The odds of Tim Tebow actually playing in MLB

Fade in: Baseball fan wakes up and checks their phone. Sees an alert from their choice of MLB app but pauses in disbelief. The screen reads ‘New York Mets agree to deal with free agent OF Tim Tebow.’

“Nope. That can’t be right,” they mutter.

But it’s true. It happened. You had your morning coffee, you settled in at work, and you still hadn’t woken up from this strange alternate reality you first attributed to dreaming.

Tim Tebow is a member of the New York Mets and this is the era we live in now.

But is he? I mean, if he plays in the Arizona Fall League, he’ll be a member of the Scottsdale Scorpions—coincidentally the team that Michael Jordan played for during his fling with another sport. But that’s not really the Mets, just like Jordan didn’t play for the White Sox (and he made it as high as Double-A Birmingham).

So we put it to you on our Twitter: What are the odds that Tebow actually plays in The Show?

We’ve not only grabbed the best responses to share with you, but we also aggregated all of your answers to come up with the one true answer: The real life, very serious, clearly accurate, obviously ironclad odds of Tebow hearing his name announced in a major league stadium as a player.

We started with a pretty good baseline:

That’s one in 10,000. Imagine for a moment that there are 10,000 alternate universes. In 9,999, Tebow doesn’t make the majors. Let’s hope we inhabit that sweet, sweet exception.

Then we got a little crazy:

I mean. The odds aren’t what’s crazy. The fact that this tweeter had a perfectly reasonable excuse to use the ‘100 emoji’ and didn’t take it is.

Presented without irony, this reader suggested we do our own research so that we may understand his cryptic answer:

Assuming the reader isn’t referring to Rakuten and means the Philadelphia Eagles, since their season begins soon and for no other more obvious or ironic reason, their playoff odds currently sit at 70/1.

Considering all of the above from you experts plus more, we can clearly set the exact probability of Tebow actually gracing our MLB.tv accounts—and no, not just during Spring Training.

All of your brains came together to forecast an 11.41 percent chance of Tebow making the majors, even more a split second. Rounding, that’s roughly 1 in 9. The Orioles currently have a 10.4 percent chance of winning the division. The Red Sox have a 12.5 percent chance of winning the World Series. The Cardinals have an 11.3 percent chance of winning the National League Division Series. Somewhere in between all of that, is Tebow’s odds of making the majors. So, if all of those things happen, it’s basically certain that Tebow will be suiting up for the Mets.