Photo courtesy of Dinur Blum.
You’re all sports fans. You’re all baseball fans. By now, I’m sure that you’ve read the report from T.J. Quinn, Pedro Gomez, and Mike Quinn of ESPN. If you haven’t read about it, I’m sure that you’ve heard the story that MLB is looking into suspending a group of players for their involvement with Tony Bosch and his South Florida Biogenesis PED Clinic.
Opinions are strong on this one and they should be. This is a very big deal moving forward, it promises to be much bigger than the BALCO investigation and trial which seemingly dragged on forever. But this is a fantasy site, and we’ve always worked really hard to keep it that way. That’s why we don’t usually comment on player movement rumors from anything beyond their fantasy significance.
So, keeping fantasy baseball at the forefront, let’s see what we can do to sort this out.
- Do I think baseball will actually do anything?
I think they’ll try really hard, but I don’t see how it’s going to work out, absent of actual positive tests.
Remember, Major League baseball has a really strong Player’s Union. I won’t pretend to be an expert on the matter, but it might be the strongest labor union in the country. After Roger Maris set the single-season home run record with 61 in 1961, nobody came within three of that mark. From 1998-2001, look at how that record was assaulted.
- 1998: Mark McGwire: 70
- 1998: Sammy Sosa: 66
- 1999: Mark McGwire: 65
- 1999: Sammy Sosa: 63
- 2001: Barry Bonds: 73
- 2001: Sammy Sosa: 64
That’s six different times that Maris’ mark was bested over four seasons. Now, you can make a case that baseball didn’t want to implement drug testing because the record chases were packing people into stadiums, something they desperately needed after the 1994-95 strike. But I’d also argue that MLB knew that it would be dealing with a strong union and decided not to fight it.
It wasn’t until Capitol Hill got involved in March of 2005 before any real punishment for positive drug tests was implemented. Even then, it was a soft 10-game suspension for one season, before they finally settled on the punishment we know today: 50 games for 1 positive test, 100 for 2, lifetime for 3.
What’s the point of all of this? Baseball has a strong union. That’s why they took so long to implement a real drug testing system. It’s also why baseball is the only sport without a salary cap. If you think the MLBPA will just sit by and let about 20 of its members suspended for potentially 100 games based on what someone says and not an actual positive test, you’re kidding yourself.
My hunch tells me that if baseball tries this, they will end up in court with the MLBPA and that that case could take the better part of a decade to decide.
What’s the fantasy connection? If you own Ryan Braun or any of the players facing possible suspensions, I’d say rest easy. If one of your league rivals is panicking and offering you a favorable trade in the hopes of unloading one of these guys, take it.
But we’re not done here. In the event that I’m wrong, let’s go over a few more questions.
- Should you worry this year?
No, you shouldn’t. Like I said, I really can’t see baseball doing anything and making it stick for the better part of a decade. The BALCO situation ran forever, and this one’s supposedly even bigger, and baseball has bigger plans.
It’s going to take Bud Selig and the MLB Front Office a while to put their case together, because they know they’ll get a fight. From a fantasy perspective, the absolute earliest that I’d worry about any of these guys is the 2014 draft. I have serious doubts that this will have any impact on your 2013 fantasy season.
- What about the guys who have already served suspensions?
Most relevantly, we’re talking about Melky Cabrera, Bartolo Colon, and Yasmani Grandal. If you’re a fantasy owner of these guys, I’d say that you can rest easier than if you own any of the other guys. These guys have already tested positive and served their suspensions. I’m really having a hard time seeing how they can be punished again for involvement in the same clinic. Let’s run through a fun little hypothetical here.
- A man who lives a clean life gets indebted to a mob boss. The mob boss tells the man that if he robs a bank, all debts will be square.
- The man robs the bank but gets caught and goes to jail.
- Once he gets out, he continues to live a clean life.
- Sometime later, the mob boss is arrested and becomes a singing witness (Unlikely, I know. But go with it).
- One of the things he confesses to is ordering the man to rob the bank
In this scenario, the police could not go arrest the man who robbed the bank because he was involved with a mob boss. If the robbing of the bank is the only crime he’s committed, that’s the only crime that he can serve time for.
Now, what’s unknown is whether any of the guys who have already been suspended have continued to be supplied with illegal PED’s by Bosch, or if they’ve maybe used for longer, but got away with it in the past. In that case, those players could be in danger of facing additional suspensions.
But it seems that all that one of these guys would have to say is, “Yeah. He supplied me with PED’s. I tested positive and served the suspension already.” If nothing else, that creates reasonable doubt, and it’s hard to imagine them not winning any appeals unless they’ve got a lot more than the word of Bosch, or even charts, working against them.
So again, if you’re a fantasy owner of someone who’s already tested positive, I wouldn’t worry too much.
- Do I care about this beyond the fantasy angle?
I do. I don’t like seeing athletes get off on technicalities. I also wouldn’t mind seeing the career and single-season HR records be returned to Hank Aaron and Roger Maris, respectively.
I live in the Bay Area, which is what the BA in BALCO stands for. I’ve spent plenty of time hearing the arguments. I’ve also spent a lot of time listening to fellow Giants fans defend Barry Bonds, even if they had no problems admitting that he used PED’s. It didn’t take very long to get tired of it, and I don’t particularly relish an even bigger investigation.
Having said that, if the guys Bosch names actually used PED’s, I think they should be suspended, and they wouldn’t get much sympathy from me (not that they need it) if that happened.
But again, this is a fantasy site. People who come to this site do so for fantasy advice, or to argue with our fantasy advice. So in this case, the advice is simple. At least for the rest of 2013, don’t worry about it. This case seems big but unless it’s even bigger than it actually seems, I doubt any suspensions will come out of this for a long time, if ever.
Add us as a preferred source on Google