Taylor Guerrieri, a pitching prospect who was the Rays’ first-round pick in 2011, has been suspended 50 games after testing positive for a drug of abuse. It was his second violation and Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports that the drug is believed to be marijuana.
He’ll start serving the 50-game suspension at the beginning of next season, but it’s essentially meaningless because he’s expected to miss most of the year following Tommy John elbow surgery anyway.
Coming into this season Guerrieri was a top-100 prospect according to both Baseball America and MLB.com and he was fantastic at Single-A before being shut down, throwing 67 innings with a 2.01 ERA and 51/12 K/BB ratio at age 20.