The Houston Astros' hopes of bringing the organization's top pitching prospect up to the Major Leagues were pushed back after news broke on Wednesday (February 21) that the 6 ft 7-inch gunslinger has been slammed a 50 game suspension for violating MLB's drug prevention and treatment program.
Coming into Spring training it had been expected that 20-year-old right-hander Forrest Whitley would be moved up to Class AAA with a chance to break into the bigs later in the season for the defending World Series Champions, but those chances have gotten a bit slimmer, as he won't be rejoining his Corpus Christi Hooks assignment until May 29. The news is a hard pill to swallow considering how well the 2016 first-round draftee did making his transition from low-A to Double-A ball with 143 strikeouts in 92 innings in 2017.
While the exact substance that got Whitley punished has not been revealed to the public, it is suspected that he used some sort of recreational drug, seeing how the league has a history of exposing whenever performance enhancers (PEDs) are responsible for a failed test. Whitley's former high school coach, Jason Thompson, says that he has spoken with his former ace and corroborates that he doesn't believe PEDs are at all involved.
"Any conversations that I've had with the Whitleys in the last 24 hours tells me that there was nothing that happened that violated a PED issue," Thompson says.
