger), putouts (118, 8th) and errors (12, tied for Ralf Schmidt and Torsten Stender).

He was inducted into the German Baseball Hall of Fame in 2018 in a class with Knüttel, Frank Stattler and Michael Wäller.

Primary source: German Baseball and Softball Federation