Doubling Down: Jurickson Profar Draws a Second PED Suspension, and Johan Rojas (Likely) a First

In 2024, 11 years after he was the consensus no. 1 prospect in the game, Jurickson Profar finally broke out, setting career highs in home runs (24), wRC+ (139) and WAR (4.3), making his first All-Star team, and helping the Padres to an NL Wild Card berth. He cashed in that winter; after never making more than $7.75 million in a season, Profar signed a three-year, $42 million deal with the Braves. Four games into his tenure with his new team, however, he drew an 80-game suspension for violating the Joint Drug Agreement. While he was productive upon returning and figured prominently in the plans of a team expected to contend for the NL East title this season, on Tuesday, the 33-year-old outfielder drew a second PED suspension, this one for the entire 2026 season.

Profar wasn’t the only player reported to be facing a PED suspension on Tuesday, or even the only NL East outfielder who had run afoul of the game’s drug policy. According to multiple sources, the Phillies’ Johan Rojas has an 80-game suspension looming for a first-time offense. While MLB officially announced Profar’s suspension in a press release sent at 6:47 p.m. ET on Tuesday — over six hours after ESPN’s Jeff Passan first broke the news — Rojas’ is not yet official.

Both players are reportedly appealing their suspensions. An hour after Passan’s tweet, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that the Major League Baseball Players Association is filing a grievance on Profar’s behalf. It’s not clear yet on what grounds the union is challenging the suspension, but such a case would be heard by MLB’s independent arbitrator, Martin F. Scheinman. Later that afternoon, The Athletic’s Charlotte Varnes and Matt Gelb reported that Rojas is appealing his suspension, as well. He is starting in center field and batting seventh in Philadelphia’s exhibition game on Wednesday against Team Canada.

It’s rare that news of such suspensions comes to light before they become official, but in these cases, the timing appears to be related to the World Baseball Classic, as both players were slated to participate but are now ineligible. Profar, who was born in Curaçao, a constituent island country under the Kingdom of the Netherlands, was scheduled to play for the Netherlands team, as he did in 2017 and ’23. In fact, he was a late scratch from the lineup for Tuesday’s exhibition against the Orioles. Rojas was initially slated to play for the Dominican Republic, but he reportedly dropped out of the tournament last week, and is no longer listed on the roster.

Generally, such suspensions, and the specifics of what substances violated the policy, aren’t announced until after the appeals process has played out, and in some cases — detailed below — mitigating factors have reduced the length of the announced suspensions. However, if it’s a player’s second (or third) violation, the appeal process doesn’t officially begin until after the suspension is announced. Here’s how Rosenthal explained it:

The league said Profar’s suspension will begin on Friday. Penalties for first-time offenders under baseball’s Joint Drug Agreement are “stayed” until the appeal is heard. Profar as a second-time offender is permitted to appeal, but without a stay. His appeal will now be expedited, one source said.

Because it’s not official, we don’t know yet what substance Rojas used that triggered the violation, but it will cost him half of what he was set to make this season. His full salary has not yet been reported, but it isn’t much more than the league minimum. (Last year, he made $773,500.) The suspension will also prevent him from playing in the postseason, something he was unable to do last year due to a lingering quad strain. According to MLB, Profar was suspended for testing positive for “Exogenous Testosterone and its metabolites” — that is, testosterone not produced by the body. He’ll lose the entirety of this year’s $15 million salary. Last year’s suspension, which cost Profar half of his $12 million salary, was for using human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone that is used to promote fertility in females and to improve testosterone production in males, often in connection to anabolic steroid usage; notably, Manny Ramirez’s 2009 suspension was for using hCG

The suspensions are the fourth and fifth since the start of the 2025 season. Like Rojas, the two other players suspended were members of last year’s Phillies team:

Kepler spent all of last season with the Phillies but struggled. He had yet to sign another free agent contract when his suspension was handed down in January. A team will have to sign him before he can serve his suspension, a situation that no doubt complicates his effort to find a new job. (Taking a wild guess, it probably won’t be the Braves.) Additionally, Profar is the seventh player to draw a PED suspension of a least a year:

Upon returning to the Braves on July 2, Profar hit .245/.353/.434 (122 wRC+) with 14 home runs and 1.3 WAR in 80 games, a solid showing but down from his .280/.380/.459 with the Padres in 2024. By the time he returned, the team’s fate as also-rans was already sealed. The Braves struggled out of the gate last year without the still-rehabbing Ronald Acuña Jr. and Spencer Strider, and then without both Profar and Reynaldo López, who made one five-inning appearance before landing on the injured list with right shoulder inflammation the same day as Profar’s suspension was announced. With second baseman Ozzie Albies, center fielder Michael Harris II, and various outfield fill-ins for Acuña and Profar all beginning the season in extended slumps, the Braves lost 13 of their first 18 games. While they rallied to climb above .500 for exactly two days (May 18–19 at 24-23), a 4-15 skid that began on May 20 knocked them below .500 for good, even with the returns of Acuña and Strider.

When he reported to Atlanta’s spring training site in North Port, Florida in mid-February, Profar revealed that he had undergone surgery to repair a sports hernia in November; he had played through discomfort in September, not wanting to miss any more time. While he did not face any physical restrictions when he came to camp, new manager Walt Weiss told him he planned to use him as the team’s primary designated hitter, which made perfect sense given his terrible defensive metrics and the vacancy created by Marcell Ozuna’s departure in free agency. Not only did Profar post ugly metrics in 2025 (-8 FRV and -9 DRS in 701 innings in left field), but his -26 FRV and -28 DRS in 2,683 1/3 innings from 2023–25 both ranked among the majors’ bottom four among all outfielders, not far behind Nick Castellanos in about 1,200 fewer innings.

Based on our Playoff Odds, the loss of Profar was enough to turn the Braves from slight NL East favorites (90.6 projected wins with 42.7% odds of winning the division) into co-favorites (89.4 wins with 36.5% odds) alongside the Mets (89.5 wins, 37.2% division odds), with the Phillies (87.7 wins and 25.3% odds) not far behind. Atlanta’s rotation has already taken a couple of substantial hits in the injury department, with Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep both recently undergoing arthroscopic surgery to remove loose bodies in their elbows. No timetable has been announced for either, but the former is already on the 60-day injured list and the latter is expected to be placed there. Additionally, AJ Smith-Shawver is still rehabbing from Tommy John surgery from last June, and Grant Holmes missed the final two months of the season with a torn ulnar collateral ligament, though he opted for rest and rehab instead of surgery, and has already made two appearances this spring. Given the injury histories of ace Chris Sale, Strider, and López, you can sense how quickly things could fall apart. In fact, Dan Szymborski showed that if every team’s top five starters were to lose half of its projected innings, the Braves would fare worse than any other club.

The lineup has also suffered notable losses. Backup catcher Sean Murphy is rehabbing from September surgery to repair a torn hip labrum and is expected to return sometime in May; recent addition Jonah Heim will start the season as the backup to reigning Rookie of the Year Drake Baldwin. Shortstop Ha-Seong Kim is out until sometime in May due to surgery to repair a torn tendon in his right middle finger; in the meantime, Mauricio Dubón will be the regular shortstop.

With Profar as the primary DH, the Braves figured to use a platoon of lefty-swinging Mike Yastrzemski and righty-swinging Eli White in left field, with Yastrzemski additionally able to fill in for either Harris or Acuña at the other positions and Dubón expected to spend time in the outfield upon Kim’s return. Without Profar, the DH spot remains open to keep Baldwin’s bat in the lineup when he’s not catching, something Weiss indicated in December that he’d like to do. “Drake hits right and left [-handed pitchers],” the manager said. “You know, he’s not a platoon guy. At the same time, we got a Gold Glove-caliber defender in Murphy behind the plate. So, there’s some nice freedom there.”

Profar’s absence could open up a roster spot for 30-year-old lefty Dominic Smith, who’s in camp on a non-roster invitation. Last year in 63 games with the Giants, Smith hit .284/.333/.417 with five home runs, a 111 wRC+, and 0.4 WAR. For as modest as those numbers were, the last two marks were his highest in those categories since his red-hot pandemic-shortened 2020 season (166 wRC+, 1.4 WAR) with the Mets. From 2021–24 with the Mets, Nationals, Red Sox, and Reds, he managed just an 87 wRC+ and -1.1 WAR. Outfielder Ben Gamel, another lefty-swinging NRI, spent last year in the minor league systems of the Angels and Tigers, slashing .281/.402/.539; he hit .240/.360/.323 (102 wRC+) in 114 plate appearances for the Padres, Astros, and Mets in 2023–24.

President of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos could also dip into the pool of remaining free agents, with RosterResource’s Jason Martinez mentioning Andrew McCutchen, Jesse Winker, and Tommy Pham as potential fits. Another option could be to wait and see how other teams’ roster decisions shake out, and then add from the group of players who become available. It’s worth remembering that free agents on minor league deals (such as Gamel and Smith) have three standardized opt-out dates if they’re not added to a team’s 40-man roster: five days before Opening Day (so March 21), May 1, and June 1. Anthopoulos should eventually be able to reallocate the $15 million savings from Profar’s salary toward other uses, perhaps taking on a player with a substantial contract in a trade or via waivers, but that may not happen immediately. Even with Profar off the books, Atlanta’s payroll is about $2 million above the first Competitive Balance Tax threshold of $244 million, so any additional salary will carry a tax penalty.

While Profar remains under contract with a $15 million salary for 2027, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Braves cut him loose and eat that money once his suspension ends. MLB.com beat reporter Mark Bowman suggested that Profar may have burned his bridge in the Braves clubhouse:

It will be interesting to hear what the Braves players say about Profar tomorrow. Many of them bit their tongue last year. I’m expecting far different responses this time. https://t.co/CgEXD10IT9

— Mark Bowman (@mlbbowman) March 4, 2026

As for Rojas, he faced a fight even to make the Phillies roster after batting .224/.280/.289 (58 wRC+) in 71 games totaling 172 plate appearances last year. They are expected to platoon lefty Brandon Marsh and righty Otto Kemp in left field, with Marsh among those sharing time with rookie Justin Crawford in center, and Adolis García the regular in right. Outfielders Pedro León and Bryan De La Cruz (briefly a Brave early last year) and superutilityman Dylan Moore are among those battling for the same roster spot Rojas might have filled.

As for the possibility of appeals changing these outcomes, historically arbitrators have intervened to reduce PED suspensions a handful of times. The most famous one occurred in 2012, when freshly crowned NL MVP Ryan Braun was suspended 50 games. He challenged the suspension, and in February 2012, arbitrator Shyam Das overturned the suspension on the grounds that the testing protocol had not been adhered to because of the delay between the collection of the urine sample (on a Saturday) and the shipping to the testing facility (on the following Monday). Braun’s subsequent victory lap, which included smearing the sample collector and then a year later turning up as having received PEDs from the Biogenesis Clinic, taints that outcome. The slugger may well have gotten away with taking the fast-acting testosterone lozenges that aid in evading detection and that Biogenesis founder Tony Bosch was renowned for distributing.

Apart from the full dismissal of Braun’s first suspension, the 100-game suspension of Rockies catcher Eliezer Alfonso in May 2012 — his second, following a 50-gamer in 2008 — was reduced to the 48 games he had already served; the league and the union agreed that the same procedural grounds that led to the Braun dismissal, regarding the timely collection of the sample, applied there, too. In 2014, arbitrator Fredric Horowitz reduced Alex Rodriguez’s Biogenesis-related 211-game suspension to 162 games plus the postseason to align with a precedent in the length of drug-related suspensions.

Those reductions all happened after the initial suspensions were publicly announced. In two other cases that come to mind, arbitrators reduced standard penalties because of mitigating circumstances. In 2016, Royals infielder Adalberto Mondesi was suspended for 50 games instead of the standard 80 for a first offense after he presented evidence that the substance he ingested (Clenbuterol, a bronchiodilator, not an anabolic steroid) came from an over-the-counter cold medicine sold in the Dominican Republic. In 2019, Twins pitcher Michael Pineda was suspended for 60 games instead of 80 because he was able to convince an arbitrator that the substance he took (hydrochlorothiazide, an over-the-counter diuretic), which was supplied to him by a close acquaintance, was taken in an effort to manage his weight instead of being used as a masking agent.

The current Joint Drug Agreement, which was part of the 2022 Collective Bargaining Agreement, only allows for partial reductions of penalties, to no more than 30 games for a first suspension and no more than 60 for a second. That said, I wouldn’t expected either Profar or Rojas to catch a break.