Earlier this month, Jurickson Profar shocked the baseball world with his incredibly foolish decision to take Performance-Enhancing Drugs the year after he had been suspended for 80 games in the past. Upon failing another test, Major League Baseball suspended Profar for the entirety of the 2026 regular season and Postseason.
However, the MLBPA did their due dilligence and launched an appeal and grievance on Profar’s behalf. While this was always a longshot, the hope was that the suspension could be reduced so that Profar could at least make some money from playing in games this season since PED suspensions are unpaid. Unfortunately for Profar, the appeal didn’t work. Jeff Passan of ESPN is reporting that the situation has been “resolved” and the result is that the suspension has been upheld and that Profar is officially done for 2026.
I can’t imagine that anybody is surprised by this turn of events. As I mentioned earlier when the suspension was initially announced, these types of appeals don’t usually go anywhere in terms of any substantial overturns. This was simply MLBPA doing what they could to support a union member — whether that union member made an incredibly dumb mistake or not. It was always very unlikely that Profar would get this overturned since MLB usually does a solid job of proving intent whenever this turns into an investigation.
The main thing that’ll come of this latest development is that the Braves now know that they’ll have $18 million to play with. Whether they use that now on another free agent who’s still available or wait until the trade deadline to use for any potential deals remains to be seen. For now, we now know officially that Profar won’t be on the field for a single pitch of this upcoming season and I’d imagine that it’s an open question as to whether or not Profar will put on a Braves uniform ever again. We’ll see what happens but we won’t be seeing Profar during the 2026 season, for sure.
