Jair Jurrjens learned too late that saying he wasn’t hurt didn't protect his career.
The Curaçao native was having the best year of his career in 2011, making the National League All-Star team with a league-leading 1.87 ERA and a 12-3 record at midseason.
But underneath the All-Star numbers, his right knee wasn’t okay.
“The funny thing is, I wasn’t even healthy,” Jurrjens revealed during a recent interview with Baseball United. He explained that he was still dealing with the lingering effects of a meniscus injury that he had “worked really hard to get back from” during the previous offseason.
The deterioration in his knee was partly to blame for his second-half struggles. Jurrjens posted a 5.88 ERA across just seven starts and 41⅓ innings, interrupted by an early-August stint on what was then called the disabled list.
That knee injury marked the beginning of the end for Jurrjens. But he wants his experience to serve as a cautionary tale for this generation of ballplayers: It doesn’t have to end the same way for them.
Let’s talk about it.
When “I’m fine” became costly
Jurrjens struggled out of the gate the next season, pitching to a 9.37 ERA across his first four starts. Opposing batters had a .411/.482/.685 line, with 30 hits (five homers) in just 16.1 innings.
And here’s where the mistake came in, as Jurrjens explained:
“I didn’t want to blame it - my struggles - on injuries. I remember they asked me if I was hurt, I said no.”
Jurrjens was very clear that, in retrospect, that was the wrong call, and if he could do it again, his answer would be different.
“Maybe now, I would say yes. It wasn’t my style (at the time). I just went down and I worked my butt back. I showed that I was able to do it.”
What didn’t help was lingering feelings that the organization was preparing to move on from him. He was abruptly removed from a dominant low-pitch-count outing in Triple-A, being told by one of the team’s coaches that “some people don’t want you to come back.” Jurrjens appeared to interpret the early removal as an attempt to prevent a dominant outing from strengthening the public case for his return.
(Editor’s note: Jurrjens refers to this as being part of a doubleheader and having “50 pitches” through six innings. Braves Today could not identify either the specific game among his 14 AAA starts that season or the specific doubleheader that he was referring to.)
The attention still found its way to him, and after then-General Manager Frank Wren claimed that the demotion was not health-related but rather for baseball reasons, saying “he is not having any health or injury issues, just needs to get back on track pitching-wise”, Jurrjens responded publicly, and bluntly.
Jurrjens told reporters who traveled to Gwinnett to see him that if Atlanta no longer wanted him, the club should trade him.
In his telling, he had never disrespected anyone within the organization. He felt he had good reason to be upset about how his injury was handled, claiming the organization did just enough to keep him from re-injuring himself but not enough to get him fully healthy. “They knew I was not treated well on rehab. Purposely (just) good enough for my knee not to blow up on me.”
The knee continued to be an issue throughout the remainder of his career, with inflammation setting in after starts and prompting a recurring cycle of pain throughout the quad and other muscles in his legs.
But no matter how poorly his knee was hurting during this period of his career, nothing compared to how he was feeling inside.
“The last year with the Braves (2012), I was driving from Turner Field to my house, like almost an hour, just bawling, and trying to show up the next day and try to be normal.”
This game is tough, and the failure was wearing on him, even if he didn’t show it. “My wife - she was the only one to see me crying. […] People think it’s not affecting you, but it’s affecting you, of course. We have feelings, we’re human beings, and we get things (in our) personal lives that affect you.”
Three years later, two deaths within approximately a week of one another sent Jurrjens into an even deeper emotional spiral.
“I had two losses”
Jurrjens was suspended by the league in June of 2017 for 80 games after testing positive for exogenous testosterone, which is testosterone from an external source instead of being naturally created by the body. Jurrjens attributes that result to DHEA, a supplement he says a doctor recommended after bloodwork revealed health problems amid his insomnia, weight gain and emotional distress.
DHEA, or dehydroepiandrosterone, was backed at the time by some research that suggested it might be helpful in treating depression. Jurrjens was dealing with that exact issue for two reasons: the loss of his father and the loss of his close friend, former Braves pitcher Tommy Hanson, within a week of each other in November 2015.
“I needed help to be myself,” explained Jurrjens, saying he went to Taiwan to pitch in 2016 but carried enough emotional baggage to keep him from living a normal life.
“Going to Taiwan, that’s where I start to have problems - sleeping, gaining weight. […] When you’re going through that kind of stuff mentally, it’s tough to prioritize yourself, your health, and everything.
It was a hard season.”
Jurrjens detailed overusing sleep aids, specifically melatonin, in an attempt to get a good night’s rest. And the cumulative effect of all of this mistreatment of his body - the diet, the lack of sleep, the mental stress - manifested itself when he returned to the United States for the 2017 season.
“I did a blood test, they saw that my organs were shutting down for stress, and I got on a supplement. […] that medicine helped me be in a better mood, have my organs working normally for me to be able to rest.”
That supplement, DHEA, was banned by the league in 2014, as the body could use it to manufacture testosterone. Again, Jurrjens says he did not take it for baseball reasons, but his appeal of the suspension was denied by MLB because the specific supplement he took was not NSF-certified for sport.
He’s also accepted the suspension and his role in its issuance, saying, “It’s my fault. […] I had to deal with it.”
“The name on the front won’t take care of you”
Some of these themes - hiding an injury or testing positive for a banned substance - have parallels to the current Braves roster.
Catcher Sean Murphy just recently returned from offseason hip surgery to fix a torn hip labrum that had been bothering him for years, but he kept insisting was fine even while receiving treatment and attempting to delay an MRI until after the season. Starter Reynaldo López just admitted last week, after a velocity-diminished start in Chicago, that his surgically repaired shoulder has been bothering him intermittently throughout the season. And last season, Austin Riley returned from a brief absence for an abdominal injury, went 4-for-37, and then aggravated it, eventually requiring season-ending core surgery.
And of course, there’s Jurickson Profar, who was suspended for 80 games in 2025 and then the entirety of the 2026 season, both times for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
Asked specifically about Profar and other players suspended for banned substances, Jurrjens declined to judge circumstances he could not know, saying “I don’t judge nobody.” But he also wants his career, and the way it progressed, to be a warning.
“I don’t want them to do the same mistake I did. Learn from my mistakes, right? Be better. Take care of yourself better.”
There was an interesting framing of Jurrjens’ advice, though: You have to do it, because nobody else will, including the team you play for.
“Sometimes, it’s nice to put the name on the jersey before yourself, (but) if you don’t take care of yourself, the name on the front of the jersey is not going to take care of you. If one time, you need an extra day? Ask for it.
If you need to take care of yourself, take care of yourself.”
To watch the full interview, which includes this testimony as well as entertaining stories about the All-Star Game, legends like Chipper Jones and Brian McCann, and the connections to the island of Curaçao that permeate the Braves organization, check out the full interview on the Baseball United YouTube channel.
Important story, Lindsay. Makes me wonder if there is some kind of injury issue with Dylan Lee that either he or the staff is hiding.