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 8^th 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.

Kumar Rocker  - 

         

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.