Jurickson Profar reportedly set to receive 162-game suspension for PED usage

Jurickson Profar missed essentially the entire first half of the 2025 season after he tested positive for using performance-enhancing drugs. Unfortunately for him and the Braves, it’s déjà vu all over again in the worst possible way.

Jeff Passan of ESPN is reporting that Profar has once again tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug and is now facing a 162-game suspension. For those of you kids keeping track at home, that’s the full season.

To keep it real with y’all, this is a hot mess. It’s one thing to get caught one time. In that case, you have the benefit of the doubt where it could’ve been a mistake or a brief lapse in judgment that led to a bad decision being made. A second time is absolutely inexcusable and there’s no way to wave this away. The Braves not having Jurickson Profar for the entire 2026 season is a pretty major blow to their current plans for their lineup and it’s absolutely dreadful that this is how they’ve lost him for another extended period of time.

The only silver lining is that this now means that Mike Yastrzemski is now an everyday player for this team but just like the Ha-Seong Kim injury forced Mauricio Dubón into everyday player status, it’s a silver lining but it’s certainly not ideal. The best way forward for this squad was to have Profar serve as a DH while Yaz started against right-handed since Yaz over the course of his career is a much better hitter against righties than lefties. Losing Profar for the entire season hurts their plans for DH and the outfield as well, so this just stinks all around.

The only other positive that comes out of this is that PED suspensions are unpaid suspensions as well, which means that that’s now $15 million that the Braves have freed up to use because Profar decided to be a big dummy and use PEDs again. It’s safe to assume that the Braves are going to dip their toes back into the outfielder/DH market but as you can imagine at this point in the baseball calendar, there’s not a lot of quality out there that could come close to replacing the level of production that Profar could’ve provided.

So once again, this is a hot mess. The Braves have now lost their starting shortstop until (hopefully) May, one of their primary catchers until (hopefully) May, one of their starting pitchers for who knows how long, one of the prime candidates for the fifth starting position for who knows how long and one of the key players in their lineup for the entire season. Opening Day isn’t until March 27 so let’s hope nothing else completely absurd happens between now and then! Good grief!