Sports Baseball

Gorst Plays With the Big Leaguers

A few baseball briefs for opening day in the major leagues, including Jewish Brave Max Fried at AAA Gwinnett.

By Atlanta Jewish Times 29 March 2018, 6:53 am
Cody Decker, who insists that his favorite baseball film is the Tom Selleck classic “Mr. Baseball,” answers a question after the second of three screenings of “Heading Home” at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival in February. To his right is teammate Josh Zeid; to his left is filmmaker Seth Kramer.

Matthew Gorst is still a long way from the major leagues as he begins his third season of professional baseball, but the 23-year-old right-handed pitcher spend a month getting out big-league batters after the Boston Red Sox decided to include him among the dozens of arms needed to get through spring training.

Gorst appeared in seven games from Feb. 23 to March 22 and posted an ERA of 3.00 over six innings pitched against Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Houston and Baltimore.

The Alpharetta resident finished 2017 with High-A Salem of the Carolina League, but his 2018 assignment hadn’t been announced at press time.

Matthew Gorst pitches for Greenville in a win against Asheville on June 29, 2017.

He and his Johns Creek High and Georgia Tech teammate, Davis Academy alum Brandon Gold, both advanced to High-A ball after starting 2017 as pitchers in the Low-A South Atlantic League.

The next step up the ladder for both pitchers would be the AA Eastern League — the Portland (Maine) Sea Dogs for Gorst and the Hartford Yard Goats, a Colorado Rockies farm team, for Gold.

While the Major League Baseball season is set to begin Thursday, March 30 (the Braves open the year at home against the Philadelphia Phillies), the minor leagues start a week later.

Fried Sent to Gwinnett

The only Jewish player on the Atlanta Braves’ roster at the end of 2017, rookie left-handed pitcher Max Fried, didn’t have as positive an experience at spring training as Matthew Gorst did.

Fried struggled in four appearances for the Braves, including being pulled from his spring debut against the Washington Nationals after recording only two outs.

After giving up four hits and one earned run in two innings against the Phillies on March 14, lowering his ERA to 6.75 for the spring, Fried was optioned to the Braves’ AAA farm team, the newly renamed Gwinnett Stripers, where he’ll be part of the starting rotation.

(Update: Fried on April 2 was sent down to AA Mississippi, the team he was pitching for last season when he got the call to the big leagues.)

‘Home’ Scores in Florida

“Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel,” which had its world premiere at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, has been playing at similar festivals across the country since then.

The Mensch on a Bench, the celebrated mascot of Team Israel, greets audience members outside a screening of “Heading Home” in Sandy Springs in February.

Most recently, while major-league teams were wrapping up spring training in Florida, the documentary screened at Jewish film festivals in Tampa Bay and Boca Raton. The film won the award for best documentary in Boca.

The three world-premiere screenings at the Atlanta festival featured appearances by Team Israel stars Josh Zeid, a pitcher who as of this writing does not have a baseball job this season, and Cody Decker, a first baseman/outfielder who has spent the spring with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Mensch on a Bench also joined the three filmmakers and others associated with Israeli baseball for the screenings.

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