Observation #1: What an idiot!
Imagine: You are a mediocre journeyman baseball player past your prime and holding on the big league job by your fingernails. In desperation, you decide to cheat, using banned performance-enhancing drugs, risking suspension and a career of being regarded as untrustworthy by fans and future employers—and you get away with it, Not only that, but you have the best season of your career by far, make the All-Star team for the first time, and because you were playing out a one-year contract, you win a\three-year, $42 million guaranteed contract. It all worked! You have a job for three seasons, and you’re set for life. even if your arms fall off.
Then you cheat again, lose half of year one (2025) with an 80 game suspension, and cheat again, and get banned for an entire season. Total loss: 21 million dollars.
Meet Braves outfielder Jurickson Profar, possessor of one of my all-time favorite baseball names (along with Van Lingle Mungo , Urban Shocker and several others) who was just hit with his second PED offense and a 162-game ban, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports. Now he’ll miss the entire 162-game season in 2026 and will get a lifetime ban if he gets a third positive test in the future, which, given his apparent IQ, seems plausible if not likely. Profar will not be paid his $15MM salary this season, and he will be ineligible for postseason play in 2026 if the Braves were to get into the playoffs, which his conduct has made less likely.
Profar turned 33 a couple weeks ago, so in baseball terms he is in the twilight of an undistinguished career with the exception of that single shock 2024 year where he played like he was on steroids or…oh. Right. He’s signed through the 2027 season and is owed a $15MM salary again in that disastrous (for the Braves) contract’s final year. They likely will release him as soon as Profar’s year-long ban is up. He has probably played his last game in the Major Leagues.
Observations (other than “What an idiot!”):
Ethics Alarms 
This is a remarkable story…remarkably stupid. Profar’s deal would have paid him $14m/yr (well, actually $12m/15m/15m)…and it was all guaranteed. He could have hit .220/12/40, been a lousy fielder, and a clubhouse toxin…and still pocketed $42 million. Jurickson didn’t need steroids to earn the money in the contract period, he just needed to show up each day wearing the proper gear. Steroid use was simply idiotic.
As a life-long Braves fan, I thought the contract was reasonable (in terms of length/money) given baseball’s current financial landscape and his numbers in 2024. As it turns out, the Braves will pay him $15m for next year whether he plays for us or not – assuming there isn’t that third suspension – and half of his 2025 salary ($6.5m or so, what he earned before the first suspension)…so $21.5m for about 80 games.
That’s a “reasonable risk” contract gone horribly wrong because of the actions of an incredibly selfish…and stupid…athlete.
Silly to quote myself, but to clarify: this is assuming the Braves do release him. Given the sunk costs and the fact that there is but a single year left on the deal, management could decide to keep him, take a flier on his performance, and try to get something for the $20+ million invested…not that I necessarily think they should because Profar is a proven (very unreliable) commodity.
One of the aspects of this case I’ve been pondering overnight is that there are some classic stories about someone altering himself, liking the results, and then fearing what happens when life returns to normal. One example is Disney’s Aladdin, and where Aladdin uses the Genie’s power to become a prince, and then feels he has to keep using the Genie’s power to perpetuate the lie. I’ve not actually read “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” but if I understand correctly, Dr. Jekyll grew addicted to the thrill of being Mr. Hyde to the point he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. The Spiderman 3 with the Venom suit also comes to mind, where Peter likes how he becomes under the influence of Venom and keeps turning back to it. I’m also thinking of a fantasy series by Melanie Rawn, “Dragon Prince” and “Dragon Star”, in which there is a drug called dranath that is highly addicting, but can augment the powers of the magic users. A character ends up addicted to it in the “Dragon Star” trilogy because he felt he couldn’t accomplish what he needed to without its additional power.
All of this is to say that Profar’s return to doping is understandable (though not certainly not to be condoned) from the aspect of liking who he was while doping, and either not liking the “normal” Profar, or fearing what will happen when he goes back to being “normal” Profar. Under the influence of the steroids, he feels good, he’s stronger, faster, better, and without the steroids, he’s nothing. While the steroids are a risk, if he goes back to being normal, people will wonder why he’s not performing as well as the previous season, which means it is just as risky (so he thinks) to not dope as to dope.
How often do we come across, “I like who am I better when I…”, especially when it comes to drugs and alcohol? The performance-enhancing substances offer an incredibly tempting, fast, and easy way to “become” the person one wants to be. Of course, that doesn’t actually make someone the person he wants to be, only creating an illusion, and it is fear of losing that illusion that powers the addiction. Of course, there’s also those fairy-tale happy endings where the prop is removed and the person finds he had the ability all along, such as with the magic dancing shoes that weren’t really magical, or the ring that wasn’t really the Schwartz but a toy from a Cracker Jack box. Maybe Profar thought he just needed the steroids to boost himself up, and after that he could maintain his abilities without doping. But real life endings are usually unhappy, precautionary tales, and that seems to be the case here.
Comment of the Day, Ryan. This is the kind of thinking I usually am looking for when I post baseball ethics stories, and will continue to do so evn though it is obvious that a only a minority of readers ‘get it.’ Baseball, of all sports, is the best microcosm of life, and by far is the best Petri dish for ethics experiments.That’s why novelists and writers have used baseball for their work (and sports loyalties) more often than all the other sports combined: it is our substitute for mythology.
I didn’t even consider the motivation for cheating that you point out here. It’s self-destructive but human. Thanks. No its tme for me to put on that paper bag….
Jack, thanks! I do want to add that my wife would have preferred if I mentioned Dumbo’s feather instead of referencing Spaceballs…
Regarding baseball as a whole, I struggle with it still. The ’94 strike that cancelled the postseason always looms large in my view of the game. I have had brief moments of renewed interest – the ’04 season when the Rockies made it to the World Series, and our time in Ohio, where we made some friends who were avid Guardians (grr… They’re the Indians, dang it!) fans, and who invited us to some Guardians games with them. Yet I also have fond memories of playing Little League baseball, and “Field of Dreams” remains a well-loved movie. I also remember my father having a book by Bill Geist detailing a man who falls into coaching a little league team of misfits. I think it was “Little League Confidential,” but it has been a while since I read it. It was hysterical, though. Maybe I need to be a little more forgiving and give baseball more of a chance.
(The Rockies’ miracle run was in 2007, not 2004. And the Red Sox swept them in the Series, just as they had the Cardinals in 2004.)
I think that’s the second time at least I’ve been corrected on the year. I wonder why I keep thinking it was 2004? No more dates without Googling first!
Yeah, I didn’t get past the “the money was guaranteed, he’s an idiot” scene in this movie.
Thanks Ryan, for dissecting this with a very different perspective.
There is also an aspect of the criminal mentality when one thinks “I’m smarter than the cops. There is no way they’re going to catch me!”
Needless to say, that is often not a fulfilled expectation, but it’s real. I think that may have played a part in Profar’s actions.
As I recall, Jurickson was a Rule 5 draft pick of the Rangers, so we got to see him for an entire season when he was just starting out. I remember liking him, but I don’t think he was, talentwise, anything to really write home about.
” ‘I’m smarter than the cops. There is no way they’re going to catch me!’ “
Per a detective pal-o-mine, AKA in criminology/LE circles as the Triple F/Fatal F*****g Flaw
PWS
Don’t the Freakonomics guys talk about the adverse effects of having a made-up name?