11/19/17

Mack's Apples - Harassing Women, Sporting News, Puerto Rico Baseball, Astros, Kumar Rocker



Good morning.



Teen Girl Posed For 8 Years As Married Man To Write About Baseball And  Harass Women -

For the last eight years, baseball fan-turned-writer Becca Schultz has presented herself online as Ryan Schultz, a false identity she assumed when she was 13 years old, duping and harassing women on Twitter along the way.

On Wednesday night, a woman named Erin tweeted a series of screenshots announcing that Schultz is not actually Ryan, a married father of two studying to become a pharmacist. Instead, Schultz is a 21-year-old college student in the Midwest, whose entire career as an aspiring baseball writer has been under a fraudulent byline.

Schultz began contributing to Baseball Prospectus’s local White Sox blog at the end of the 2016 season and wrote for BP South Side and BP Wrigleyville throughout the 2017 season. Additionally, Schultz wrote for the SB Nation sabermetrics site Beyond the Box Score throughout 2017.

            So… do we have this problem here?

            Tom?  David?  Hobie?

            No… wait!  Peter?

 Sporting News predicts where top free agents will sign –

19. CC Sabathia: Yankees (or Mets) - Sabathia has had two solid seasons in a row after getting healthy and reinventing himself. No longer a power pitcher, Sabathia is a true crafty lefty who uses his slider-cutter combo to keep hitters off balance. Between that and his leadership in the clubhouse, the Yankees should give him one-year deals until he decides to hang it up. It’s worth noting that signing Otani would give the Yankees a full slate of five starters, so unless they were to have Jordan Montgomery open the year at Triple-A, an Otani signing may leave Sabathia looking elsewhere. He’d make a lot of sense for the Mets, who need innings and a Bartolo Colon-type veteran.

I know we need another lefty to come out of the pen, somewhere before the 8th inning, but I just can’t sign off on this guy. Call it the Yankee factor.


Puerto Rican baseball players find home away from home at Jesuit -

           
No water, no electricity, no school and, definitely, no baseball.

That was life for four students from Colegio San Ignacio, a college prep school in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for weeks after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island.

"They ask, 'Can you take my son?'" said Jesuit High School educator Brother Larry Huck about a call he received in the middle of class a few weeks after the storm. "So that was the first, and then a few days later another one contacted me, 'Can you take my son?'"
Within days, Huck arranged for the boys to make the journey to Jesuit, becoming full-fledged Blue Jays, studying with the rest of the students and joining the baseball team for fall conditioning.

We were talking about Puerto Rico this past week at a family dinner.

We have a friend that has been doing relief work there and he told us that the island we once knew and loved is simply gone. He also said that most families there are now making plans to leave the island permanently and move to the mainland of the United States, where they are recognized as full citizens.

As for baseball, we should immediately handle this like the Dominicans do. 

Set up baseball camps in key Florida cities and ‘invite’ players to go to school there locally. Invite their immediate family to move with them and house them in affordable motels that are all over the state until low income housing can be built for them.

These are our citizens and we must save both them and their heritage… baseball.

Astros honored by New York baseball writers -

Astros ace Justin Verlander and second baseman Jose Altuve shared the Babe Ruth award as postseason MVP. Houston center fielder George Springer, the World Series MVP, was honored with the Arthur and Milton Richman You Gotta Have Heart award for overcoming a severe stutter. Astros shortstop Carlos Correa will receive the Joan Payson/Shannon Forde award for community service after leading hurricane relief efforts in his native Puerto Rico.

            Wow… I didn’t realize they named an award after Shannon. That is really cool.



         
RHP, North Oconee, Bogart, Ga.

In a class with no clear top talent, no one would be surprised to see this high schooler separate himself from the rest of the top tier. Built like a linebacker, his appeal is obvious, and brings to the table some of the best present stuff in the class. His full arsenal was on display at Perfect Game's World Wood Bat Championship, with Baseball America singing his praises afterwards, saying this:

Rocker's fastball sat 94-97 mph in his first two innings before settling in at 91-95. He showed feel for an above-average slider, with late tilt and hard, mid-80s velocity. In case that wasn't impressive enough, Rocker busted out his changeup in the fifth inning, throwing it from a slightly lower arm slot than that of his fastball and generating heavy tumbling action to induce a swing-and-miss.


            This is a top 10 projected draftee.

20 comments:

Tom Brennan said...

I hear Becca Schultz is a great writer, so how do you know she isn't also writing under the name of...Tom Brennan? LOL. If she wasn't getting paid, she could call herself whatever she wanted, I guess.

Lots of Houston awards...we won the Surgery Shield for most injured status.

Puerto Rico - great idea, Mack. Somehow, the island will eventually come back. Above my pay grade. Imagine if Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates said, "Folks, we got this" and rebuilt the island with surplus cash.

If Kumar Rocker is truly elite and could make it to the bits by 2020, maybe. Or he could end up with an 18 month forced vacation like Anthony Kay. I think of the Astros - their top drafted hitters are hugely contributing, top drafted pitchers stumbled. Sometimes, though, you do get a Verlander.

Mack Ade said...

Tom -

We could write all day about top pitcher prospects, like Rocker, that never make it to the Promiseland.

Like the one we just signed... Matt Purke.

Tom Brennan said...

Mack, it is why, if there is rough equivalence in talent, I pick the draft bat over the arm...I if you ended up with a surplus duplicate of Michael Conforto in the draft, he could be traded for a ready to go pitcher at the right time. A pitcher with a bum arm...lots of them that a team can sign cheap. At least that is Becca's take LOL.

Mack Ade said...

Tom -

I'll give you 8 excellent bats...

Now, put them behind 5 shitty starters (5.00+ ERA)...

How many games will you win?

Reverse...

I give you 5 excellent starters (2.00 ERA or less)...

And I field 8 light bats...

I easily win more games

Tom Brennan said...

Point taken. Now give me 8 excellent bats, 5 excellent starters (2.00 ERA or less), and some fielders too, and you have a team that can beat LAD and the Astros.

Off topic, wonder if the Yanks will get Stanton? If they did, I'd move Sanchez from the catcher spot and have 3 guys who can hit 50 homers a year. While the Mets watch their budget.

Mack Ade said...

Tom -

I believe the Yanks will get Stanton.

1.There is chemistry between Jeter and his former team.

2. The Yanks aren't afraid to spend this kind of money.

3. The Yanks have the prospects in the pipeline to put together an offer with 4-6 players.

Lastly, a team with Stanton and Judge in the same lineup will take over NYC

Tom Brennan said...

Are we too old to switch?

The Yanks areAmazon, the Mets are JC Penney

Mack Ade said...

Tom -

It has always been this way.

When I grew up, the Yankees were Macy's and the Giants and Dodgers were Korvette's and John's Bargain Store

David Rubin said...

Striving to be May's or TSS or even A&S!!

Unknown said...

All good points and at what point will we all be beaten into submission if the Yanks get Stanton and they also have a stocked farm system and will OWN the city for years to come. Meanwhile the Wilponzies think up more excuses and I'm not getting any younger and am REALLY tired of their crap so it's time to own up fellas or sell the dam team.

Mack Ade said...

We had a May's on Jamaica Avenue past where the 'EL' ended... near Korvette's... great memories.

Unknown said...

Well at least I can sleep better at night knowing we got Matt Purke......LETS GO METS!

Mack Ade said...

Gary -

STOCKED pipelines come from astute scouting and relationships with high school and college coaches throughout the country.

We have a big time HS pitching prospect locally here. The coach gets a call from 15+ scouts a week during the season.

Never has received any call from someone associated with the Mets.

RAY OF HOPE; The new scouts in the Latin countries seem to be doing a great job down there. Potentially 10+ ++ pitchers will come stateside this spring.

You have to start somewhere and the Mets need to do a better job in the draft, first researching the health of the players they are scouting.

bgreg98180 said...

I have to lean toward Tom's side here.

Considering the injury problems the Mets have with their pitchers throughout the entire organization, better to focus on bats early in the draft.

Maybe hit on lower drafted pitchers, trade, or go free agency for rotation.

Bill Metsiac said...

Einstein's definition of insanity is repeating the same action over and over, expecting a different outcome.

I love this site, but I'm tired of the endless repetions of the "cheap Wilpons" theme. Whether we like them or not, whether they are or are not "cheap", they are the owners and in all probability will be for many years (well, Jeff will).

If you are a fan of the Mets, they are part of the package. And their budget policies will probably not change to any significant degree. What good comes from endless comparisons to the Bronx guys?

Why stay a Mets fan if you're that turned off by the owners? Would you keep eating at a restaurant if you hated the owners because they didn't serve quality food? Would you keep shopping at a store if you felt the merchandise was shoddy?

If you like our team, support it and hope for the best. If you hate it, there are 29 others to choose from. Just be aware that it is what it is.

Reese Kaplan said...

There is nothing wrong with wanting to win. Unless you are a Wilpon, apparently...then winning is not an important part of the agenda.

Hobie said...

Going back, I realized I have read some of Becca/Ryan's articles. Found some of them interesting and have no prob with a nom de plume (note: I am not the actually the First Met, Hobie Landrith). If some would have reacted differently to any of her work knowing her age/sex...that's their problem, not hers.

Now harassing women on Twitter... having never tweeted, twat, whatever--I guess I don't know/care. Keep thinking of the Monty Python "Upperclass Twit of the Year" sketch though. Is that apropos?

Tom Brennan said...

Assuming as we all do that the Wilpons may be here longer than the Kim Jong dynasty, what will shake them to their core if the Yanks ramp up to a lethal, homer-blasting champion; the Mets are winning 70-75; and Yanks outdraw the Mets by 1.5 million. They will then realize that half-stepping is sometimes a very bad strategy.

Mack is right - what you invest in scouting has a correlation to who you draft,

and Gary, I like the formula of trying to draft a lethal bat or bats early on, then drafting power pitchers and trying to get them to become major league caliber pitchers.

Tom Brennan said...

I worked, Mack, at a May's Dept store in Lake Success for a few months in the early 70's. They had me in the sheets and pillows section - boring was not the word. My supervisor Arthur once wrote me up for taking 13 minutes on a 10 minute break - I thought he was kidding but he was not - about that point, I realized retail was not for me.

Bill Metsiac said...

Reese---Of COURSE there's nothing wrong with wanting to win. We all do (and I'm sure the owners do, too). What I see as wrong is the very definition of masochism I see in some people. If it (rooting for the Mets) hurts, then don't do it.