2018 Minor League Preview: Columbia Fireflies

Anthony KayThe Columbia Fireflies began the 2017 season with just as much buzz about them as they did their inaugural 2016 season thanks to the presence of quarterback-turned-outfielder Tim Tebow. In typical Tebow fashion, he homered in his first at-bat, but as the season progressed, he was exposed as the unrefined baseball talent that he is and regressed to the mean. The 2017 Fireflies season can be thought of as a microcosm of that at-bat. They started off looking good, but the team faded in the end. In the first half, the Colafies jockeyed with the Greenville Drive for first place all season but fell just short on the last day of the season, when a Columbia loss coupled with a come-from-behind Drive win dropped the team into second place by a half-game, knocking them out of the South Atlantic League playoff picture. The team was not nearly as successful in the second half as they had been in the first, as combination of promotions, trades, and injuries gutted the lineup and pitching staff.

…