For those scoring at home, MLB has the first test of the new drug policy in the books, albeit Minor League players. Four players were suspended for 50 games today.

Given that the Minor Leagues run shorter seasons than the Majors, this will hit them harder in terms of loss of wages, which are far lower than an MLB numbers to begin with. Maybe that’s the excuse by some Minor Leaguers: I have to cheat to be able to make The Show. There has been that said already, so it wouldn’t surprise me.

What’s interesting, and something that has garnered little play since the testing program came into exisitence, is that all 4 of these players are pitchers (none of whom have pitched in the Majors, by the way).

When you look at the number of players, at least in the Majors that were caught, pitchers matched position players 6 to 6. What we’re seeing is pitchers using steroids to bounce back from wear and tear. While the data set is extremely small, and therefore inconclusive at this time, 3 of the 5 players caught within the last 2 months of the season (Matt Lawton’s suspension was announced after the World Series on 11/2) were pitchers. Could it be that pitchers are more likely to Juice at the beginning and end of the seasons when stress is more likely to occur on arms and shoulders? Time will tell.

I had been tracking just MLB players that have tested positive for banned substances (There were 81 suspensions last season in the Minors for violating the drug policy), but with a “clean slate” provision (if you were caught prior, it’s as if it didn’t happen, so Juan Rincon would serve a 50 game suspension, not 100 if caught through the program again), I’ll be tracking all Minor league players going forward.

On the four players… It will be interesting to see what Justin Mallet’s suspension is for. Marijuana? Amphetamines? If it’s the later, it will be the first player snared for that newly added range of substances.

Here is the press release from MLB today:

The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball today announced that the following four Minor League players have been suspended for 50 games, effective immediately, for violation of the Minor League Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Baseball Insight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.