Padres infielder Fernando Tatis Jr. served 17 of his 80-game doping suspension through Major League Baseball and missed the first payment of what may be just $2. 9 million in lost wages. He met with the owner, the general manager, his teammates, the media, apologizing profusely for “my mistakes”, expressing “how sorry”, explaining “how my dreams became my worst nightmares”.
That’s the simple component. The hardest component is in front of us.
“There’s a long way to go,” Tatis said.
He was talking about reconnecting with the franchise and its enthusiasts after testing positive for the anabolic steroid clostebol, but he’s more cynical, more confusing than that. Whether or not you buy your excuse for ringworm, Tatis is a doping condemned under MLB’s Joint Drug. I deal, and historically, statistically, anecdotally, that means I’m probably not the same player as before, at least anytime soon.
It’s a small, unscientific pattern, yet the last 10 MLB players with suspensions of 80 games or more experienced a drop in functionality when they returned later that year or the following season.
Second baseman Robinson Cano was arrested for the time being in the 2020 offseason and missed all of 2021. He beat Array316 with an ARRAY896 OPS in 2020. . . and bounced back with the Padres and two other clubs in 2022, achieving Array150 with an Array373 OPS.
Receiver Welington Castillo hit Array282 with an Array813 OPS in 2017 before testing positive a few months after the 2018 season. He beat Array241 after his return in 2018, Array209 in 2019, Array143 in the minors in 2021 and retired.
Outfielder Jorge Bonifacio had a promising rookie year with the Kansas City Royals in 2017 (. 255, 17 HR, Array752), and then, at age 24, took the anabolic steroid boldenone in spring training. wallowing in the miners now.
It goes on and on: Ramón Laureano, Tim Beckham, Dee Gordon, Abraham Almonte. . .
Part of that may simply be because you haven’t noticed elementary league pitchers for part of a season or more. Some may be the intellectual stigma of being called a cheater. Some may be just the age and downward slope of a career. Some may be simply organizational, policies and lack of opportunity.
And some may simply be the Joint Drug Agreement, which pushes the fangs for past offenders and is closer to the benchmark Olympic testing protocols than to a jointly negotiated professional sports program where holes in the net are less difficult to break through. Future punishments are more severe, more frequent tests, more sophisticated laboratory tests, more suspicious tests.
“Risk-reward research is changing,” says Victor Conte, the mastermind of the BALCO doping empire and one of the few people who speaks candidly about this taboo subject. “For some, it’s too dangerous. As long as you have this big contract in place, why accept the threat of getting stuck for a moment?
Tatis Jr. now faces a 162-game suspension if he returns for an anabolic agent and the immovable stench of doping that cannot be explained through the Dominican Republic’s anti-moth medicine. He faces at least nine more tests a year: six urine. , 3 bloods, for the rest of his career, which, with the minimum of 3 consistent with the season everyone faces, can increase to 150 in the remaining 12 years of his $340 million contract.
He is still 23 years old. That’s a smart chance that a positive comeback will return, either inadvertently or for more sinister reasons.
Another in 2024 would charge him $11 million. In 2025, $20 million. In 2027, $25 million. In 2029 and beyond, $36 million.
A third party brings a lifetime ban and terminates the contract.
But it goes beyond that.
At the time Conte doped the athletes, he used a designer steroid called THG that acted in the same way as known anabolics, but chemically changed enough to avoid detection and punishment. sanction athletes for anything that resembles a known steroid, whether or not it is on the prohibited list.
“This ended the steroid era of conception,” Conte says. “Have you heard of an author steroid since then?What does that mean? They all went old school and used fast-acting testosterone.
The idea is a microdose every night with testosterone patches, gels or pills that release a small amount of the muscle-building hormone intended for maintenance and recovery from a long hot season. Testosterone levels rise while you sleep (and can’t be tested) and go back to usual when you show up at club headquarters the following afternoon (and it can be tested). And popular urine tests can’t distinguish between artificial and natural sources of testosterone, only if the overall point is out of control.
Another check has been developed, called the Carbon Isotope Ratio (Isotope Mass Spectrometry). You can locate exogenous or artificial checkosterone, but it is significantly more expensive and time-consuming. For this reason, it is not used in maximum MLB. urine samples unless safe chemical markers are activated, and microdosing prevents you from activating them.
Even if your pattern is decided randomly for MRI tests, it’s still imaginable to overcome it by microdosing since, Conte says, the thresholds for a positive result aren’t set as low as they should or deserve to be.
Still, betting with fire and the more urine tests go straight to the MRI, the riskier microdosing becomes, baseball’s doping approach of choice, according to many experts.
Now read the fine print of the Joint Agreement on Drugs. All players are evaluated in spring training, at least once in the season and at least once out of season, and one of them will likely go on to MRI. Former offenders go through a dozen more urine tests, and everything can go to MRI as the program’s medical director, Christiane Ayotte, of the renowned Montreal Anti-Doping Laboratory, has “full discretion” to order this.
When a pattern of urine reaches the lab, it is only known through a number, not through a name. But it also comes with a player’s non-public chemical profile and doping history, and is the popular procedure in the world of Olympic trials. for past offenders to obtain additional scrutiny and evidence. And Ayotte comes from the world of Olympic trials.
Another factor: when players are chosen to undergo testing during the normal season, they know there is a smart chance that they will no longer be chosen, which opens up a prospective window of doping. the next day, and the next, and the next. Or a week later. Or not for a few more months, then each and every day for a week.
This does not mean that former criminals who need to make juice will be permanently arrested; there are other, more complicated ingredients that laboratories test. This means that its characteristics are limited, the network has fewer holes, the consequences are harsher, the dangers are greater.
This raises additional questions about why Tatis did not appeal, whether his positive check was really the result of a topical medication containing clostebol for ringworm, which is not yet allowed for some anabolic agents for clostebol due to the documented option of involuntary use. A player who proves he “does not have a significant foul or negligence” could see his suspension reduced by up to 30 games. Most importantly, those who get reduced suspensions are not subject to additional controls for the rest of their races.
He is 23 years old. Why at least give it a try?
“At first, we felt like we had a very strong track record,” Tatis said in a media scrum in the Padres canoe. “Actually, I don’t know how the appeal procedure works. Obviously, I have other people who advise me and. . . I was told there was no chance we would win, so we made the decision to start serving the suspension immediately.
He is perhaps another of many of his comrades in the Dominican Republic, who has a known doping culture and has accounted for 80% of MLB’s positive controls over the past five years. positive. Maybe he’s going to continue to hit home runs and sweep bases at the same absurd speed as before. Maybe you have nothing to fear.
But there is a long way to go.
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