Major League Baseball announced Wednesday that Nationals catching prospect Raudy Read has been suspended 80 games after testing positive for Boldenone — a substance that is banned under the league’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. Read is on the Nationals’ 40-man roster, so the suspension creates an unexpected vacancy for the Nats.
“This is a very serious matter — one that I do not take lightly,” said Nationals GM Mike Rizzo in a statement on the matter. “We educate players across our system on the program and set the expectation that they fully abide by it. I am deeply disappointed in Raudy. I have spoken with him directly and he understands that he is ultimately responsible for what he puts into his body. In the end, I hope he learns from this experience.”
Read issued a statement via the MLBPA and, like many before him, expressed confusion as to how a banned substance could have gotten into his system. The 24-year-old notes that he’s been tested dozens of times and passed seven different drug tests over the course of the 2017 season (Twitter link via the Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes). As MLB.com’s Jamal Collier points out (also on Twitter), Read is the first 40-man player for the Nationals to ever receive a PED suspension.
The suspension is a blow to an already thin area of organizational depth for the Nationals. Read enjoyed a solid season in Double-A last year, hitting .265/.312/.455 with 17 homers through 442 plate appearances, and he ultimately made his MLB debut late in the season. While he’s behind both Matt Wieters and Pedro Severino on the current depth chart (to say nothing of recent minor league signee Miguel Montero), Read certainly had a chance to reach the Majors and make an impact in 2018. ESPN’s Keith Law recently ranked him 14th among Nats farmhands, praising his power and plus arm behind the plate.
[Related: Washington Nationals depth chart]
The Nationals, of course, have already been tied to catching upgrades — most notably a pursuit of Marlins star J.T. Realmuto. While Read’s suspension isn’t likely to push them to radically accelerate their efforts to acquire a significant upgrade, his absence could theoretically push the Nats to add some depth at the position. Read’s absence from camp will enhance Montero’s chances of making the club, though it seems that Severino could have an edge in that race given the fact that he’s out of minor league options.
Given how far the depth chart that he is I do not see him missing 80 games impacting the Nationals current plans.
Agree, I think the bigger impact is he was a potential trade chip.
Read would have been the Nats third or fourth option at C. While not expected to play a significant role the chances of him spending some time with the mlb club would have been good. Now—Montero just got elevated a spot.
The Nats current plan involves waiting the Marlins out re: Realmuto, which isn’t likely to change until/unless an injury or poor performance forces Rizzo’s hand.
I am not saying that this is purely a problem with Latin players, but it seems to be an extraordinary number of Dominican players that have been getting caught in the past few years. In a way, it is understandable since they come from such impoverished countries and the difference between pay for a few major league seasons and being a lifelong minor league player might seem to be more worth the risk for players from poor countries. It really is a tough issue when you consider all the factors.
Sounds like they Dominican guys need to stop obtaining supplements from Dominican sources. Need to go through team sources to be the safest in taking any type of supplement. Still would have some risk but risk would seem much lower.
Yea he needs to stay away from Bartolo Colon…
Looks like you can get them from Amazon?
Interesting name for a Dominican player. Raudy Read. Sure his name is Jose Martinez or something like that. I totally agree with you. Mist people wont ever know what it is like to live in a dirt shack and your mom or pop havent even enough food to give you or even just shoes. Give me some PEDs and I can land a 2.5 mil contract. Big line at the doctors office who does the shots. These people wont smell 2.5 mil pesos in their entire lifetime.
As a Hispanic, doing the right thing is not that hard. What he did was simply stupid. Just because you may be poor it does not excuse you from doing the proper thing. After all, he is 24 years old.
Also, being on the 40-man roster pays you a lot better than those who are not.
Bringing back the horse steroids… Arnold would be proud.
Boldenone? Is this guy an idiot? It’s like he wanted to get caught.
Makes the Montero minor league sign seem a no brainer
Yeah I think Nats had an idea he was going to be suspended because a player has a certain amount of time to decide if he’s going to appeal. His decision to apparently not appeal made the Nats decision simple in adding Montero as depth.
His full statement says that he already fought the charge on appeal but lost when he couldn’t identify a way he could have accidentally gotten it in his system
So yes, the Nats have known this was coming for a while
“…like many before him, expressed confusion as to how a banned substance could have gotten into his system”
A much easier argument to make when the substance isn’t literally Testosterone and classed as a “anabolic–androgenic steroid” – it’s not exactly something simple to come by here; especially on accident
Guessing he got the supplements that had the boldenone in it from a source in the Dominican. A trainer or a local doctor there that told him that nothing banned was in it. That would be the only way that I could see where he could claim he didn’t know.
Don’t disagree with that as a possibility too, but it would lead to two natural followup questions
1, how did the price of such a supplement not raise interest?
2, should he not know exactly how the substance entered his system in that case? I mean unless he regularly sees random people who give him random substances available only in other, less developed countries with looser drug laws (but that seems pretty unlikely)
And with how little should enter the system thru a single ingestion or absorption application too, especially if it were merely present in some other product and not specifically marketed as Boldenone…
All just makes it quite difficult to believe the claimed surprise (doesn’t mean malicious either, but can’t buy his supposed confusion – hes gotta know!)
I’ll also say, his full statement is rather silly and makes it all even less believable
Maybe he ate too many beetles? From wikipedia “Boldenone occurs naturally in the scent gland of Ilybius fenestratus, a species of beetle.[1]”
Old family recipe.. Grandma made that beetle salad all the time! Granma used to say “Eat it up kids! It will make you big and strong!”. Grandma knew what she was talking about!
Ah grandmas good old fashioned beetles salad. Grandpa use to say itll put hair on your chest kiddos…….just like grandma. We laughed and thought he was joking. Now im not so sure.
He saw how bad the Nats catching was and tried to speed up his “development”.
A proper diet, exercise, training, vitamins and practice is all you need. Why take all these supplements?
So can we all just start calling him Roidy Reed from now on?