I have not been shy about where I stand on the Jurickson Profar situation. He screwed the organization over not once but twice, cheated the sport, and robbed the Braves of $40 million. There’s absolutely zero reason he should be given a third chance next season, the $15 million owed to him be damned.

Principles matter, and this is an organization that’s spent a great deal of time ensuring a stable culture over the last 35 years, which is part of the reason they’ve had so much success. Keeping Profar around would put a massive black stain on all of that.

Even Braves beat reporter Mark Bowman suggested earlier in the week that Profar would not be welcomed back with open arms after negatively affecting the team’s chances at winning a World Series two years in a row.

“Profar certainly won’t be back in the clubhouse after performance-enhancing drug suspensions the last two years,” Bowman wrote. “So finding a right-handed-hitting outfielder stands at the top of the must-do list.”

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I think, or what Bowman believes. It might not even matter what the players in the clubhouse feel. Alex Anthopoulos is sending a clear message that he’ll keep Profar around if he believes he can help the team win in 2027.

“As we get closer to camp and things like that, we’ll see, and we’ll see where the offseason takes us as well,” Anthopoulos said, via Chad Bishop of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “There’s no absolutes. No decisions have been made. We’re going to do what’s best for the club, and it’s the beginning of the offseason, so it’s premature right now because I don’t know what our club’s going to look like.

“As I get a week into the offseason, two weeks, three weeks, a month, things can change, right? But in terms of absolute decisions being made, playing, not playing, none of that stuff. If anyone wants to speculate, none of that stuff’s been decided.”

Profar is currently competing in the Venezuelan Winter League, where he’s holding his own pretty well, hitting .315 with a home run and a .770 OPS through 14 games. The competition, obviously, isn’t the same as Major League Baseball, but one can assume the Braves are keeping a close eye on how he performs.

This is a story that doesn’t appear to have an end in sight. The Braves have to bring in some sort of competition this offseason, at the very least. Because at this point, there’s no telling whether Jurickson Profar will get popped for PEDs a third time, which would result in a permanent ban from baseball. He was dumb enough to do it two years in a row.

But the options that are clearly better than Profar in left field — as far as free agency is concerned — are few and far between. And the Braves are already on the hook for the $15 million they owe him no matter what. That’s what Alex Anthopoulos is currently mulling. Is the juice — whatever Profar could provide on the field — worth the squeeze of keeping him in the clubhouse? From the sound of it, we’re going to find out.

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