Luke Erickson: Is too much attention being paid to Tebow?

A lot of attention was paid this past weekend to the 29-year-old left fielder for the visiting Columbia Fireflies in a four-game series at the Nationals' Single-A Hagerstown affiliate, a matchup of the third-place team in the Southern Division against the first-place team in the Northern Division.

From a baseball perspective, this is puzzling. After Sunday's game, he had 16 RBIs and 16 walks, 53 strikeouts and 53 total bases in 47 games. His OPS (on-base plus slugging) is .629 - roughly 60 points lower than the South Atlantic League average, despite his being more than eight years older than the average player.

On defense, he's made four errors in 32 games and has one assist, about what you'd expect, given his 47.9 percent completion rate as a quarterback for the Denver Broncos and the New York Jets.

Oh, did I forget to mention he's a failed pro football player (at least in the NFL, not the SEC) and former Heisman Trophy winner?

This, among other reasons (political and evangelical; so let's leave them both right here), is why they're coming out in droves to see Tim Tebow.

I'm thrilled for the Suns to have gotten the bump in attendance; prior to the series, they were reporting a little less than 21,000 in 23 dates. After these four games, it's more than doubled to just past 43,000. That's a big deal for a team that's been dead last in league attendance for the past six seasons.

But that's not reason enough to ignore or deny this simple fact: Somebody in the Mets organization who's younger and paid his dues longer is being denied an opportunity.

I don't know who that is but it doesn't matter. Minor leaguers already have enough unfair obstacles: They're woefully (perhaps illegally) underpaid, players with pedigrees get preferential treatment (as if they don't inherit 50 percent of their genes from their mothers?) and high draft picks get more chances (sometimes way more than they deserve).

Don't get me wrong: Tebow seems like a nice guy, and I'm certainly thankful for his support for children with special needs, but that's not reason enough for me to not criticize, and not mock what's happening this season in the Sally League.

Luke Erickson blogs about the Nationals' minor league affiliates for NationalsProspects.com. Follow him on Twitter: @nats_prospects. His thoughts on the Nationals' farm system will appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our site. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.