Major League Baseball suspended San Diego Padres pitcher Robert Suarez for 10 games on Friday for using a foreign substance, making the right-hander the sixth player to be penalized since the league began cracking down on sticky stuff.
Suarez, who was also fined an undisclosed amount, will appeal his suspension.
Suarez, 32, was ejected from Wednesday’s series finale against the Miami Marlins. The reliever took the mound in the top of the eighth inning, but he was quickly tossed by first base umpire Todd Tichenor when a routine check revealed a sticky substance on Suarez’s left wrist and arm.
Through a translator, Suarez claimed the substance was sunscreen and that he doesn’t use “any banned substance at all.”
Suarez is 2-2 with a 4.73 ERA over 13 games (13 1/3 innings) in his second major league season, both with San Diego.
Earlier this season, Domingo German of the New York Yankees. as well as Drew Smith and Max Scherzer of the New York Mets, were suspended for foreign substances.
Hector Santiago, then of the Seattle Mariners, and Caleb Smith, then of the Arizona Diamondbacks, were suspended in 2021.
–Field Level Media