JJ McCarthy dragged for awful first pitch at the Minnesota Twins

J.J. McCarthy may have a bright future in the NFL, but he definitely doesn’t have a career ahead of him in baseball.

The Minnesota Vikings first-round pick was asked to throw the ceremonial first pitch before the Minnesota Twins took on the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night. 

Although he’s fresh off a national championship with the Michigan Wolverines, and throws balls for a living, fans were quick to point out the quarterback should probably stick to football. 

‘JJ McCarthy’s first pitch was….. not great,’ one fan captioned a clip of McCarthy’s attempt, which showed the ball flying past the catcher and hitting the backstop.

‘Good news is they didn’t draft him to be a pitcher,’ one fan responded to the clip.

‘He’s used to hitting moving targets, let’s go with that,’ another chimed in.

A third wrote, ‘He went for it though. Never afraid.’

His teammate and fellow first-round pick, Dallas Turner, also threw out a pitch, with similar results to McCarthy. 

‘Didn’t have time to warm up,’ Turner joked on his Instagram Story. 

McCarthy is currently vying with former 49ers quarterback Sam Darnold for the starting position after veteran QB, Kirk Cousins, signed with the Atlanta Falcons earlier this year.

Head coach Kevin O’Connell said Darnold would lead next month’s training camp, but that wasn’t necessarily indicative of what the season will look like.  

​​’We haven’t had to put out a depth chart or anything like that, but yeah, I would say Sam would be the guy I would look to based upon the spring he’s had, and really where he’s at in his career and his quarterback journey, and what he’s been able to do coming in and [hitting] the ground running and taking advantage of a competitive situation,’ O’Connell told reporters. 

McCarthy was the fifth quarterback taken in April’s NFL draft after Caleb Williams (No. 1 to the Bears), Jayden Daniels (No. 2 to the Commanders), Drake Maye (No. 3 to the Patriots) and Michael Penix Jr. (No. 8 to the Falcons).

He kicked off the Vikings’ rookie minicamp last month, telling ESPN it ‘didn’t feel like [his] first day.’

‘I’ve been going over the offense for a long time now. So being able to [go] out there and perform and execute, that’s new, but it was nothing that was overwhelming or too much,’ he said.