2016 MLB Regular-Season Thread

To be fair, I wasn't disputing the choice when I asked why they were going with him over Cueto. It was more to reaffirm that the decision was sticking with the thing that got them three World Series wins as opposed to something being wrong with Cueto that required giving him a few extra days.

 

Gator brought this to my attention on Facebook and I thought it was worthy of discussion here.

While in Boston to honor David Ortiz, Rob Manfred said there may have been "10 or 15 [players] where there was probably or at least possibly a very legitimate explanation that did not involve the use of a banned substance" after the 2003 anonymous PED testing occurred. He says the league office and MLBPA were aware of the possibly false positives, but the testing had so clearly gone beyond the 5 percent agreed upon and testing would proceed beginning in 2004, that they never followed up on it because it didn't matter.

I just find it strange that we haven't heard this in the 13 years since testing occurred until the Commissioner was in Boston to honor a player who was on that list.

David Ortiz, Red Sox DH, on 2003 PED list? MLB's Rob Manfred says, 'People don't understand what list was'

 

Last season some Royals fans were angry that they gave up Finnegan for Cueto

 

Not me.

 

This is opening the doors of the HOF to the steroid suspects for the stampede which will start pouring in in the next several years.

 

I understand your question regarding the timing. MLB should have addressed this years ago. I had never heard about false positives on the list before, but I've been saying for a long time that MLB should have been held accountable for these names being leaked. The agreement with the union called for the names to be kept confidential, but MLB got away with failing to keep up its end of the agreement.

Why the MLBPA never do anything about it?

Of course, this issue never seems to gain any traction on or off the board.

 

Agreed, the names were supposed to be confidential and should have stayed that way (realistically, they didn't need to attach the names to the samples at all, since it didn't matter who gave the samples).

But I'm finding it hard to believe that the MLBPA knew about 10-15 false positives and never said a word about it. Not one. They would have brought it up the first time a name from that list was released.

It's now in MLB's best interests to pretend its biggest stars were not tainted by the PED use, so Manfred is throwing shade on the test results. But when the league needed to look tough on PEDs, nobody said a word about "false" positives that "probably or at least possibly" had "a very legitimate explanation that did not involve the use of a banned substance."

 

Gee, never been called despicable before.

Hey, the Cards missed out, but it hopefully lit a fire under them.

 

Vin Scully was the best pork sausage salesperson of all time. I actually was the cliched person listening to him under the covers with the transistor radio in the 60's. Great storyteller of course, but after he pretended that the players' strike wasn't happening I could not listen to him without a degree of skepticism. (heretical opinion)

 

You, I'll buy that from. But I was listening to some callers to Marty Lurie suggest that with no backing than a gut feeling. You don't do that with Marty Lurie.

 

That is certainly possible. The MLBPA should be screaming about this, but they have always been oddly quiet about the breach of their agreement with MLB.

 

Rob Biertempfel suggests that it was done to show team's displeasure with Marte for missing too much time with the injury. Again, I still don't get it.

Pirates notebook: GM says it was 'useful' to note Marte went on DL