Mets invite Tim Tebow, Peter Alonso, and seven others to major league Spring Training

The Tim Tebow Experience will continue in Port St. Lucie this upcoming season, but the focus should be on a couple of other guys.

It’s always interesting to see who major league teams decide to invite to camp before Spring Training kicks off. Last season, the Mets gave us our first taste of Tim Tebow at Port St. Lucie but he wasn’t a major league invite, he just happened to crossover on a couple of games. In 2018, however, that won’t be the case as he, along with eight other notable minor leaguers, have been invited to hang with the big boys during the early days of spring.

The list of players include first baseman Peter Alonso, left-handed pitcher P.J. Conlon, outfielder Kevin Kaczmarski, catcher/first baseman Patrick Mazeika, newly-acquired right-handed pitcher Drew Smith, and righty Corey Taylor, infielder David Thompson, right-hander Adonis Uceta, and the previously mentioned Tebow.

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They’ll be joining the previously announced group of outfielder Zach Borenstein, infielder Phillip Evans, catcher José Lobaton, and left-hander Matt Purke as the team’s invites to big league camp.

While Tebow’s name is obviously the one that will catch most people’s attention, there are a few other names that Mets fans should be focused on instead.

Peter Alonso has shown great progress in the last couple of seasons at first base, and could really put pressure on the Mets to give him a real shot at winning the major league job in the future. Alonso was listed at no. 7 on MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo’s top first base prospects list of 2018. He played a handful of games late last season in Binghamton after making the jump from Single-A, so we should expect him to start there this upcoming season as well.

Another player to keep an eye on is righty Drew Smith. The 24-year-old was acquired in the Lucas Duda trade to Tampa Bay. While he’s projected as a reliever, we shouldn’t dismiss his potential to help this club overall. Early reports about Smith had him throwing mid-to-upper 90s with an above average curveball.

The fireballer will likely start the season with the Rumble Ponies as well, but with the Mets needing more and more pitching depth, don’t be surprised to see him make his way up the ranks quickly.

Next: Pace of play, and why we should leave baseball alone

Spring Training is around the corner, people! The weather will start warming up before we know and we’ll have some Mets baseball to actually talk about and dissect soon enough.