The former No. 1 overall draft choice was involved in a car accident on March 22 near the Rays' spring training camp; he's now in jail and facing a lawsuit.
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On March 23, Rays prospect Matt Bush was arrested and charged with DUI and leaving the scene of an accident, after hitting 72-year-old Tony Tufano, who was riding his motorcycle.
Tufano is still hospitalized in critical condition, and Bush is now in Charlotte County Jail. The Rays say Bush won’t play for them again (he’s currently on the team’s restricted list), and now there’s more trouble for Bush:
The Tufano family has named both Rays pitcher Matt Bush and minor league outfielder Brandon Guyer in lawsuit in Charlotte County Court, seeking an excess of $5 million from each for damages and future court costs.
Why is Brandon Guyer named?
Guyer was included in the suit because he owned the Dodge Durango that Bush was driving during the crash.
According to the linked article, the attorney for the Tufano family says that “more parties” could be added to the suit. It’s a sad situation for everyone involved in this unfortunate incident.
Matt Bush has never played Major League Baseball. He's played minor-league baseball, up to double-A, and it looked like he was ticketed for triple-A. He's played spring-training baseball with the big boys, but he's never played a regular-season game in the show. For that reason, maybe you don't feel like his story is worth nearly 4,000 words.
But here are nearly 4,000 words on his story, from Yahoo!'s Jeff Passan. Sorry about that exclamation point, in the middle of a somber tale. But Yahoo! should've thought about that before they started writing about depressing things.
A Passan excerpt:
Friedman said the Rays will cut Bush, a move a source said should happen sometime this week. It will come days after Bush met with Friedman and manager Joe Maddon to discuss his demotion to Triple-A. While such roster moves often come with sadness and rancor, Bush’s felt almost upbeat. They talked about how far he’d come, how he’d fought his alcoholism, how proud they were of him.
What an incredible story it was going to be when sometime this year Bush finally made his major-league debut.
It's still an incredible story in a lot of ways. It just isn't the incredible story everybody hoped it would be.
Last Thursday, Rays prospect Matt Bush was involved in a car accident that seriously injured a 72-year-old motorcyclist. Bush was arrested and charged with DUI.
On Sunday, Rays GM Andrew Friedman said Bush won’t play for the Rays again. From Joe Smith:
Matt Bush is “not going to play for us” again, Rays executive vice president Andrew Friedman said Sunday, speaking for the first time about the minor-league pitcher’s DUI hit-and-run arrest.
“We’re all very surprised and saddened by what happened,” Friedman said. “We’re still a little numb to it.”
Friedman said the ongoing criminal investigation, as well as other dynamics, make it difficult to make an official roster move.
Smith reports that the Rays pitcher is being held on $1.015 million bond, and that neither the team nor Bush’s parents have spoken to Bush since Thursday’s accident. One more detail of the accident was revealed in Smith’s article:
Bush, who has a suspended license, was driving teammate Brandon Guyer’s SUV, NBC2-TV in Fort Myers reported Sunday night. Guyer, through the Rays, declined to comment.
