Afterwards? prolly “only” 50%.

2) Any endocrinologist will always know what to look for if they participate in continuing education. The issue is figuring out how to test for it. This is outside of MLB’s control so they have an obligation to work with what is available. If people only did things that worked pefectly, we’d still be figuring out the wheel.

-14 year old boy

Two things though:

1. You must have a lot more confidence in the fool-proofness of drug testing than I do. Weekly testing of every MLB player, statistically, guarantees that there will be false positives. Just for the broad stroke, 54 weeks x 30 clubs of 40 man rosters (this is not counting minor leagues), a test with a 99% certainty rate would net you 480 false positives a year. Hell let’s call it 99.9% and 48 a year. That’s a helluva lot of people to have their live’s work decimated purely because of chemical margin of error. To put that another way, for just the 40 man rosters of major league teams, you’ll have one player banned for life every week of the year save six – and again, that’s just straight-up false positives.

2. And that’s even assuming you know what you’re testing for. What’s the baseline for testosterone? What about a guy who tests positive for a substance that would be okay if he had a prescription (like Adderral, say?), but he is without one? Deer antler powder? Marijuana? What about testosterone cream that doesn’t raise your longitudinal levels over your monitored baselines? Etc. etc.

There isn’t some cartoon syringe labeled “steroids” that you either take or don’t take. It’s a constantly changing line, and every ballplayer is going to have constantly different levels. The process of identifying what is banned and what is not is necessarily entirely arbitrary and ever-evolving (seriously, go dive into what MLB drug testing actually entails – it’s an incredibly complicated process). And, incidentally, even the ballplayers that any reasonable person would call “clean” are ingesting a metric shit-ton of “performance enhancing drugs” on a daily basis – that’s true of any professional athlete. Go into even just your local GNC and start reading bottle ingredients, or talk to any athlete and ask them to list out what they ingest as part of their completely on-the-level training. The difference is just what PEDs they’re doing, and whether it raises certain hormonal levels to 1% over the line or 1% under.

No, it’s too complicated an issue to be pat about in that way, though I get the impulse.

“Off the charts” levels of testosterone were in the sample. They mishandled it or he would have had 50 games on the street. But he’s a golden boy, so people get offended when others state the obvious.

Didn’t Braun skate away on a technicality?

Braun was acquitted because his samples were mishandled in a way that’s known to produce false positives. Letting the guy off because you can’t honestly know if he’s guilty or if you screwed up the test isn’t a technicality.

Whether you are an athlete or not everybody wants a better body whether they look good or feel stronger!

When Bonds & Big Mac were blasting balls out of the park fans were going crazy!

Why does it seem only the guys with the best numbers are the ones in trouble? What about the other 200+ players mentioned in the steroid scandal?

Goes to show you reporters steroids doesn’t help everybody!

Since half of the sports reporters either never played a sport or are not in shape why don’t they experiment with either HGH or steroids & get back with us?

It’s an arms race. While MLB struggles to catch up on something it ignored for years, the chemists are coming up with new ways to chemically alter PEDs in order to produce false negative tests. When tens of millions of dollars are at stake you will always find cheaters trying to game any system.

The proposed solution of draconian measures (lifetime ban, voided contract, etc.) is over the top. One false positive and your career is toast. Half a season suspension without pay would be a good place to start, but testing would have to become virtually foolproof. Didn’t Braun skate away on a technicality?

Paint771′s attitude is quickly becoming mine as well. I’m just out of outrage on this issue. In time it will solve itself: PEDs mess up your body. Kids will get this as they watch the steroid-era players having to deal with the aftermath of juicing, but there will likely always be young men willing to roll the dice for lifetime financial security even if the practice wrecks the rest of their lives.

Now it’s possible if the CBA were amended to void contracts for positive tests, with restitution made, could be enough of a deterrent. But the MLBPA would be idiots for agreeing to something like that.

Drug testing is a joke. From Lance Armstrong to Schedules I, II, and III.

If it weren’t for kids all propped up on anabolics killing themselves none of this would be happening.

The fact that the NFL willfully ignored this problem for decades is a problem.

Don’t forget that many of the same NFL “Analysts” are the ones perpetuating the “tough guy” act that almost forces these guys to go out and play injured. FFS, Merrill Hoge, who lost his career due to multiple concussions until a doctor said the next one would probably kill him, thinks players need to “man up” and “get out there and play”.

They really do have the best drug testing program in American pro sports though, CC. Your point is well taken.

MLB will, probably forever, be in a no-win situation in regards to PEDs. If you find too many players using PEDs, the problem is epidemic and MLB needs to do more. If you find too few players using PEDs you are turning a blind eye and need to do more. And if you find just some, you just get a rolling series of “PEDs in baseball!” “scandals” wherein everyone is reminded that professional athletes use PEDs omg.

Can anybody, particularly folks really bothered by PEDs – and I mean this seriously – indicate to me a scenario in which they’d deem MLB to be doing exactly enough?

Me, I’m done being worked up over PEDs. I really just don’t care. But, for what it’s worth, I am, in fact, one of those that think MLB is basically dealing with it on the “just right” level, and hope they continue as-is (and hold their heads up high to boot). It’s just unfortunate that taking it seriously, as MLB does, means that you draw more attention to it and just increase the perception that your sport is tainted (whereas other sports that take it much less seriously have to hear about it a lot less because of it).