{"id":62236,"date":"2021-07-13T18:29:14","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T00:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=62236"},"modified":"2021-07-14T04:34:52","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T10:34:52","slug":"baseball-phenom-jacob-steinmetz-becomes-first-known-orthodox-player-drafted-into-the-mlb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/baseball-phenom-jacob-steinmetz-becomes-first-known-orthodox-player-drafted-into-the-mlb\/","title":{"rendered":"Baseball phenom Jacob Steinmetz becomes first known Orthodox player drafted into the MLB"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(JTA) \u2014 The Arizona Diamondbacks drafted Long Island, New York native Jacob Steinmetz 77th overall in the third round of the Major League Baseball draft on Monday. He\u2019s the first known observant Orthodox player to be picked in the league\u2019s draft.<\/p>\n<p>MLB.com ranked the 17-year-old as the 121st best major league prospect, so he was chosen far earlier than expected.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_62237\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Steinmetz.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-62237\" class=\"wp-image-62237 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Steinmetz-300x167.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"167\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Steinmetz-300x167.png 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Steinmetz-1024x569.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Steinmetz-768x427.png 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Steinmetz.png 1536w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/167;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-62237\" class=\"wp-image-62237 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Steinmetz-300x167.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"167\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Steinmetz-300x167.png 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Steinmetz-1024x569.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Steinmetz-768x427.png 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Steinmetz.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-62237\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(MLB.com)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Steinmetz, a 6-foot-5, 220-pound pitcher, spent the past year at ELEV8 Baseball Academy in Florida, honing his mound skills while attending The Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway in Long Island via Zoom. His fastball has reportedly reached as high as 97 miles per hour.<\/p>\n<p>Steinmetz keeps kosher and observes Shabbat, but he also pitches on the Sabbath. To avoid using transportation on Shabbat, he has booked hotels close enough to games that he can walk to them, the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/07\/12\/mlb-draft-jacob-steinmetz-taken-by-diamondbacks\/\">New York Post<\/a>&nbsp;reported.<\/p>\n<p>Starting pitchers in the big leagues only pitch every five days, so his schedule could theoretically be planned to skip Shabbat.<\/p>\n<p>Steinmetz comes from an athletic family \u2014 his father, Elliot, played basketball at Yeshiva University and is now the New York school\u2019s basketball coach. He had&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jta.org\/2020\/03\/25\/sports\/yeshiva-universitys-mens-basketball-team-made-history-before-the-coronavirus-canceled-its-season\">coached the team to record success<\/a>&nbsp;before the pandemic.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Baseball%20phenom%20Jacob%20Steinmetz%20becomes%20first%20known%20Orthodox%20player%20drafted%20into%20the%20MLB\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":62237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1491],"tags":[11505,8790,8795,810,8788,460],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62238,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62236\/revisions\/62238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}