Montero facing 100-game suspension per ESPN
Also Ryan Braun and the remaining shell of what was once Alex Rodriguez

ESPN is reporting that a massive suspension of 20 MLB players for 100 games each is about to come down.

One of the players is recently demoted Mariner Jesus Montero.

Main story: here

Jayson Stark: here

The severity comes from concluding that each offense is actually two: having contact with the clinic in Miami and lying about it when the documents first broke into the public domain.

There will be appeals and the like, and, of course, Montero is injured anyway.  But still not good news at all.

Comments

1

We don't really know much at this point, but I'd bet that Jesus was a referral (from Nunez, the dirty ACES guy, maybe?, or even A-Rod, a sometime workout partner?) rather than a customer. The next few weeks should be verrrrry interesting!

2

If the Tigers lose Peralta for any period of time, I can see them being interested in Carlos Triunfel, with Asdrubal Cabrera (redux) in the back of their minds.

3

Actually the report says the suspensions MIGHT be up to 100 games.
Here's what I conclude:
1. It may ruin A-Rod's HOF shot.
2. The big losers are the Rangers (Cruz,13 homers), the Nationals (Gio Gonzales, 3-3, 3.64 ERA) and the Tigers (Peralta, 332-378-487)
3. The Tigers loss will be huge and perhaps interesting for us. Peralta's BU is Ramon Santiago who is hitting .150. They have nobody at AAA and two guys at AA who can hit, but both field the position in the .920's. So, would you dangle a great glove Brendan Ryan at the Tigers and then go with Miller? Ryan isn't likely a M next year, anyway.
Of course, there will be appeals and such. It may take a while for all this to come down....but if the owner of the place is testifying, things don't look good for the PED 20.
On the other hand, those PED's didn't do much for Montero, did they?
I forget the allegations about Braun. Are they that he came up as a PED guy? Man, his rookie year was .324-.370-.634! Why would you juice after that? He's 147 OPS+ guy in 4077 PA's and has never had less than 70 extra-base hits in a full season (OK, he had66 in 113 rookie year games). He's basically fantastic. Sounds like MLB thought he slid by 2 years ago and felt they had the goods on him and wanted to get him.

4

took them when he was with the Yankees, hence his super prospect status. I hope baseball knows what they're doing here. This could be more devastating than any of the strikes or lock outs. It's one thing to suspend a player for using but in this case they are going to have to battle superstar players, besmirching there character in a court and hoping that the public sides with baseball while not becoming totally disenchanted with the players. Good luck with that.

5
benihana's picture

If the owner of the clinic is cooperating with MLB then these "superstars" will have no leg to stand on when it comes to MLB suspensions. There is no court process for these players as baseball uses mandatory arbitration for union related disputes. This is not a Roger Clemons situation where that jury had to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Clemons lied and obstructed justice (hence the credibility of the witness was a major factor). Here the question will be whether it was more likely than not that the purported PED users where using. Under that standard, in front of an arbitrator, having collaboration from the clinic director as well as the records already released by the Miami papers? Done deal.

6
Mesully's picture

Seems like a lot of NYY players have been connected with steroids over the years, perhaps a culture of use in that system?

7

Because he was terrible we've been making other plans.  If he had been great and was roiding, and was about to be suspended the rest of the season, would that make more of a mess of things?
Either way, he has a lot to recover from.  Demotion, knee injury, position change and now the steroid cloud (regardless of whether he gets suspended, it will be discussed openly now - his ST denial won't cut it).
A hard road is getting harder.
~G

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