BREAKING: Jurickson Profar suspended for ENTIRE 2026 season for PED's | Atlanta Braves Podcast

Juriken Proar is just a complete and utter dummy. And the Braves now got to figure out what they're going to do. Let's talk about it. Yes. Welcome on in to a second episode of Braves Today here on Tuesday, March 3rd. This I'm your host, Lindsay Crosby, awardw winning baseball writer and podcaster. I wish this was under different circumstances. The Atlanta Braves uh are facing a full season without Juriken Proofar. Um let's talk about what we know. Let's talk about the options the Braves have and how this is going to have to get fixed and all of that. So for those of you who don't remember the specifics of what happened last year, Jurixen Proar was suspended for a fertility drug that is used to um that was used to like to spur testosterone production. and he put out a statement, you know, saying that he would never intentionally disrespect the game, blah blah blah blah blah, etc., etc. Uh, and his wife did have a baby like 9 months after he tested positive, nine or 10 months or whatever. So, like this, it could have legitimately been that. I don't think it was, but it could have been, right? You could give a little bit of benefit of the doubt, but Juren and Proar has now been popped again. And what is really tough about this is I there's a lot of things that suck about this, right? The thing that I can't help um think about is WSB's Allison Mrangelo. I'm pretty sure I'm butchering her name. I apologize. We've talked before. or I'm sorry I can't pronounce your name right. She spoke to Jericken Proofar in spring training and she asked him like did you fix whatever happened? Like do you know what happened? Did you take care of it so it's not going to happen again? And you know what he said? He said that he did. He said that he fixed it and it wasn't going to happen again. And clearly that was wrong. Clearly whatever he did did not work. We do not know if he tested for the same drug or not or something different. We'll get those details probably in a couple days, but or a couple hours knowing my luck, but he specifically addressed that when she asked it and said that he did not like that he that he made sure it's not going to happen again. And I pulled the clip for you. >> Come here and and and get ready for the season. You know, last year wasn't uh a really good year for for me and and and and the team, but you know, the team is is looking really really good, you know, this year and and you know, just here and and and ready and ready to to help the team make the make the postseason and go from there. >> Did you do anything this off season to like make sure that mixup that happened before never happens again, like type of deal? >> Yes. Yes. >> Yes. That was apparently a lie. Okay, so jurism profile is not here. All right. Um I don't want to keep on going on here. Here's the issue. And I seen a lot of people in the comments, a lot of people on social media saying void his uh void his contract and all of that stuff. Here's what you need to know about what's going to happen here. We we'll cover this real quick. So the joint peed policy with the with the league and the players association, they the the the teams do not have the ability to void a player's remaining guarantees because of a failed peed test. And I don't think this situation should apply, but I understand not all like the players not allowing that if it happens once because you can legitimately make a mistake, right? You can legitimately get your supplements mixed up or a medicine or whatever and you can make a mistake one time and it's too convenient to allow a team to get out of their entire remaining contractual obligation of a guy if he pops one time for a part of the season and you could just void it all. I understand why they don't want to do that. To me, it's different if it happens twice. Right. It's really really hard to argue it was an accident if it happens twice. And I think that is the issue here. Right. It's happened twice. Uh the timing clearly is terrible. U the players association is going to challenge the suspension. They always do. This is their job as a players union. Even if they think he's still going to be suspended the entire season, it's their job to establish the paper trail because if they challenge the suspension, everything has to be revealed, right? So, they find out all of the details when he tested, where he tested, what it was, were the procedures followed, blah blah blah blah blah. I have no issue with them challenging the suspension because they need you and it's going to it's not going to be overturned unless something went drastically wrong in this. But what I want to talk about, what we have to figure out now is what the Braves do because they don't have to they say $15 million on this, right? And when you consider the fact that they were going to be above the luxury tax, it's really $18 million because that was the additional penalty that they are now going to save by not being above the luxury tax. So, they do have some money to spend. The question is what they do. There's a couple different options. Do you sign a pitcher? Do you stick with the rotation you have and do you sign a bat? or do you stick with the guys you have in camp and see, you know, can you mitigate this when you get Murphy back, when you get Kim back and all of that? Let's break down these options. Uh, I think first right now, if you look at who this benefits as far as getting playing time, it's probably something like Dominic Smith, okay? He's one of your guys that is in camp right now. um he theoretically can play corner outfield because here's the issue. Mike Estrimsky is very very good against righties. Mike Estrimsky is virtually unplayable against lefties. So what you have to do Jurixen Proar was going to be the DH against righties, but he was going to be in the field playing left field against lefties. So, you ideally need to find somebody who can play left field and can hit lefties. And none of the options you really have are great. Let's be honest. Dom Smith, who's in camp with you, career 103 OPS plus versus righties, 91 versus lefties. He's worse against lefties and righties. He's below average in his career. not a guy you want to count on for it. If you're just going off of the roster right now, that is probably who makes the roster unless it's somebody like a Ben Gaml who has been hitting well so far in spring. He's got three home runs. He's done all of that. Here's the issue. Same thing there. Ben Gaml as a left fielder against lefties career 92 OPS+. Against righties, 102 OPS+. He's better against righties than lefties. He doesn't make sense either. Um Kyle Farmer is in camp. He's played a lot of different positions. He's one of the Atlantic kids. He's really an infielder, though. He doesn't have, I think, actually any experience in the outfield. Correction, he has a couple of games in left. He has uh seven career appearances out of 804 games played in left. He's been a little bit better against lefties in his career. It's a um 131 OPS+. It's a 117 WRC plus. So maybe it's Kyle Farmer. Um Eli White is a guy on the roster. Um he's been better against lefties than righties in his career. Or is this 2025? In 2025, he was better against lefties than righties. Hey Bandit, can you not bark at the mailman right now? Hey, I apologize. Um, so what you've got to what you've got to figure out, sorry about that, is the guys you have, can you piece this together? Because the thing you have to know is Shawn Murphy has been able to hit lefties even last year when he was not good. Remember, he hit 199 last year, but against lefties, he had a 127 OPS+. He was really good against lefties. So, some of this depends on when do you think Shawn Murphy's going to come back. You can maybe stay. You can maybe just sit with what you have. If Shawn Murphy can come back soon, you make it work for a month, right? you try to, you know, you you try to play play matchups and things like that. Um, great comment from video moonshot. Your dog also voices displeasure in PD Proar. Yes, Bandit's a really good judge of character and Bandit doesn't apparently not like Jerks and Proar, but thank you for telling him he's cute. It's going to go to his head. Um, here's Let's talk about the guys that are available. There are a couple uh free agents. None of them are great options and that's kind of the problem because so many guys just signed. But we'll talk about who's available next right here on Braves today. Welcome back to Braves today. Lindsey Crosby. Really just kind of quick so I can put an um an ad into that later when the live is over. Um Jurgson Proofar real quick. Somebody asked me the teams had to know about this for a long time, right? And no, they don't find out anything until right before um the suspension's announced. Like you've you maybe know, you know, a day or two before the Braves acquired Stuart Fairchild, I believe, the same day that um ProFar was suspended last year. So, the timing of this just is is terrible though, right? It was clearly five games in last year, but now you just had a bunch of guys sign. You just had uh Michael Conforto sign a minor league deal with the Cubs. You just had Randall Grick, who's a guy I've talked about a lot, um sign with uh with the Yankees. They're both in camp as non-roster invitees. You could always make a trade for somebody like that. Uh Jesse Winker is somebody who is technically an outfielder. He can stand in the outfield. um at this point in his career he is uh like he's been pretty bad against lefties in his career though is the issue that's come up a lot so far versus righties 108 OPS+ versus lefties 66 ops plus so he's really not been that good um against lefties he doesn't really help you in this situation um I've also seen people talk about Tommy Fam Tommy Fam um as as a like in his career 88 OPS+ and he's not been as good recently as he was obviously earlier in his career. If you want to bring in somebody, you may have to consider can we find somebody that is not a not an outfielder. Andrew McCutchen is technically like he said just the other day he can still play the outfield. He can like he he could play as many games as a team needed in his career. He's been 26 points better. Yeah. 20 25 points better of ops against lefties than righties. OPS plus of 119 versus lefties. OPS plus of 94 against righties. That's his career. If you look at what he did last year, it's a small sample size, but he was still like a 113, something like that. OPS plus. So, you could bring in somebody like Andrew McCutchen. Maybe this does help from a like from the the perspective of also it brings in a veteran. It brings in somebody that's known for plate discipline, that's known for being patient. What you don't get here, you don't get a lot of power and you don't really get a lot of defense. And I you might not get any defense from Andrew McCutchen simply because he almost never plays the field anymore. Um, last year he played seven games in the outfield. The year before he played five games in the outfield. The year before he played eight games in the outfield. He hasn't played more than 10 games in the outfield since 2022 with Milwaukee. So, you have defensive options if you want to do a sub late in games, right? This could be a situation similar to when you brought in Jorge Solair and he was in right field and he was terrible defensively. Ask Chris Sale. But then late in games once he got that final at bat, the Braves would sub him out. The hard part here is there is no good options. There's no It's not easy to replace a top half of your rotation hitter three weeks into spring training. It's just not. So, what I'm going to watch for is, of course, do they actually add a guy to reinforce the the offense or do they say we're going to piece it together with a Kyle Farmer with some other guys we have on the roster until um until Shawn Murphy is back and until or or until Hoson Kim is back because Mauricio Dubon does really well against lefties, too. So you could do Dubon and Yrimsky as a platoon when Hassan Kim is back. So thing one I'm looking for, do they bring somebody else in to reinforce the lineup or not? Thing two, do they pivot and go get a starting pitcher? I've talked before. I don't think they're going to right. They feel like they have enough depth. the one thing that they might try to do, and I don't want to get anybody's hopes up. This is all speculation, but do they re-engage some team about a trade, right? Uh you could, it would be a fortune. You could go to Minnesota and you could try to get Byron Buckton and or Joe Ryan, right? That's an option. I don't think they'll do that. It'll be incredibly expensive. But there you go. Do they reach out to Boston and say, "Hey, we let's talk about Jiren Durant. It's going to be an expensive trade. Boston's going to want pitching. They traded a lot of their high miners pitching depth to get um to get Sunonny Gray and to get Wilson Contrarus and a lot of those guys. But do the Braves look at making a trade? And if they do, one, is a pitcher coming back as well? Do they shoot high? I feel like this probably isn't going to happen simply because it would Braves have no leverage here, right? And we know AA does not throw desperate money, right? He wants to win every deal. He wants the value to be there. And it's really going to be difficult to find a difference maker and them not be incredibly expensive at this point in the schedule here. I do want to address something everybody's kind of been asking. I've seen it in the chat a lot. Um again, you you I don't think the Braves will announce anything with Jurixen ProAR as far as a roster move because you can't do anything while he's suspended, right? I do think now given this second thing, there is a possibility that when he is officially reinstated from the suspension at the end of the season, it'll be after it'll be after the season is over, the Braves release him. Um, if they do that as of right now, they will be on the hook for the $15 million in salary for 2027. Um, if there's no season played, obviously they don't have to pay that. I'm not banking on that being the case. I do think they'll play a season because meteorites negotiations come up soon after. Um, and I just I still I still want to hold out hope that in this upcoming CBA negotiation, shout out shout out to Zack in the chat for making the same point I was about to make. Uh, I still want to hold out hope that because of this there will be a conversation about if a player is suspended multiple times for peeds, teams will have the ability to void a guarantee because again, there's nothing in the CBA that allows a team to get rid of a guy for a peed suspension or and not have to pay his money. His money is still guaranteed. So, it's possible that that's something that the Braves um push MLB to ask to include in the new CBA is a dude suspended multiple times. We can cut him. Uh question from Sweetie here. Does he still play the WBC? No. WBC is a MLB sanctioned event. He cannot play in the regular season. He cannot play in the WBC. Were the Braves to make the postseason, he couldn't come back for that. and he also can't play in any MLB partner league, right? Which is not only the Frontier League and things like that, but a lot of the foreign leagues are partner leagues with um with MLB. And so if you're suspended from MLB, you can't go play in the Dominican, right? You can't go play summer ball in Puerto Rico and things like that. Uh, I did see something else. Somebody asked about Marcelo Zuna. And the Braves had no way to know about this when Marcelo Zuna was signing. They've been pretty insistent. Walt Weiss has been pretty insistent all um all spring. They didn't want a full-time DH because they want to be able to rotate guys through, right? They want to be able to get guys a half day, get them off their feet. So, they did not have the ability to go to Marcelo Zuna before he signed with the Pirates and say, "Hey, we want you to come back. We're going to need you because Proofar is getting suspended." They likely did not find out about this until probably yesterday. Kind of given the time frames from when we learned uh what the Braves knew in um last year, early in the season, they learned about it the day before it was announced. So, they probably heard about this late yesterday and they just haven't done anything. And Bubby puts it great. Proofar kind of screwed the Braves here. If they had if he had gotten suspended um in November, in December or whatever, if he had filled a chest, then the Braves still had money. The Braves had a offseason plan. They could have more aggressively um went after a either an outfielder instead of Ystrrimsky that was more well-rounded that could also hit lefties or they could have gotten a second outfielder like gotten signed two outfielders. But in this situation, you're out of luck. And so we got to figure out what the Braves are going to do. Honestly, again, I've said it once already, my expectation, they might bring in somebody on a minor league deal, but I think they're going to kind of stand pat if they feel good about the health updates for either Hos Hoson Kim or Shawn Murphy because again, if Hoson Kim's back and playing shortstop, then Dubon can partner with um can partner with Ystrinsky and Dubon can handle the lefties. If Murphy comes back, he can be the DH against lefties, or I guess you can DH Bowwin against lefties. You just still have to find somebody to stand out in left field. But if you look at Atlanta's platoon lineups right now on Fan Graphs, they have your lineup versus lefties. Jorge Matteo is your DH and Eli White's your left fielder. I love Eli White. Um, I like the idea of Jorge Matteo. He had a 30 WRC plus against lefties. You're just missing. You just you need to figure out something. We're going to see what your guys can do in spring. You got a lot of bats in in camp. Maybe it's Farmer. Maybe it's somebody else. But either way, Jerick and Profar kind of screwed the Braves here. I don't want him back. I don't care what he says. I don't care what the statement comes out. I don't care what the explanation is. I in the clubhouse. the clubhouse was willing to welcome him back the first time it happened. That's probably out the window. I can't imagine after a second time there is any interest in that room even from his countrymen, right? And I I don't know how Aussie Obies feels about this. Obviously, I don't know how Chad Trump feels about this, but I find it very unlikely that any of those guys want him back in that room. And as a fan, I don't want him back on my team. And so I still predict that he's going to end up being released at the end of the season. Reminder, you can't release him now. He's on the he's suspended, but when he's reinstated at the end of the year, he probably gets released at the same time or the very next day. Uh we'll update more. I'll have more on tomorrow's show all about everything. We know what the Braves say about it. They're going to put out a statement. they're going to do something like that. Um, so we'll talk about all of that on tomorrow's episode of Braves Today. Thank y'all for being here kind of suddenly. I wish it was under better circumstances. I am really proud of the show we dropped on Tuesday morning, the Pitching Nerd Show, all about the new pitches for Joey Wentz, uh, Grant Holmes's work, J.R. Richie's new pitch that he created, all of that. So, go check that out. It's in your podcast feeds before this one. Um, and if you have any questions for us, let me know. I will do my best to try to answer those either in the newsletter or on the show tomorrow when we continue talking about the fallout of Jerks and Proar being a dummy. Until next time, this has been Braves today.

Atlanta Braves outfielder Jurkickson Profar has been suspended for PEDs for the SECOND time in two seasons, meaning he is now out for the entire 2026 season. Sure, the Braves save his $15M salary, but what do they do for the lineup? Subscribe to Braves Today on audio wherever you get your podcasts Join our NEW Discord: https://discord.gg/wksQqVNEpX Follow the show on Twitter: @braves_today Follow Lindsay on Twitter: @CrosbyBaseball Read our written work: bravestoday.substack.com Send us questions: contact@bravestoday.com Get 10% off at Chinook Seedery with promo code "Braves" Get 20% off at NCase Cards with promo code "BravesToday" Rocker Chicks by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/