Tim Tebow, Michael Jordan and What We Can Learn from Them
Maybe not all of us will admit to it, but I think many of us have been curious to watch Tim Tebow’s foray into professional baseball.
When I was in the Pittsburgh clubhouse in Bradenton, Florida, earlier this spring, MLB Network chose to broadcast a Mets’ game in which Tebow was participating. MLB clubhouses have become more and more like your area Buffalo Wild Wings location, with multiple, large flat-screens usually adorning their interior to help pass the significant amount of stagnant time players spend there.
On this day, I entered the clubhouse shortly after the Pirates made a call to the bullpen. (It’s standard practice in spring for a team to permit media following the removal of the starting pitcher.) Several Pirates lingered in the mostly vacant room, including reliever Tony Watson, who turned his attention toward a television.
“Is that Tebow?” Watson asked aloud.
Even major-league players are curious how Tebow performs. A large part of that interest is probably tied to celebrity. Tebow was an ESPN favorite. It was difficult not to be aware of him. And not many Heisman winners quit football to give baseball a shot. If this were Brandon Weeden, or another failed pro quarterback, making an attempt at a baseball career, few would be paying attention. But part of this curiosity, I suspect, is also tied to this question: just how far away is an elite athlete with no professional baseball experience — and far removed from his amateur playing days — from being a passable major-league hitter? Essentially, how does (a very athletic) man off the street perform when thrown into a professional lineup?
I think we can all agree that Tebow isn’t a prospect, that he’s not likely to have a major-league career unless the Mets are desperate for an attendance bump. Eric Longenhagen saw Tebow last fall and quickly dismissed him as a prospect. From Longenhagen:
The crowds he draws, which, aside from the parking conditions they create, have been generally harmless. Last night’s game in Scottsdale was an unusually crowded mid-week affair with most of the fans raucously cheering for Tebow in a setting that is usually quite bookish. It created a unique environment in which to watch baseball, that’s for sure. Tools-wise, Tebow takes big, fun, aggressive hacks and he has some bat speed and power but his hand-eye is lacking and his swing is very long in the back. Several times he swung through hittable 89-91 mph fastballs because he couldn’t get there in time to punish them. His routes in left are raw, he has a 40 arm and is an average runner underway but below average from home to first. He isn’t a prospect, but he’s been gracious with the media and patient with the fans and autograph lines. It was weird watching a baseball game in which fan excitement was most palpable during a semi-routine fly ball to left field and not when a Yankees shortstop prospect hit one 380 feet the opposite way.
But Tebow gives us a different context, a different lens with which to understand how difficult it is to hit at the professional level, let alone advance to the major leagues.
Tebow will be 30 in August and has all of 71 professional plate appearances. He slashed .194/.296/.242 in the Fall League last year. He owns a .167/.200/.167 slash time in Grapefruit League play this spring. That he’s recorded four hits in 28 at-bats might actually be considered remarkable.
Baseball is hard…
Tim Tebow hits against Max Scherzer.
It's fun and eventful, and for Tim, it doesn't go well. pic.twitter.com/4oZabpjOYS
— Jay White (@JaySaysWords) March 27, 2017
There is one interesting historical precedent, however. Tebow’s early performance should perhaps allow for a greater appreciation of the most similar experiment, which created an even greater media frenzy: Michael Jordan’s attempt to play major-league baseball.
He spent the 31st year of his life with the Double-A Birmingham Barons, managed by Terry Francona. He hadn’t played organized baseball since his Laney High days in Wilmington, North Carolina. So his time away from baseball and status as an elite athlete were similar to Tebow’s. Tebow played just two years of high-school baseball back in 2004 and 2005.
Through one lens, that of strict baseball analysis, one views Jordan’s experiment as a great failure. He posted a .202/.289/.266 slash line, hitting three homers runs in 436 at-bats. He did steal 30 bases in 46 attempts, but that alone isn’t going to earn prospect status for a 31-year-old in Double-A.
Michael Jordan's Double-A slash line .202/.289/.266 in 1994 was …
— Travis Sawchik (@Travis_Sawchik) March 29, 2017
But, in context, you could also look at it is as a great athletic achievement: essentially a man off the street (a very athletic man off the street) jumps into Double-A and hits .202, with 21 extra-base hits and a 22.9% strikeout rate. And remember that Double-A was Jordan’s first exposure to professional baseball. He didn’t enjoy reps in a fall league or winter league before diving in. Francona himself said he thought Jordan could have become a major leaguer.
“I think if he was willing to invest two more full years, and by that I mean 800-900 at-bats, I really think he would have found a way to get to the major leagues. I’m not going to sit here and say he’s going to be an everyday player, but in his first year in Double-A, after not playing for 14 years, he found a way to steal 30 bases, he found a way to drive in 50 runs. And I found out if you tell him no, he will find a way to make the answer be yes — probably more than anyone I’ve been around. He had so many raw tools, he hadn’t played in so long. I thought it was actually a miracle that he did what he did, and again when he went to the fall league, he got better. I’m going to guess if he would have invested a couple more years, I bet he would have found his way to the big leagues.”
Francona might have been a bit aggressive with his timetable. It typically takes even the best prep prospects at least four to five years to reach the majors. Even if Jordan had the requisite tools, the polish required would have put his debut age in the majors in his mid-30s. By that age, hitters are in decline, losing bat speed at a time when “visual acuity starts deteriorating.” So Jordan, and Tebow, never really had a chance. Even if they embarked truly in earnest, they began this experiment much too late.
Jordan and Tebow were and are curiosities but were never prospects. And while their baseball careers are likely limited to entertainment and media value, can we learn something from them?
Sure, it reinforces the idea that hitting a baseball, one thrown by a professional pitcher, is among the most difficult athletic endeavors in the spectrum of all of sport. Jordan and Tebow have demonstrated just how difficult it is to acquire such skill even for elite athletes. There is no substitute for time or reps in mastering this craft. There are no short cuts. While someone like Bo Jackson might seem an like exception, Jackson played college baseball at Auburn where he OPSed 1.364 as a sophomore. He never took an extended break from baesball. Rick Ankiel posted a career 91 wRC+ after giving up on pitching and returning to the game at 28 as an outfielder, but he at least had the benefit of experience in professional baseball and limited hitting experience in the game.
Tebow also had me thinking a bit about Rob Manfred’s focus on the “Play Ball” and “One Baseball” initiatives, which are inspired projects on which to focus. Attracting more young people to the game is key, they become future players and paying customers. I think it’s fair to say Jordan and Tebow chose the correct sports on which to focus, but retaining young athletes is as important as attracting them to baseball.
Hitting is perhaps a learned skill, tied to the idea of the 10,000-hour rule, as much or more than it’s a natural athletic gift. It requires years and thousands and thousands of reps to master. And with the costs of private instructors, equipment and travel ball, becoming an elite amateur hitter has become more and more expensive. Even elite athletes cannot take shortcuts to establishing the muscle memory and repetition that is necessary.
You can pick up other hobbies later in life. Jordan and Tebow remind us that you cannot pick up hitting a baseball.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
I’m sure you were aware of it as you wrote it, but since Brandon Weeden played several years of professional baseball, it would be especially unremarkable for him to go back to baseball, compared to some other failed QB like RG3 or Vince Young.
That’s a good point. I should have picked just about any other failed NFL quarterback that had some experience playing prep baseball
I thought the same thing. What an odd choice for an example. Perhaps of all professional athletes, Brandon Weeden is the anti-Tebow: he’s a failed baseball player who became a professional NFL quarterback at age 28.
I’m also not sure it’s fair to call him a failed quarterback. At the moment, Weeden is still on an NFL roster making millions of dollars in a reserve role. If Tebow somehow managed to eventually do that in the MLB I would call it a tremendous success.
When I read Brandon Weeden, I thought of Drew Henson and Chris Weinke. All 3 had somewhat similar paths.
I feel like we learned far more about Tim Tebow than we ever wanted to, needed to, or was at all necessary to. The only reason anyone even knows his name is because ESPN issued some mandate that they would report on every single time Tim Tebow left his house, ate, took a crap or even sometimes played football. This was all apparently more important than anything else.
We’d all be better off if we’d never been subjected to Tim Tebow. That sounds mean, but it’s true.
I feel like if you constantly watch First Take and other shows like that, the content you receive is really on you.
Watched literally none of such things, but the Tebowism was so prevalent there for a while that any attempts to follow sports of a varied amount inevitably led to some BS about Tebow.
Now that you’ve moved the goalposts, yes, you do hear about Tebow some when watching sports. I hear a lot more complaining about hearing about Tebow than I actually hear about him.
Enjoy the downsides, trashing tebow is just as mundane as the endless hype he receives/received.
I have suffered a depressingly important loss of internet points.
It makes sense when you think about it from the media’s standpoint. It is a profitable story line. He carries a huge following and outside of his athletic career, he is a very likable person. You can bet someone will make a movie about this one day.
Despite the downvotes, there really is a lot of truth to this. I utterly loathe football, do not follow it at all, haven’t seen a single game in decades. And other than the occasional Sunday Night Baseball game, my TV hasn’t been tuned to ESPN since the MLB Network became a thing. Yet I still knew every single thing about every moment of Tebow’s career and life, because somehow it became this inescapable societal thing from which you couldn’t hide no matter how deep a rock you crawled under. I’m pretty sure CNN was spending more time talking about him than they were two foreign wars. Fairly certain if you divide media attention by professional success, the guy is the all-time world leader in all sports.
A 40 arm for Tebow specifically isn’t surprising, but man is that sad for a quarterback. I’d also like to nominate “Jordan was was able to achieve quite a bit more at the professional level in his given sport” for Understatement of the Millennium.
Tebow was widely thought to have the weakest QB arm in the history of football when he was in the NFL
What we learned from Mike? Don’t be a degenerate gambler and get gifted a way to serve a two year ban as a “baseball player”. From Tebow? Jump pass is a cute gimmick, not on you can build a career on. at least he’s not a man whore degenerate like Mike.
Tone aside, Jordan has admitted to having been a reckless gambler at the time. Seems pretty likely that this is what happened.I don’t think his leaving the NBA is really “inexplicable” as Travis writes. His official story about his Dad’s dream for him and then not wanting to fulfill said dream as a replacement player (regarding his return to NBA) isnt very plausible.
Tebow is a “man whore degenerate” for media attention, I mean the constant bowing in front of the camera please!…he basically a Kardashian. Wouldn’t be surprised to hear of a sex tape soon after he flops at baseball, (missionary style only of course)
“Well, you see, I kneel down, and I raise my fist, just like so…”
What I’m taking away from this is that even among 30 year old transfers, Tebow is still well below average lol
The distribution of hitting results of pitchers probably gives the best idea of what happens when good athletes who aren’t selected for their hitting ability get to face major league pitching. Are the results of Tebow and Jordan predicted by the distribution of pitcher batting outcomes?
Michael Jordan was perhaps the most elite athlete in history, combining the physical and mental aspects. Guys like that seem to get to big league level at a much faster pace (e.g. Harper, Trout). I don’t think it is crazy to believe that Jordan could have earned (and I mean earned) a call-up sometime in his third season.
We learn that our sons need to play baseball instead of football
We learned that from Bo Jackson.
TIL in the mid 90s Tom Brokaw actually spoke English like a normal human being.
Excellent article, though it probably could have been shortened to just, “Baseball is hard…”
The Tebow thing is fun. I do not expect much success, but you never know. He seems to make a career out of being surprising, both positively and negatively.
At this point, if he manages to hit a tape-measure home run, even in A ball, that might qualify as a victory.
I think your keyboard might be messed up, because I’m pretty sure you meant to say, “The Tebow thing is fun, although he certainly won’t succeed at making the majors short of the Mets imploding and, as a result, deciding to conduct the most transparent gimmick-marketing event of all time.”
What, you think I am one of those infinite monkeys producing comment content? Banana Hamlet Audi Taco!
The likelihood that Tebow will earn a major league look is tiny. There is a high percentage chance he will flop in A ball. However, he has had one of the strangest trips in sports so far so I’m not taking anything off the table at this point. If someone showed up on my front lawn in a time machine and told me Tebow hit a 500 foot home run in AA which he parlayed into becoming the Commissioner of the NHL, I’d be inclined to believe it.
Obviously with his noodle arm, Tebow wouldn’t be the best test case, but I wonder if a failed QB with a strong throwing arm might be better off trying a switch to pitching. I once had a conversation speculating on whether JaMarcus Russell could make it as a pitcher.
Colin Kaepernick, anyone? He pitched in college, and when he threw out the first pitch at a Giants game a few years ago, he didn’t mess around: it was clocked at 87 mph. Not major league speed, but I imagine with some practice he could get it over ninety.
If he doesn’t get an offer soon, he might possibly be out of the NFL.
Russell Wilson also played some pro ball, though as an infielder. John Elway was a very good ball player in college, Stanford went to the CWS while he was there, andhe had not gone into the NFL, he would have been drafted by I think the Yankees. Again, though, he was a position player.
Actually was drafted by the Yanks in the 2nd round, and trotted out some good numbers playing RF for their short-season team.
Just neighing.
“Colin Kaepernick, anyone? He pitched in college, and when he threw out the first pitch at a Giants game a few years ago, he didn’t mess around: it was clocked at 87 mph. Not major league speed, but I imagine with some practice he could get it over ninety.”
See: weaver, jered.
Maybe kaep could pitch for the padres
It isn’t his fault a team is exploiting his fanbase to generate buzz. It also isn’t his fault that his org invited him to camp. Point being, the sooner this blows over and he leaves the better.
My limited experience trying to hit a baseball thrown at 90 MPH is that it is virtually impossible. It’s like trying to aim a basketball into a hoop from 60 feet away, except the hoop is moving in a completely random direction at a speed you can’t discern. And you can’t think about it at all, you just have to instinctively go for it. This is a reflection of my hitting talent but I can’t imagine other regular joes would fare well. I can’t even imagine how real athletes fare. I don’t even know how baseball players do it.
I say this mostly in the context of: I could imagine a universe in which I am strong enough, fast enough, coordinated enough to play basketball or soccer. Football and rugby too, if my body was made of steel. Not at the professional level or anything, but I understand how people who are stronger, faster, and more coordinated do these things. On the other hand, hitting a baseball seems impossible to me. I simply refuse to believe that I belong to the same species as professional baseball players.
Unless there are other space aliens wearing human skins of whom I am unaware, we still do not belong to the same species as Michael Jordan and Mike Trout.
I have said for a long time that Jordan does not get enough credit for what he managed to do. Sure he sucked by baseball standards but by “guy who walked off the street” standards what he did was damn near impossible. Even Tebow being awful is a decent achievement given the circumstances. I know alot of people who have played baseball for 20 years and would look MUCH worse against a Scherzer fastball.
The average person really does not understand the gap between elite athelete and eve really good athelete. Elite athlete’s are almost another species lol.