MLB Insider: Players still hitting jackpot despite PED sanctions

As Bud Selig was weaving his way through his 22nd and final year as baseball’s commissioner, he often cited labor harmony and strengthened drug testing as two of the hallmarks of his reign presiding over the game.

But it was an evolution for Selig after watching the damage done to the game by the 1994 strike, which included losing a World Series, and after seeing performance-enhancing drugs rip apart the records he cherished amid a public uproar that forced him to get tough.

In the vacuum of his final year in 2014, he was right. There hadn’t been a work stoppage in 20 years, and players were getting nabbed and facing the harshest penalties yet for a positive test for banned substances.

Jenrry Mejia, Chris Colabello and two-time All-Star Dee Gordon — and, at this point, there’s no telling who else — are putting drug testing back on the front burner in a year in which a new collective bargaining agreement will be hammered out.

The bad news is that PEDs aren’t going away. The good news is that players, based on recent adjustments to the Joint Drug Agreement, are all for strengthening the testing and the punishments for a positive test.

A first flunked test results in an 80-game ban without pay, and a second pop costs a player a season. A third bad sample means a lifetime bad. Mejia, the former New York Mets reliever, became the first to receive that penalty earlier this year.

But with the positive tests of Colabello and Gordon, the penalties apparently aren’t strong enough. The risk is worth the reward.

Take Colabello, who rose from independent ball to the major leagues. He didn’t do it as a 22-year-old. He was 29 when he made his major league debut in 2013. He batted .194 and .229 in his first two seasons, then hit a remarkable .321 with 15 homers last season with Toronto.

Colabello isn’t even arbitration-eligible yet, so he’s not making buckets of money in baseball terms. But $500,000 a year beats what he was doing in independent ball and in the minors.

Gordon, though, is making buckets of money. He signed a five-year, $50 million extension with Miami in January. His positive test that was revealed early Friday morning will cost him $1.3 million of his $3 million salary for 2016.

Jackpot.

Colabello and Gordon both expressed shock that they had tested positive, citing years of clean tests. They have no idea how the substances found their way into their systems. Colabello vows to not rest until he solves his mystery.

Teammates are shocked, too. Colabello reportedly is so scared of defaming the game and wrecking his career that he wouldn’t even eat over-the-counter protein bars. Gordon isn’t just skinny. He looks like he is on a hunger strike.

By now, though, players shouldn’t be so naive. They know that there are more reasons to take PEDs than just to build muscle. Some banned substances can help a player’s body recover more quickly from the day-to-day grind, can help him overcome an injury sooner or can sharpen his focus.

Gordon won the National League batting title last season, led the majors with 58 stolen bases and won a Gold Glove despite suffering a dislocated thumb in July while diving head-first into first base. Though the positive test likely came during spring training, it’s entirely fair to doubt how clean he was last season.

It was a dumb play in the heat of a baseball game for a job that has made him — and his father before him — a fortune. Even though the money he will lose during his ban isn’t insignificant, he still has all of that $50 million coming his way, including the $1.5 million signing bonus.

Jackpot.

Despite the penalties for getting nabbed for a positive sample, the risk is worth the reward. If baseball and players want to eliminate the use of PEDs, the penalties need to be more severe.

How about a one-year unpaid ban on the first failed test instead of a half-year? Even then, someone will try to cheat the system.

Selig’s replacement, Rob Manfred, and the head of the players association, Tony Clark, will have to find middle ground on a problem that isn’t going away.

With a new CBA to be hammered out this year, the Selig hallmarks of labor harmony and drugs testing are both back on the front burner.

This story was originally published April 30, 2016 at 6:15 PM with the headline "MLB Insider: Players still hitting jackpot despite PED sanctions."