Gregory Santos suspended 80 games for drug violation

The San Francisco Giants farm and depth are taking a hit. On Tuesday, MLB announced that right-handed pitcher Gregory Santos had been suspended 80 games without pay for violating he league’s substance abuse policy after he tested positive for Stanozolol.

Here’s the full MLB statement:

The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball announced today that pitcher Gregory Santos, a 40-man roster player of the San Francisco Giants who is currently on the roster of Triple-A Sacramento, has received an 80-game suspension without pay after testing positive for Stanozolol, a performance-enhancing substance in violation of Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.

The suspension of Santos is effective immediately.

Santos has rocketed up prospect lists over the past year, and was surprisingly listed as the team’s No. 5 prospect in Fangraphs’ preseason ranking. Here’s hoping that the suspension doesn’t hurt his development too much, though it certainly won’t be helping it.

The high-velocity righty — who was traded to the Giants along with Shaun Anderson in the deal that sent Eduardo Nuñez to the Boston Red Sox — made his MLB debut earlier this year, and got rocked a bit, allowing 5 hits (3 of which were home runs) and 5 earned runs in 2 innings of work. That shouldn’t diminish his potential, however, as he’s still just 21 years old.

And, since the 2021 MLB Draft is right around the corner, let’s revisit this sentence from Fangraphs’ Eric Longenhagen in the aforementioned prospect ranking: “If a college arm were to come out of the gate with stuff as good as Santos showed during 2020 Instructional League, they’d be the early-season favorite to go first in the draft.”

Santos has spent the bulk of the year with the AAA Sacramento River Cats, where he’s had mixed results: 15.2 innings, 16 hits, 9 walks, 16 strikeouts, and a 5.17 ERA.

See ya next year, I guess.