Some terrible news has just hit the baseball world. St. Louis Cardinals right fielder Oscar Taveras has died in a car crash. Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports has confirmed the news.
Can now confirm: Oscar Taveras, 22, has died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic. Just awful.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) October 27, 2014
Tavares was 22, and he had just completed his first season in the Majors.
Awful. RT @LigaDomcom: Confirmed by his family, Cardinals' Oscar Taveras has died in car accident he was driving from Sosua to Puerto Plata.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) October 27, 2014
UPDATE: According to Dioniso Soldevila of ESPN Deportes.com, Taveras and his girlfriend were driving to Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic when the tragic crash happened. Neither survived. Taveras's agent, Brian Mejia, was among the first to confirm the deaths according to Soldevila.
A very highly-touted prosepct, Taveras made it to the Majors on May 31. He hit .239 with 3 HR and 22 RBI in 80 games. In the postseason, he was 3 for 7 with 1 RBI. One of those three hits was a pinch-hit home run off the Giants' Jean Machi in Game 2 of the NLCS.
USA Today said that Taveras was to improve his conditioning during the offseason so he could compete with Randal Grichuk for the starting job in right field in 2015.
At a time like this, we remember that players are humans. Taveras was a son, a boyfriend, and a friend to many -- even more so than a ball player.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to Taveras's family, friends, and all of the St. Louis Cardinals, as well as Major League Baseball as a whole.