MLB, MLBPA agree on tougher drug testing

Figured this was worth a thread:

1st offense: 80 games unpaid
2nd offense: 162 game unpaid
3rd offense: lifetime ban

Suspended players ineligible for postseason & postseason shares.

Any player suspended subject to 6 random urine tests & 3 blood tests per year for the rest of his career.

Random collections more than double immediately.

https://twitter.com/MLB_PR/status/449644331469512705/photo/1

 

Dang, that's pretty tough.

Looks like they're headed toward the one thing that does help cut down on PED use -- make the penalties so severe that, even if you think you're ahead of the game with an undetected substance, it isn't worth it to try.

 

Just don't like you: 65 games

 

Ah, Dick, it's strong, but strong is the route they needed to go to affect change.

Personally, I don't care much if Player X took PEDs and Player Y didn't. But obviously, the majority does.

 

Get back to us when MLB players have to log into a website every 48 hours in order to predict where they will be at all times for the next 48 hours, so that they can have WADA drop by to draw blood and pee unannounced.

/pro cyclists.

 

Glad to see this. I still think a second offense should be enough for a permanent ban, but this is still a pretty harsh punishment. I like it.

 

Those poor cyclists, such a clean sport

 

Oh sure, now they're being tough. Where were they 15 years ago?

 

Chicks did the long ball.

 

I don't get this line of thinking. MLB and the MLBPA have taken steps over the past seven years to try to clean up the sport. They are continuing to institute stiffer penalties.

The fact that this didn't happen in 1996 (if we're going to play this game, 15 years was still too late) has no bearing on the fact that this is good for the sport in 2014.

 

It does have bearing in that the powers that be in the sport nearly killed their game, then relied upon the drugs to bring fans back to the point where the sport is as, no pun intended, healthy as it's been in years.

 

Maybe it's naive of me, but I don't buy into the narrative of MLB "relying on the juicers" to save the sport. Nor do I buy into the idea that any sportswriter who didn't expose the juicers was actively supporting them to somehow save the sport.

I think most of them, MLB execs and sportswriters, were starry-eyed at the amazing feats that were being accomplished and/or hamstrung by what they could or could not prove on the record at the time.

I'm not absolving them of blame (and I don't hold the writers nearly as accountable as many here do). I'm saying that I understand that, even if they were aware of a growing PED problem, the answers as to how to handle it were not simple at a time when MLB and the MLBPA raised their backs at the mere sight of each other.

I think my position on PED users is harsher than most on this site, so maybe my position on the executives who allowed the PED problem to flourish is a little soft. I suppose it's a matter of placing the blame mostly on the actual perpetrators rather than the enablers.