Marlon Byrd Suspended 162 Games for PEDs
The Indians outfield, already seen as a rather glaring weakness for a team with intentions of contending, just took another hit. Marlon Byrd has been suspended for 162 games after testing positive for performance enhancing drugs, multiple sources reported Wednesday afternoon. It’s the second positive test of Byrd’s career; he was suspended for 50 games in 2012 after testing positive for Tamoxifen. Cleveland Scene’s Vince Grzegorek was first with today’s news, and FOX Sports’ Ken Rosenthal later confirmed it.
Byrd is far from a superstar, but he was a key part of Cleveland’s now-dangerously thin outfield depth. Before the suspension, he was doing precisely what he’d done the previous two seasons: hit for enough power to be a slightly above-average hitter while providing average-or-better defense in right field. He was a body capable of performing adequately in a major league outfield, and the Indians don’t have many of those left. Their current everyday outfield looks like this:
- LF: Jose Ramirez
- CF: Rajai Davis
- RF: Lonnie Chisenhall
No platoon partners, nothing. That is, as my colleague Eno Sarris put it, a utility infielder (who, granted, has been Cleveland’s best hitter this year), a career fourth outfielder, and a platoon third baseman.
The immediate problem for Cleveland is that Byrd represented half of a right field platoon with Chisenhall, who owns a career 89 wRC+ against left-handed pitching. Davis would be a sensible partner in right with Chisenhall, if he weren’t being asked to handle center field on an everyday basis in the absence of Abraham Almonte (PED suspension which ends 30 days) and rookie Tyler Naquin (21 strikeouts and two walks in 65 plate appearances). Michael Brantley still has no timetable for his return to left field, and word out of Cleveland has not been optimistic about his 2016.
The stopgaps have done their job — between Ramirez’s exceptional play and Davis, Byrd and Chisenhall performing adequately, the Indians outfield currently ranks 10th in WAR — but they can’t reasonably expect this unit to maintain its current level of production. Our projections see the Indians outfield putting up just 3.1 WAR the rest of the way, the worst figure in the American League.
Top prospects Bradley Zimmer and Clint Frazier are both crushing Double-A, but Zimmer is striking out in 30% of his plate appearances and he’s supposed to be the more polished product. This Indians front office has been notoriously cautious with their promotion of top prospects, and so it seems unlikely that we’ll see a knee-jerk reaction that brings Zimmer or Frazier to Cleveland anytime soon.
It’s possible that they’ll just recall Naquin and hold pat — they still have the second-best playoff odds of any American League team thanks to their top-five rotation and middle infield tandem — but with the depth as thin as it is, it might be time for the Indians to revisit those offseason trade talks.
August used to cover the Indians for MLB and ohio.com, but now he's here and thinks writing these in the third person is weird. So you can reach me on Twitter @AugustFG_ or e-mail at august.fagerstrom@fangraphs.com.
hilarious -guy was a jerk to the media with the Cubs. But the Cubs now have walk up music b/c of him -vs organ music.
Safe to say this is a career ending suspension for old Marlon?
We can always hope. He gets caught at it once and yet he keeps on doing it? What a tool.
He got caught in 2012 after a -1.0 WAR “season” of 153 PA. He played in 2013 for $700K and put up 4 WAR. He then made $16M over the next two seasons. So from his point of view, if he sucks in 2013 he is probably out of baseball so PED’s made him at least an additional $16M before ending his career. Definitely the right call.
He also fell 6PA short in 2015 or else his option would have vested and he would have made $8M this year too.
Not at all. If anything, given his repeated inclination toward the PEDs, Byrd is more likely than most to bounce back with a good season post-suspension. (See Rodriguez, Alex.)
The question is, how much do the PED penalties have to be increased? Maybe two years for first offense, plus a permanent post-playing career lifetime ban from professional baseball in any capacity and automatic disqualification from the Hall Of Fame? (The latter would of course have to come directly from the Hall, as they’re not formally under the MLB institutional umbrella.)
Second offense would be an immediate comprehensive lifetime ban. Again, that’s majors and minors, playing, coaching, managing,scouting, even a very limited ownership role.
I dunno. If you’re a marginal player like Marlon Byrd, you probably figure that without the juice you’ll be out of MLB anyway. What penalty is worse than not playing otherrwise?
“Not at all. If anything, given his repeated inclination toward the PEDs, Byrd is more likely than most to bounce back with a good season post-suspension.”
Wait, what?! He’s presumably been inclined to use PED’s because they appear to have helped him fairly significantly over the back half of his career. Why would we expect a bounce-back from someone who will be almost 40 when they return from suspension after taking a year totally removed from baseball activities? Because one guy had one good season after a year suspension?
A prescient quote from the May 11th David Laurila article on Marlon Byrd: “But you can slow that regression down with how you work out, how you take care of yourself, how you get your rest, your supplementation and all that.”
…your “supplementation and all that.”
Would love for Frazier to get the call. Hit a moonshot off of me in high school.
Almonte is coming off suspension July 1. Seems like Indians should look for a scrap-heap player until then. Shane Victorino? He left Cubs camp recently…..Gomes? Still wants to play, fires up the clubhouse.
Is Almonte eligible to play in the playoffs this year, assuming that happens? Not that you wouldn’t use him anyway, but it is definitely a consideration.
Kind of tough calling Chisenhall a “platoon 3b” when he’s been +11 DRS and 27.1 DRS/150 in right field.