Major League Baseball just announced that free agent catcher Taylor Teagarden has received an 80-game suspension without pay as a result of his violation of Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.
This may not have been a big thing in a vacuum. Teagarden has played in only 17 major league games in the past two years, is a 32-year-old free agent and in all likelihood would not have appeared in a big league game again. But the circumstances which have led to this bit of news does make it notable. Those circumstances: he was named in the Al Jazeera report which also named Ryan Howard, Ryan Zimmerman, Peyton Manning and other athletes last December. Howard and Zimmerman have sued over the report and have denied all wrongdoing.
To be clear, Teagarden was shown in an undercover video in the report talking openly about his PED usage and such was not the case for Howard, Zimmerman, Manning or other athletes named in the report. As such, this might just be a case of some low-hanging fruit being snagged by MLB. It is worth watching, however, to see if anything else comes of the Al Jazeera report.