Pitcher Admits He Gave Easy Pitches To Tim Tebow During MLB Showcase, Allowing Him to Get a Hit
In August of last year, Tim Tebow gave his MLB Showcase debut. MLB teams and scouts a were given a glimpse at Tim Tebow as a baseball player to see if he could hang in the big leagues.
As it turns out, Tebow’s MLB showcase may have been rigged after one of the pitchers admitted to tipping his pitches to allow Tebow to look good.
The MMQB reported:
The first was Chad Smith, a reliever who had recently retired at 26 and was studying for a job in finance. Before he ever met Tebow, Smith had been a big fan. He attended chapel and Bible study and considered himself, like Tebow, a man of faith. He’d read Tebow’s first book and watched a video of him speaking to prisoners and had been inspired.
Smith pitched to Tebow first, and Tebow looked rusty, as if getting his bearings. Every time he swung, he felt pain shooting down his left side from the tear in that oblique. Then Aardsma came on and made Tebow look worse. He repeatedly fooled Tebow with his off-speed stuff. He mixed pitches, locations, and got Tebow to swing and miss several times. The sequence exposed Tebow’s weakness: For all the reps he’d taken, he had no experience hitting a big-league changeup.
Then Smith went back out, and Tebow started flashing his power, hitting line drives again. Thwack, thwack, thwack. See, maybe this was Tebow’s baseball moment. Maybe this was another fourth-quarter comeback. If you saw those line drives, part of you might have started believing.
What you didn’t see was Chad Smith, on his way to the mound, telling Tebow, “Be ready for some fastballs,” and then grooving a few pitches right where Tebow liked them. It was the least he could do. Afterward, Smith asked Tebow to sign a few balls for his parents, too.
At the end of the day, this stunt didn’t really do much for Tebow except get him in the door. Many of the MLB scouts were left unimpressed with Tebow’s baseball skill after the showcase and even in Spring Training this year.
