By Randy Galloway
rgalloway@star-telegram.com
If I'm Nolan Ryan, if I'm Jon Daniels, then I'm privately moving ahead by immediately subtracting Nelson Cruz from the Rangers' 2013 opening-season plans.
Nellie is going down. Going down for 50 games.
Where's my proof? My proof doesn't matter. It's Cruz who had better have the proof, and have an air-tight alibi, if he's going to skate on this one.
And if Nellie goes down, thus continues a winter of baseball hell in Arlington, during which a good organization has repeatedly gone sideways, or worse yet, backward.
You can blame sideways and backward on bad decisions or bad mojo, with both being factors, although in fairness, the bad mojo has been prevalent in several of the off-season failed plans.
However, there are also prominent players' agents out there -- and agents certainly have their own agendas -- blaming the Rangers' winter on a front-office arrogance, aimed at Daniels, and a failure of Ryan to step up and take charge of the situation, or Daniels, or both.
I did mention, right, that agents have their own agendas?
But the PED news this week involving Cruz was a boomstick blow to the Rangers' gut.
With some incredible luck, such as a Ryan Braun-type hanging chad mysteriously surfacing in south Florida, maybe Nellie beats this rap.
But several factors work against Cruz. His name is now linked to a Miami drug house peddling its products to a variety of major league players. Some of those players have already gone down for the count, and I'm not talking about ancient A-Rod history.
Last season alone, MLB decked Melky Cabrera of the Giants, who was leading the National League in hitting, and pitcher Bartolo Colon, who was a 10-game winner for the A's.
As a sidenote, Rangers' fan were claiming last season (I hope jokingly) that a cheater and his 10 wins allowed Oakland to overtake the Rangers. Well, forget the joke. Cruz, with his career-high 90 RBIs, is now directly linked to Colon.
But the major point here is both Colon and Cabrera took the fall for testing positive for previously undetectable synthetic testosterone. MLB caught them despite limited testing under existing rules.
However, as of three weeks ago, MLB, with total agreement from the players' union, introduced the most updated and comprehensive testing program in all of sports for synthetic testosterone and HGH. It's a program that moves far beyond the testing for mere street steroids, a PED the smart player was avoiding anyway under the existing program.
MLB is not playing anymore on PEDs. MLB is still steamed that Braun, the Brewers' NL MVP from 2011, didn't go down last season because he failed an HGH test. Braun beat the rap on a loophole, which has since been closed.
But this is not the '80s and '90s and a case of MLB turning its head because the steroids fight against the players' union could not be won anyway. Remarkably, the union is now in lockstep with management, a clear indication that a vast majority of today's players want all PEDs out of baseball.
No matter, some ballplayers will cheat. That's a given. The search for the edge, any edge, will continue. The objective for MLB is to have testing programs at the same level of expertise as the dirty players' chemists.
Actually, MLB is now doing such a good job in this area it's bringing heat on the NFL, both its commissioner and its players' union, for football's lax PED enforcement, at least lax by current and updated baseball standards.
This MLB vigorous attack on PEDs is also another problem for the Rangers and Cruz. Baseball was already investigating the PED lab in south Florida before the
Miami New Times broke open the story this week, naming names and giving detailed written records provided by a company secretary who didn't get her final paycheck when the business folded last fall.
What that newspaper story provided was another blueprint for MLB to work with.
A-Rod is directly linked in this new scandal, but he's old news. Pitcher Gio Gonzalez, baseball's winningest hurler of 2012, is a new name. So is Cruz. Neither has ever tested positive for a PED, but under baseball rules, agreed upon by the union, they can still take the 50-game fall on "just cause" from Commissioner Bud Selig.
I heard it said yesterday that the burden of proof is now on Selig to prove the allegations coming from south Florida. Actually, not. This is not a court of law. It's the court of baseball. The Selig court.
Cruz will have to now convince the commissioner and his investigators that he didn't pay $4,000 last summer for a delivery of products from the south Florida company. That payment is part of the new evidence against Nellie.
And I repeat, the payment was reportedly made to the same company that a Cabrera and a Colon were buying from when they tested dirty last summer.
Meanwhile, the Rangers have been scrambling all winter, attempting to cover butt after a repeated failure of off-season goals. Now it's hello to a new scramble.
It's a questionable batting order even with Nellie. Take him out of right field for 50 games, and it's a pathetic batting order.
If Cruz goes down, what's the front-office answer?
At the moment, it's difficult to figure what the next best move would be.
But if I'm Daniels, or if I'm Ryan, I'm already subtracting those 50 games for Nellie. And the scramble to replace him would begin immediately.
Randy Galloway can be heard 3-6 p.m. weekdays on Galloway & Co. on ESPN/103.3 FM.Randy Galloway, 817-390-7697
Looking for comments?
