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How ‘Pitching Ninja’ Rob Friedman accidentally became one of the most popular Jewish personalities in baseball
(JTA) — It’s safe to say that few people watch more baseball than Rob Friedman.
During the MLB season — which features 30 teams playing 162 games each from April through October — Friedman spends countless hours every day watching as much of the sport as he can from the comfort of a four-screen media center he set up in his home outside Atlanta.
His particular area of expertise is pitching — a complex, crucial and, he believes, underappreciated aspect of the game. His dissection of individual pitches, posted on social media, has made him an authority on the craft.
For nine years, posting as the “Pitching Ninja,” he has built a following of more than a million users across social media platforms. He highlights impressive performances from the mound and has gone on to work as an analyst on multiple TV networks as well as MLB’s own channels. Big league players have been spotted wearing his merchandise — with its recognizable logo of a baseball dressed as a ninja — and learning from his videos.
Dozens of times a day, on the platform popularly known as Twitter, Friedman shares pitching GIFs and edited videos of pitchers throwing multiple pitches, overlaid on top of each other to illustrate their variety. He also has a daily segment where he breaks down his “filthiest” pitches of the day, highlighting sliders, changeups or fastballs that he calls “nasty” or “dirty” — adjectives that all count as high praise in the baseball world.
Scott Effross, Slider and Sinker, Overlay.
pic.twitter.com/PUtpUtqOM9
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 11, 2022
How did Friedman, a lawyer by trade with only scant amateur baseball experience, become one of the most popular personalities in the sport?
“I have no idea,” he recently told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Friedman, 56, grew up in a Conservative Jewish family on Long Island, had a bar mitzvah and attended Hebrew school, where he fondly recalls melting crayons on the heater in his classroom.
And although he was born the same year Sandy Koufax retired, Friedman was a big fan of the Jewish Dodgers pitcher, saying that he has always admired “the way he carried himself his entire career.”
Friedman played baseball on and off through college But he said it wasn’t until he coached his son Jack that he discovered his love for the sport.
“That really made me love baseball even more, teaching it to somebody and having to learn the ins and outs of the game,” Friedman said.
As a coach, Friedman took a particular interest in pitching. He asked a lot of questions — a curiosity he attributed to his training as an attorney — and began to learn everything he could about the craft.
“It gave me a whole new appreciation for it, and also a way to break down mechanics and really kind of teach what actually pitchers do, as opposed to what coaches say they do,” said Friedman. “I think that was the fun part, delving deep into it.”
He began posting about the finer points of pitching on online message boards around 2007. In 2014, he started tweeting.
“I wanted to share this because not everybody is fanatical like I am,” Friedman said. “So I shared the stuff that I had and just kept getting more and more, a bigger, bigger following, MLB pitchers would start following it, too and asking questions. And it just blew up.”
Before he knew it, Friedman had become the “Pitching Ninja,” a name inspired by his family. Friedman’s wife is half-Japanese, and his son was once told he looked like one of the stealthy Japanese warriors when he wore a bandana while pitching. His son didn’t love the name, so Friedman happily adopted it for himself.
“After a while it was like, you know what, I want to be known as ‘Pitching Ninja’ versus ‘internet geolocation dude,’ which was my company that I started, or ‘lawyer dude,’” said Friedman, who co-founded the tech firm Digital Envoy. “I figured it was a better way to spread the love of something in the world. And a good use of social media, because [I’m] generally staying positive on stuff and showing people that social media can be good.”
Fellow baseball analysts have noticed. Jake Mintz, a baseball writer and podcaster who makes up half of the duo behind “Cespedes Family BBQ,” a popular baseball podcast and social media presence, said he first became aware of Friedman’s work back in 2016 or 2017.
“It doesn’t take too much baseball knowledge to understand why what he’s tweeting is awesome,” Mintz told JTA. “Him doing an interview on YouTube with a pitcher is a higher-level thing, obviously. And that is interesting for people who are super into the game. But just for a casual fan, him providing a light-hearted perspective on pitching is incredibly relatable.”
Friedman is part of a group of Jewish baseball experts who have gained a following online. Mintz, who is also Jewish, collaborated with Friedman in 2019 on a baseball show called “Changeup,” where they would break down the top pitches of the week. He said Friedman is “an incredibly nice fella.”
Friedman recalled running into Mintz and his Jewish podcasting partner Jordan Shusterman at this year’s All-Star Game, along with Alex Fast, another Jewish baseball content creator. He said he’s also in touch with Jewish ESPN reporter Jeff Passan from time to time.
“There’s a camaraderie when you realize, yeah, there are guys that I didn’t know were Jewish that are, and like, ‘Oh, this is cool,’” Friedman said. “Like we talk about bar mitzvahs and stuff like that.”
Friedman also said he enjoys seeing and sharing highlights from Jewish pitchers like Max Fried, Dean Kremer and Scott Effross.
“I don’t highlight them extra-special, but I’m like, hey, it’s cool to see these guys succeed and to be carrying on the Jewish brand in baseball,” he said.
Rob Friedman, right, with Jewish pitcher Max Fried at the 2022 MLB All-Star Weekend red carpet event in Los Angeles. (Courtesy of Rob Friedman)
Friedman said the current slate of Jewish talent in the major leagues — 18 Jewish players have appeared this season — is an important step toward better representation.
“There were not a lot of Jews playing when I was growing up,” Friedman said. “As a Jewish kid, you always look for somebody because everybody tells you, ‘You should be a lawyer or a doctor,’ or something like that. And seeing somebody succeed definitely gives you a connection to them. I think seeing more Jews in baseball brings more Jews to baseball.”
Though Friedman isn’t a player himself, Mintz said he’s part of the elevated Jewish presence in the game today.
“The thing with him being Jewish is, my guy’s name is Rob Friedman,” Mintz said with a laugh. “He’s carrying that in a way that is unavoidable for him. Just by existing in the baseball internet with the name Rob Friedman makes him a visible Jew in that world.”
Mintz added that there is one thing that sets Friedman apart from most content creators in the sport: his popularity among players.
“You go into any clubhouse on any given day, and you’re gonna see people wearing the [‘Pitching Ninja’] shirt in the colors of their team,” Mintz said. “And that’s just because in a way, he’s kind of like a central clearinghouse, like a town hall meeting room for pitchers.”
Friedman said he is frequently in touch with MLB pitchers — and has even helped them improve their game.
“I’m lucky enough to have pitchers that follow me, major league guys that learn pitch grips from my account, which is fantastic,” Friedman said. “I’m always excited when I hear stuff like, a guy picked up somebody else’s grip because I interviewed the pitcher.”
Friedman said one key reason that pitchers follow him is that a lot of mainstream baseball coverage places an emphasis on hitting, since a 400-foot home run can be flashier to a casual fan than a whizzing curveball on the inside corner.
“Everybody always focuses on that aspect of the game, not as much on the pitching,” Friedman said. “So [pitchers] view it as their chance to shine. And they love it when they get featured.”
Friedman said Collin McHugh, a veteran pitcher on the Atlanta Braves, once called his account the “ESPN Top 10 for pitchers” because, Friedman recalls him saying, whenever he’s featured on a highlight reel of top plays on “SportsCenter,” “it’s always because I screwed up.”
As his profile rises among players and fans, Friedman said he remains grateful that he gets to spend his days watching, writing and talking about baseball.
“There are days I wake up and I’m like, how the heck did I get that lucky to do this?” he said. “This is so cool.”
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The post How ‘Pitching Ninja’ Rob Friedman accidentally became one of the most popular Jewish personalities in baseball appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Amid Rising Antisemitism, American Jews Make Aliyah to Israel Seeking Safety, Community, Impact
Olim gather at JFK Airport in New York, preparing to board Nefesh B’Nefesh’s 65th charter flight to Israel. Photo: The Algemeiner
NEW YORK/TEL AVIV — Confronted with rising antisemitism and unease in the United States, a growing number of American Jews are choosing to make aliyah, embracing the risks of war in the Middle East for the chance to build new lives and foster meaningful communities.
On Wednesday, 225 new olim arrived in Tel Aviv on the first charter aliyah flight since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Aliyah refers to the process of Jews immigrating to Israel, and olim refers to those who make this journey.
Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN) — a nonprofit that promotes and facilitates aliyah from the US and Canada — brought its 65th charter flight from New York, which The Algemeiner joined.
Founded in 2002, NBN helps olim become fully integrated members of Israeli society, simplifying the aliyah process and providing essential resources and guidance.
In partnership with Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Kayemeth, and the Jewish National Fund, NBN has helped nearly 100,000 olim build thriving new lives in Israel.
Shawn Fink is one of the 225 people who embarked on the life-changing journey earlier this week, leaving Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife, Liz, and their son.
For Fink and his family, making aliyah was driven not only by their love for Israel and desire to build a new community, but also by the escalating threats and uncertainties facing Jewish communities abroad since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
“Mostly, we were frustrated with the direction the United States is taking, and the rise in antisemitism was a major concern for us,” Fink told The Algemeiner.
Like many countries around the world, the US has seen an alarming rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment since the Oct. 7 atrocities.
According to the latest data issued by the FBI, hate crimes perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the federal agency’s counting them.
A striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, who constitute just 2 percent of the US population, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
Fink explained that the increasing costs of living a Jewish life in the US — from education to kosher food — weighed heavily on his family’s decision to make the move to Israel.
While they first considered making aliyah five years ago, Fink and his family had to put the plans on hold for personal reasons — returning to the idea only in the past few months when the timing finally worked in their favor.
“We started planning it seriously in November and began the entire process with Nefesh B’Nefesh,” Fink told The Algemeiner. “It’s been a nonstop whirlwind ever since.”
For them, the current war did not stop their plans, but it did influence the cities they explored for their new home.
“The war really reinforced for us the importance of supporting Israel and our community,” Fink said. “By making aliyah, we felt we could do even more to help.”
Even though it is difficult to leave behind family and close friends, they look forward to reconnecting with friends in Israel, making new connections, and building a vibrant new community.
“Making aliyah in less than six months has been a whirlwind. I’d encourage anyone considering it to give themselves at least twice as much time, double the budget, and be prepared for plenty of unexpected starts and stops along the way,” Fink told The Algemeiner.
Nefesh B’Nefesh provides assistance to families throughout their entire aliyah journey, offering guidance before relocating and continued support once in Israel.
The Israeli government also complements these efforts with resources and financial incentives to help newcomers settle and ease their transition into their new lives.
“Once the ticket is finally in your hand and you’re waiting to board the plane, you realize that all the challenges and obstacles along the way were worth it,” Fink said.
Veronica Zaragovia was also one of the 225 olim who joined the flight earlier this week.
Similarly to Fink and his family, Zaragovia decided to make aliyah, driven not just by her love for Israel, but also by the increasing challenges of being Jewish abroad and the hope of making a meaningful impact by serving her community.
From Florida, she embarked on the journey alone, excited for all the new opportunities and possibilities that awaited her in her new home.
“I want to take pride in being Jewish and in Israel — that’s why I’m making aliyah,” she told The Algemeiner, reflecting on the move she has been planning for the past two years.
“It’s a huge concern for me that in some places in the US, I can’t — or maybe shouldn’t — wear my Star of David necklace,” she said. “I don’t feel that Jews can be fully safe anywhere in the country. The rise in antisemitism has been truly shocking and deeply concerning.”
Zaragovia, who worked as a journalist in the US, said her love for storytelling and uncovering the truth played a key role in her decision to make this move.
“After Oct. 7, I felt that the way my colleagues and other journalists were covering Israel was wrong and unfair,” she said.
“As someone whose career is built on facts and truth, I didn’t see that reflected in their reporting. That’s why I decided to make a difference by being there myself,” she continued.
Rather than deterring her decision to make a change, Zaragovia explained that the current war only reinforced it.
“It became clear that I needed to go, be there with my people, and make a difference through my work,” she said. “I couldn’t have done this without Nefesh B’Nefesh. They’ve been incredible, guiding me every step of the way from start to finish.”
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Mike Huckabee, Israeli Government Push Back Against Claims of ‘Famine’ in Gaza
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli government and the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, are pushing back against international criticism after a UN-backed authority declared a famine is taking place in Gaza.
“To the uninformed who claim Israel is starving Gaza, get the facts & read the thread below,” Huckabee said on X on Friday. “Tons of food has gone into Gaza but Hamas savages stole it, ate lots of it to become corpulent, sold it on [the] black market but they didn’t give it to the hostages.”
His comments came hours after the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the global body that monitors hunger crises, reported that famine thresholds had been met in Gaza City and surrounding areas, with more than half a million people already experiencing catastrophic levels of hunger. The IPC warned that the number could rise to 641,000 by the end of September if conditions do not improve.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a post on X, dismissed the IPC’s conclusions as “an outright lie,” insisting Israel “does not have a policy of starvation” but rather “a policy of preventing starvation.” Israeli officials note that thousands of aid trucks have entered Gaza and blame the ruling Hamas terror group for diverting supplies.
Huckabee’s remarks echoed that position, framing the Islamist group as the central cause of hunger. Israeli leaders and their allies accuse Hamas of stealing food, hoarding aid, and reselling goods on the black market at inflated prices instead of distributing them to civilians or releasing Israeli hostages.
The United States and Israel set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) earlier this year to coordinate aid deliveries outside of UN channels, after accusing Hamas of exploiting international assistance. The group says it delivers more than a million meals a day, but humanitarian organizations counter that the aid falls far short of what is needed.
Distribution sites have often descended into chaos, with starving crowds surging around convoys. Human rights groups have described the alleged famine as a “man-made catastrophe” and accused Israel of weaponizing hunger.
Israel recently increased the flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza, after imposing a temporary embargo in an effort to keep them out of the hands of Hamas. While facilitating the entry of thousands of aid trucks into Gaza, Israeli officials have condemned the UN and other international aid agencies for their alleged failure to distribute supplies, noting much of the humanitarian assistance has been stalled at border crossings or stolen. According to UN data, the vast majority of humanitarian aid entering Gaza is intercepted before reaching its intended civilian recipients.
Last week, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) released a report saying that Hamas has been inflating the death toll of Palestinians due to malnutrition and that most of those verified to have died had preexisting medical conditions.
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Italian Hospital Staff Discard Israeli-Made Medicine as Concerns Mount Globally of Antisemitism in Health Care
In Italy, Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci throw products of the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical in the garbage in protest against Israel. Photo: Screenshot
Two medical workers in Italy filmed themselves discarding Israeli-made medicine in protest against the Jewish state at their workplace, fueling global concerns of antisemitism in health-care facilities as a doctor in the United Kingdom who praised Adolf Hitler was allowed back to work this month.
A doctor and a nurse who work at a community hospital in Pratovecchio Stia, near Arezzo in Tuscany, recently posted on social media a video of themselves dramatically throwing away products from Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli company.
Italy
Throwing Israeli drugs in the binAt the Casa della Salute in Pratovecchio Stia, two public employees – Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci – film themselves throwing away drugs manufactured by TEVA.pic.twitter.com/nQhc3TIQT3
— Hamas Atrocities (@HamasAtrocities) August 20, 2025
Dr. Daniel Radzik, a senior member of the Italian Jewish Medical Association, told Ynetnews that his organization is “very concerned about the event.”
“It’s evident that this act was not accidental, but carried out with the intention of encouraging the boycott of medicines produced in Israel,” he added.
Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci apologized for the video following backlash, saying, “We apologize to anyone offended by the video. It was a symbolic gesture for peace. We did not actually throw away any medicine.”
In Italy, Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci throw products of the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceutical in the garbage in protest of Israel. Photo: Screenshot
However, the Italian Jewish Medical Association was skeptical of the apology.
“They tried to explain in a very naive way. Because they say that their act was only symbolic, made for peace and that the medicine was only integrator and they don’t want really to throw them to the rubbish,” Radzik said.
The doctor and nurse claimed the items were not medications purchased by the hospital, but rather items such as wet wipes that are given out for free, and that they removed them from the trash after filming. Additionally, they claimed the video was filmed after working hours.
Meanwhile, a doctor in the UK was allowed to return to work this month after praising Hitler during an antisemitic rant and making racist comments about a colleague.
“All this antisemitism … if Hitler was around today, I would support him as he got rid of horrible f—kers like him,” Dr. Mili Shah said in reference to a colleague in 2021, according to British media.
In response, Shah was reportedly suspended for four months. However, a review by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in July concluded Shah, who is no longer employed by NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group, is fit to return to work.
These recent incidents come as concerns mount globally over antisemitism in health-care spaces, with Jews feeling unsafe due to medical professionals expressing antisemitism or even outright death threats against Israelis.
In the UK, for example, the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH Trust) issued an apology this past week following a patient’s complaints about the placement of anti-Israel posters at a facility. These posters — which read “Zionism is Poison,” called for a “Free Palestine,” and accused Israel of wantonly starving and killing Palestinians — led a patient to reach out to the group UK Lawyers for Israel, expressing fear of receiving subpar treatment if the hospital staff discovered she was Jewish. The chief executive of UCLH Trust released a statement apologizing for the posters.
Meanwhile, in a separate incident, midwife Fatimah Mohamied, who resigned from her position after UKLFI highlighted her anti-Israel social media posts, has now filed a claim against Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, alleging a violation of her rights. Mohamied’s posts included her defending and celebrating the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion and massacre across southern Israel.
Other Western countries have seen health-care providers’ antipathy toward Israel manifest as violent threats.
In the Netherlands, police opened an investigation into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.
Although Sa’id denied making the comments, claiming someone was “pretending to be me,” an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people last year, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”
The nurse’s alleged threat mirrors a similar incident in Australia, in which video showed two nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements. The widely circulated footage showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” Shira Nussdorf, a US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago, told The Algemeiner earlier this year when the video first emerged. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.
The issue of antisemitism in medical facilities also extends to North America.
A December 2024 study by the Data & Analytics Department of StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group, found that 40 percent of 645 Jewish American health-care professionals surveyed reported experiencing antisemitism in the workplace. A similar study of Canadian Jewish health workers conducted last year reached 80 percent.