Former Royal Jeremy Guthrie rips Marlon Byrd and other PED users

You might think that Indians outfielder Marlon Byrd’s 162-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs and former Royals pitcher Jeremy Guthrie opting out of his contract with the Padres would be unrelated.

Byrd received his suspension on Wednesday, the same day that Ken Rosenthal tweeted that Guthrie would opt out of his deal with the Padres (he’d been pitching at Class AAA) and become a free agent.

Aside from both happening on the same day, I believe there is another connection. Guthrie, as far as we know, has never taken performance-enhancing drugs. If he did, maybe he’d be in the majors right now.

That may be why Guthrie crushed Byrd and other PED users on Twitter on Wednesday.

Later, Guthrie expanded on his thoughts with another weet and this was the key part of what he wrote:

I have met Marlon & by all accounts he is a nice person. He & others’ decision to use PED’s for me is a “joke” or lamentable b/c of how it affects them, their teammates, & our sport.

Here is the second tweet from Guthrie:

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 8:18 AM.