[Alberta's Child]

If you're 31 years old and you're hitting .163 at the AAA level, I'd say you're not even close to a big-league ballplayer.

Too bad. I really like the guy, and he was a great fan draw at the AA level last year with the Mets.

[Dr. Sivana]

If you're 31 years old and you're hitting .163 at the AAA level, I'd say you're not even close to a big-league ballplayer.

Yeah, the real talents don't usually linger at the minor league level. Bob Welch was about 20 years old and he had a 4.44 ERA in single AA, a 3.78 in AAA, but he had "it", and was immediately put on the August roster and scored a 2.02 ERA for the Dodgers (7W-4L) and had a great World Series outing.

[jz638]

If you're 31 years old and you're hitting .163 at the AAA level, I'd say you're not even close to a big-league ballplayer.

Professional sports have never, in their entire history, been about showcasing the best athletes and posing them against one another in the most competitive environments.

Professional sports came about when someone observed a sporting match, looked over the crowd and said to himself "there's money to be made here." Then figured out how to do it. Recruiting and paying the most skilled athletes has been a means of selling tickets and t-shirts, but it's not the only way.

Tim Tebow has probably sold more minor league baseball tickets than any player in the history of the game at that level. He would sell a lot of Major league tickets too, but he will sell a whole lot more tickets and tshirts in the majors if he can actually play because having an unqualified player on the team only works for a little bit of time before it damages the brand and lowers ticket sales. Make no mistake about it, there is a spreadsheet somewhere in the Mets' servers that has a calculation of exactly how much money Tebow can make them by bringing him up to the major leagues, and it gets updated each season. Minor league teams can milk his "development" process for as long as he wants to play, but there is probably a spreadsheet on that same server that figures out where he'll make the most money that gets updated each season as well that plays heavily into where he gets to play as well.