Tim Tebow made headlines this week when news emerged that he wants to pursue a career in professional baseball.
Tebow’s pursuit of a baseball career would come a decade after he last played baseball competitively, which has left many doubting how his transition from professional football to professional baseball would go. Former All-Star pitcher Curt Schilling is among those who doesn’t think Tebow has a prayer of playing in MLB.
“There is absolutely no chance that he would ever set foot on a big-league diamond to play in a big-league baseball game in the regular season,” Schilling said on the “StewPod” this week.
Tebow was considered a baseball prospect in high school, but he stopped playing after his junior season in order to concentrate on football. That seemed like the correct decision as Tebow went on to become a two-time national champion at Florida and Heisman Trophy winner. But despite finding some success as a starting quarterback with the Denver Broncos, Tebow’s NFL career fizzled out, and he never was interested in switching positions away from quarterback.
Schilling placed Tebow’s success at the high school level in context.
“The comment I heard,” Schilling said, “was that he was a really good hitter in high school. Well, I was too. I was really good hitter in high school and I hit .100-something in the big leagues. I saw him swing the other day. He looks like he’s got a nice swing. I think he’d kick the crap out of people in the 30-and-over league.”
Here’s Tebow’s swing:
Tebow in the cage. Judge for yourself. You tell me if that swing gets past AA. pic.twitter.com/7Ij0pfK5cv
— BEAU BISHOP (@BeauBishop) August 9, 2016
Though Schilling doubts how much hitting well in high school matters, recall that at least one team wanted to draft Tebow. The guy is massive, has power and strength, and maybe one day could have been a prospect. But after missing 11 years of development, Tebow would be playing catch-up at 28 years old, which is very hard to do.
Some team could easily give Tebow a chance to play in the minors because you know he’ll draw a huge crowd and make a franchise a lot of money. But like Schilling says, the prospect of Tebow rising above anything past Single-A ball seems very unlikely.
