Who’s better right now: Rafael Palmeiro or Tim Tebow?

He’s never going to play in the big leagues.

Let’s get that out of the way right now. There are too many players, elite athletes who have spent their entire lives honing every seemingly-insignificant detail of their game to become the elite of the elite—this many years out of the game is too big an impediment, even for someone with his particular set of tools. Remember  Michael Jordan?

But someone will sign him to a minor-league deal. They have to. He’ll sell tickets and merch. What’s the loss of a game or two of development here or there at a low-level affiliate? He won’t take playing time from any blue-chip prospects, of course, but maybe he can DH a few games a week, sell a few tickets and jerseys, sign some autographs, and wave his hat at the crowd. People will go nuts; it’ll be great.

But he’s never going to play in the big leagues.

If you’re wondering whether I’m talking about Tim Tebow or Rafael Palmeiro, the answer is …yes.

But it has been a relatively slow Winter Meetings, so last night as I talked with Will Carroll and a few others, I stumbled onto what felt like an interesting question: who’s a better baseball player right now: the 30-year-old former Heisman Award winner, or the 53-year-old 4-time All Star?

Let’s start by getting a scouting report on the one who is actually playing organized baseball right now. I talked to Craig Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus, and he had this to say:

From a scouting standpoint the biggest asset Tebow has is athleticism. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen him do…anything, really. He works great as a butt to jokes online —  and there are plenty of worthwhile jokes to make — but we shouldn’t let that cloud the fact that he’s a supreme athlete, in any respect.

A close second is his raw power. Raw is crucial there because while he can really thump the ball in batting practice, “five o’clock power” is a phrase for a reason. Not only does he generate power from his pure strength (and it is a strength-driven swing), he has good bat speed — especially considering the layoff. The issue is that he lacks the barrel control and has a long enough swing that even minor-league pitchers can exploit it. He’s not striking out insane amounts as of yet, but he’s also not getting his power into games, meaning he’s not making solid contact when he does connect (lack of barrel control), or he’s shortening the swing to the point of ineffective contact.

So I praised his athleticism up top, but it doesn’t translate to a good defensive player. He’s bad in a corner outfield spot and his arm, despite his previous occupation, is a bottom of the scale tool and his reads in the field aren’t much better.

Jarrett Seidler wrote a more in-depth report on Tebow at Baseball Prospectus here, if you’re interested, but the short version is this: Tebow is world-class athlete with a Plus power projection who can’t field, can’t throw, and might never hit. He struck out 126 times in 486 plate appearances at Low- and High-A in 2017, his first season in professional baseball. But also managed to launch 8 home runs, walk 43 times, and hit .226. He wasn’t begging for a promotion, but he also wasn’t an abject disaster out there.

But if Tebow is an otherwordly Adonis who just seems to be learning how to operate under a new set of physics, Rafael Palmeiro is a 1964 Shelby Cobra that has been banished to the garage for 12 years. Maybe Raffy has—as he claimed in Ken Rosenthal’s story in The Athletic—maintained his body, feeling better than he did when he played. But time didn’t wait on him. There are newer and faster cars, and a world-class drag race isn’t exactly a leisurely drive around the gated community.

So why now? Why is Palmeiro talking about a comeback at a more advanced age than anyone in baseball history? The obvious answer is usually the right one, so the easy guess is that the drive is there (please pardon the pun), not just to prove he can play, but to reset the counter on his Hall of Fame clock. If he plays even one game at the big league level, he gets another five years of eligibility. With Hall of Fame voters currently voting for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens at around a 70% clip, Palmeiro knows that his 3,020 hits and 569 home runs have a better shot in 2020-2025 than they did in 2010-2015, when voters had no idea what to even do with steroid-era players.

It’s not an easy question to answer. Palmeiro was clearly an exponentially better baseball player in his prime. Tebow clearly has a better shot at improving to the point of playing even one game in the big leagues. But if you put both of them in the same High-A division, who would have the better stat line at the end of 2018?

I welcome your answers in the comments, but here’s where I landed:

Tebow improved enough over the course of 2017 that I could see him hitting .250 with 15-20 home runs at High A in 2018.

Palmeiro’s baseball mind and natural hit tools are such that I wouldn’t be surprised if he could still hit .290-.300 at High A, but his old legs would likely limit him to mostly singles and home runs, if he even still has the bat speed to park one once in awhile. And of course, Palmeiro is a much higher injury risk.

Give me Raffy in 2018, but I’m not sure my answer would be the same in a year.

NOTE: Thanks to Allen Clark for the Tebow photo.