What Do All-Stars Think of Tebow's Baseball Journey?

By ESPN

Major League Baseball's best players were in Miami for the All-Star Game this week, just a two-hour drive away from Port St. Lucie, where a former NFL quarterback is trying to make his way through the minors.

What do All-Stars think of Tim Tebow's baseball journey? We asked a few for their thoughts on what he has to do to keep moving up the New York Mets' minor league ranks and what his chances are of playing at Citi Field in a couple of months.

How closely have you been following Tim Tebow's career, and what do you make of his progress?

Charlie Blackmon, CF, Colorado Rockies: I'm always interested to see when his name pops up. I think Tim Tebow's a great guy. I don't really know him, but I think it's a great story.

Nolan Arenado, 3B, Colorado Rockies: I'm pulling for him, to be honest with you. I want him to do well; I don't want to see him fail. You're gonna fail in baseball because it's baseball, but I wanna see him do well.

Lance McCullers, SP, Houston Astros: For anyone to take that long off of baseball and do what he's doing -- he's a freak athlete, I know that for sure. I was committed to Florida when he was there and doing his thing, and I think there's not any doubt about his athletic ability. I saw he went to high-A and then hit a home run the next day. He seems to be doing well.

Michael Conforto, CF, New York Mets: You always hear about when he hits a home run, when he makes a big play. It's pretty cool and inspiring, I guess, that he's been able to take this much time off and then have success in the minor leagues. I actually was down in high-A for a rehab assignment and I played with him. One thing I'll say about him is he always takes good at-bats. He's got a good eye, he doesn't chase, and I think really that's half the battle in the game of baseball as far as being a good hitter.

With how much skill it takes to play this game, for him to take that much time off [and compete in the minor leagues] is pretty impressive. ... Having met him, I know he's genuine about it. He does want to play baseball. He's a great guy, and from what I know talking to players that play with him, he's a great teammate as well.

Michael Fulmer, SP, Detroit Tigers: I see a lot of stuff on social media about it. I think it's awesome what he's doing. Obviously, he got promoted to St. Lucie, and knowing some of the coaching staff that are working with him, he's in good hands. I've kind of just been seeing what's popped up on Twitter, and he's doing a good job. I think it's great for him to believe in his dream and try to follow it, try to get to the big leagues.

Justin Upton, LF, Detroit Tigers: Honestly, unless it pops up on Twitter, I don't see much. I think the last thing I saw, he hit a homer or something.

Wade Davis, RP, Chicago Cubs: Big Tebow fan. Get some, Tebow!
What advice would you give him as he tries to make it to the majors?

Upton: It's not that easy. The game's not easy, and you've gotta grind every day, man. That's the name of the game. It's one of the toughest games in the world.

Michael Brantley, LF, Cleveland Indians: Just keep working. It's a process. It wasn't easy for a lot of people. Dude's gotta keep grinding through it and try to get better every day.

George Springer, CF, Houston Astros: Keep grinding. That's it.
Do you think we're going to see him at Citi Field this September?

Blackmon: I really don't know. I know that big league baseball is not something to take lightly. There's a lot of guys working very hard to be a part of a big league club.

Conforto: He's still got a long way to go, but I think I've seen a lot of improvement out of him. From spring to the one day I got to see him when I went down on Thursday [July 6], he looks like a much better player already. If he just keeps getting better, who knows?
If he makes it to Citi Field this September, will you watch him?

Arenado: Heck yeah, I'll watch him. I hope he goes deep four times in his first game, too.

Ranking Best Matchups From All-Star Game

Among the reasons you'll hear that baseball's All-Star Game was "better in my day" is this one: Between interleague play and increased player mobility, there's no longer any novelty to these matchups. Most of these guys have faced each other in the regular season.

There's certainly some truth to that. In 1965, to pick an old year at random, there were a combined 80 plate appearances in the All-Star Game. Only 18 featured a batter and pitcher who had ever faced each other in the regular season or the World Series. Compare that with the 2017 All-Star Game, in which there were 78 matchups and 48 of them had happened before. On average, the batter in the box Tuesday had faced the pitcher on the mound three times before this week. Which is a big part of what Bryce Harper was getting at when he suggested a scrambled-up, mixed-leagues All-Star Game: "I could be facing Max Scherzer today. Nobody sees that."

But let's not overstate the problem. There were 30 matchups Tuesday that had never happened before! All-Stars facing All-Stars for the first time, unprecedented star-on-star hostilities. Some of these matchups were relatively ehhh on paper, but at least one was the first time some future Hall of Famer faced some other future Hall of Famer, and we all watched it!

So let's memorialize these 30 in ranked order. We gave each hitter and pitcher a 1-10 score based on interestingness and averaged them for a matchup score. We then gave the outcome a 1-10 score based on how well it delivered something worth seeing. Sum those two numbers for the overall matchup score.

30. Avisail Garcia vs. Brad Hand: 4.5 points
Garcia and Hand were each the lone representative of a terrible team, and neither would have made the game if he'd played for basically any other franchise (except possibly those in Pennsylvania). Both are having fine seasons, but Hand has a career ERA worse than the league average and Garcia has a career OPS worse than the league average. Worse, Hand wasn't even asked here to do the one thing he's in the majors to do: Gut lefties. Garcia lined out to center.

29. Marcell Ozuna vs. Jason Vargas: 5 points (ground ball double play)

28. Salvador Perez vs. Alex Wood: 6 points
Wood threw a first-pitch fastball that badly missed its target and trudged through the middle of the strike zone. Perez swung and popped out, and Wood won the battle of who could fail worse.

27: Justin Turner vs. Ervin Santana: 6 points (popout)

26: Carlos Correa vs. Pat Neshek: 6.5 points (fly out to center)

25: Cody Bellinger vs. Santana: 7 points
Bellinger is one of the few players in this game to whom we gave a 10 for interestingness (along with Harper and Aaron Judge), but this at-bat didn't deliver. The rookie took a pitch outside for a strike, then took a pitch in the zone for a ball, then rolled over a fastball for a weak 4-3 groundout.

24. Mike Moustakas vs. Greg Holland: 8 points
Moustakas flied out to the warning track on the first pitch, which was something like the 5,000th Greg Holland pitch he'd seen in his career but the first from that side of the mound.

23: Paul Goldschmidt vs. Roberto Osuna: 8.5 points (foul out to right)

22. Gary Sanchez vs. Hand: 9.5 points (ground out to second)

21. Nolan Arenado vs. Chris Sale: 10 points (bloop single to right)

20. Corey Dickerson vs. Neshek: 10.5 points
This was actually the lowest tandem score I gave to the players in a matchup, lower even than Garcia and Hand, but it delivered. Neshek, a sidearmer and a relative soft-tosser in this company, used all sorts of trickery, throwing three strikes on three pitch types from three very different release points. He got Dickerson out on an 0-2 changeup from an overhand, almost quick-pitch delivery.

19. Michael Conforto vs. Osuna: 11 points
18. Daniel Murphy vs. Sale: 11 points
Both of these ended with singles lined the other way into left field, good hitting by good hitters. Murphy's was especially fun, though, because of what he'd told Alex Rodriguez in an on-field interview the previous inning. Asked how he'd approach Sale, he said he'd "hopefully get a fastball on the plate and try to knuckle it like Bryce [Harper] did there," referring to Harper's opposite-field single. "See if I can get something early and get my A swing on it." And it went exactly like that, with Murphy getting the first-pitch single before the broadcast even had time to introduce him.

17. Jose Ramirez vs. Carlos Martinez: 11.5 points (ground ball single)

16. Corey Seager vs. Osuna: 11.5 points
For our purposes here, an at-bat is usually considered to have "delivered" when the better player in the matchup does something that either confirms his particular style of greatness or exposes his lone vulnerability. Seager is the bigger name in this matchup, but it delivered by demonstrating what makes Osuna so good: He threw a breathtaking first-pitch slider at Seager's hands, and Seager swung over it for strike one. Then he dotted a fastball low and away, and Seager swung flimsily into a double play. Perfect Osuna moment.

15. Mookie Betts vs. Martinez: 13 points (groundout to first on 101 mph)

14. Judge vs. Wood: 13.5 points (fly out to right, shy of warning track)

13. Nelson Cruz vs. Kenley Jansen: 13.5 points (strikeout swinging)

12. Francisco Lindor vs. Holland: 13.5 points (K; all three strikes swinging)

11. Ender Inciarte vs. Andrew Miller: 14 points (6-3 groundout; one ridiculous 3-2 slider fouled off)

10. Garcia vs. Jansen: 14 points
With the go-ahead run on second in the ninth, Jansen struck out Garcia swinging on a cutter ... except he was called for a balk for failing to come to a set position, so the strike didn't count. With the go-ahead run now on third in the ninth, Jansen struck out Garcia swinging on the cutter. You got the sense by the end of the at-bat that he could have got 15 or 20 more past Garcia if he'd needed to.

9. Charlie Blackmon vs. Dellin Betances: 14. 5 points (K, swinging; A-plus slider followed by 99 mph whiff)

8. Bellinger vs. Chris Devenski: 14.5 points (hard groundout to second)

7. Conforto vs. Craig Kimbrel: 14.5 points (K on five straight fastballs)

6. Miguel Sano vs. Wood: 14.5 points
Sano drove home the first run of this pitchers' duel, and the hit came on a pitcher's pitch: a perfectly located fastball away, after a first-pitch changeup put Wood ahead in the count. Sano popped it shallow down the right-field line, where it landed amid a trio of confused Washington Nationals. The drop shot came as the broadcast crew was talking up Sano's extremely high exit velocities. It was everything that has been perfect about Wood this year, getting beat by the very opposite of what has made Sano so great this year.

5. Harper vs. Betances: 15.5 points (Walk, after falling behind 0-2)

4. Giancarlo Stanton vs. Sale: 15.5 points
Sale dominated Stanton, dropping in two sliders at different angles to get ahead 0-2 before eventually striking Stanton out swinging on 98 mph cheese. The one mark against this was that the final pitch badly missed its location, though maybe that makes Sale overpowering Stanton even more impressive.

3. Judge vs. Martinez: 16 points
Only three full-time starters this year are shorter than Martinez, who was staring down the largest and strongest man who has ever walked the earth. He threw three pitches over 100 mph to get ahead 1-2, with the two strikes perfectly painted on the low/outside corner. He then quick-pitched Judge and got a 6-3 groundout; that final pitch was a mere 99 mph.

2. Harper vs. Sale: 16 points
On his second pitch to Harper, Sale hit 100, which, according to Brooks Baseball, he has never done in a regular-season game. It missed, and Sale was down 2-0 and had to come in, and he grooved one 95 mph over the plate. That was the moment this plate appearance really could have delivered, except Harper took the pitch. On 3-1, though, he got a fastball up on the handle of his bat and flared it into left field for a single. The super-slow-motion replay showed his bat almost liquefying on contact, but Harper is so, so strong the other way.

1. Judge vs. Scherzer: 18.5 points
Probably the most interesting hitter in this game facing probably the most interesting pitcher. Thanks to, I think, the umpire's microphone, we heard Scherzer grunting with strain on every pitch, something I'm not sure I've heard from a major league mound before. Better, every grunt was slightly different from the others; when he hit 98 mph, it was like a heeeyah, while the next pitch (96) was more like a yaahw. Ultimately, the count went full, with Scherzer alternating perfect pitches with overthrows before getting Judge to swing and miss -- butt out, shoulders collapsed -- at an unhittable slider outside. After 20 hours of pondering the greatness of Judge, we had just seen Scherzer slay him.

So there we go: 30 histories made, some more memorable than others. But there's another reason we shouldn't overstate this so-called loss of something special from All-Star Games past. In the bottom of the 10th inning, with the American League up by a run and the tying run on base, Bellinger batted against Miller with two outs. This is a perfect on-paper matchup, nearly as interesting (to me, at least) as Judge against Scherzer. The stakes of the game were higher; the tension was greater. And, crucially, these two had history. Bellinger had homered off Miller in June, a game-tying shot that blemished what had been an almost perfect season up to that point by Miller. Did this history make the matchup worse? Quite the opposite.

This, right here, was the best matchup of the game, and it wasn't novel. Except that every matchup in baseball is brand new, informed by but never truly repeating the past. It was perfect. Bellinger struck out. That's the ballgame.

Thursday, July 12

No games scheduled

Friday, July 14 Schedule (All Times Central)

Chicago Cubs at Baltimore, 6:05 p.m.

St. Louis at Pittsburgh, 6:05 p.m.

New York Yankees at Boston, 6:10 p.m.

Toronto at Detroit, 6:10 p.m.

Washington at Cincinnati, 6:10 p.m.

Colorado at New York Mets, 6:10 p.m.

Los Angeles Dodgers at Miami, 6:10 p.m.

Arizona at Atlanta, 6:35 p.m.

Seattle at Chicago White Sox, 7:10 p.m.

Philadelphia at Milwaukee, 7:10 p.m.

Minnesota at Houston, 7:10 p.m.

Texas at Kansas City, 7:15 p.m.

Cleveland at Oakland, 9:05 p.m.

Tampa Bay at Los Angeles Angels, 9:07 p.m.

San Francisco at San Diego, 9:10 p.m.

Saturday, July 15 Schedule (All Times Central)

New York Yankees at Boston, 3:05 p.m.

Toronto at Detroit, 5:10 p.m.

Chicago Cubs at Baltimore, 6:05 p.m.

St. Louis at PIttsburgh, 6:05 p.m.

Seattle at Chicago White Sox, 6:10 p.m.

Philadelphia at Milwaukee, 6:10 p.m.

Arizona at Atlanta, 6:10 p.m.

Washington at Cincinnati, 6:10 p.m.

Minnesota at Houston, 6:10 p.m.

Colorado at New York Mets, 6:10 p.m.

Los Angeles Dodgers at Miami, 6:10 p.m.

Texas at Kansas City, 6:15 p.m.

San Francisco at San Diego, 7:40 p.m.

Cleveland at Oakland, 8:05 p.m.

Tampa Bay at Los Angeles Angels, 8:07 p.m.

Sunday, July 16  Schedule (All Times Central)

New York Yankees at Boston, 12:05 p.m.

Toronto at Detroit, 12:10 p.m.

Washington at Cincinnati, 12:10 p.m.

Colorado at New York Mets, 12:10 p.m.

Los Angeles Dodgers at Miami, 12:10 p.m.

Chicago Cubs at Baltimore, 12:35 p.m.

Arizona at Atlanta, 12:35 p.m.

St. Louis at Pittsburgh, 12:35 p.m.

Seattle at Chicago White Sox, 1:10 p.m.

Philadelphia at Milwaukee, 1:10 p.m.

Minnesota at Houston, 1:10 p.m.

Texas at Kansas City, 1:15 p.m.

Tampa Bay at Los Angeles Angels, 2:37 p.m.

Cleveland at Oakland, 3:05 p.m.

San Francisco at San Diego, 3:40 p.m.

New York Yankees at Boston, 7 p.m.