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Braun to admit to PED use on 8/19

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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#141 » by Siefer » Wed Jul 24, 2013 7:53 pm

ReasonablySober wrote:
Newz wrote:People have really changed their tune now that one of their guys came out and admitted that he did it.

Funny how that works.


I used to be in favor of lifetime bans. But I've become more disillusioned with the notion of clean sports, clean records, etc. I started reading smart writers who convinced me that MLB is doing more harm than good.


My opinion has changed pretty dramatically over the last few years, of course factoring in Braun, but most importantly, how we're handling (or not handling) the stars of the 90s and early 2000s that are coming up for HoF voting.

In particular, the 2013 HoF voting was a huge indicator that the current dispositions of the MLB, media, and fans are woefully disconnected from reality.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#142 » by sneakerdust » Wed Jul 24, 2013 8:14 pm

Newz wrote:
ReasonablySober wrote:
Newz wrote:People have really changed their tune now that one of their guys came out and admitted that he did it.

Funny how that works.


I used to be in favor of lifetime bans. But I've become more disillusioned with the notion of clean sports, clean records, etc. I started reading smart writers who convinced me that MLB is doing more harm than good.


Not just saying you.

When I first heard about Braun testing positive, I just assumed he was on them... as I would assume any professional athlete is on them. That isn't to say all of them are, but I think it's just naive to believe that a lot of them aren't.

When I said that most people ripped me and claimed Braun was clean, that there is no way he'd cheat, etc. Now all of the sudden most people "don't care" about him using PEDs anymore, a lot of people want them to be legal, etc.



I dont have institutional memory of this place but almost all fans I know except for some women fans (fancy that) thought he was probably on them, they just didnt think the way it was going down was fair.

Theres a few dramatics out there that play to the cameras but if you follow MLB its not a shock.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#143 » by sneakerdust » Wed Jul 24, 2013 8:21 pm

:lol: ESPN front page "Trophy Case" supposedly about Kemp more like ESPN wants everyone to know Braun is in their Trophy case. A little bare w/out Sandusky in there guys :lol:
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#144 » by MickeyDavis » Wed Jul 24, 2013 8:32 pm

I guess I don't know how the whole process of buying PED's works but why don't these guys have a friend, or friend of a friend, or someone else buy these for them? Money talks and Braun (and the others) have plenty of it. Why even allow Bosch to know who was actually using the stuff. It's illegal no matter who the end user is.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#145 » by ReasonablySober » Wed Jul 24, 2013 8:37 pm

MickeyDavis wrote:I guess I don't know how the whole process of buying PED's works but why don't these guys have a friend, or friend of a friend, or someone else buy these for them? Money talks and Braun (and the others) have plenty of it. Why even allow Bosch to know who was actually using the stuff. It's illegal no matter who the end user is.


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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#146 » by trwi7 » Wed Jul 24, 2013 8:48 pm

Maybe they don't trust the friend or the friend of a friend to not blab that they're buying PED's for them. I would at least use an alias though and have a phone that's only used for PED purchases.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#147 » by El Duderino » Wed Jul 24, 2013 9:29 pm

ReasonablySober wrote:
luss54321 wrote:If you told me Ryan Braun would hit .400 with 60 home runs next year, I wouldn't trade a bag of peanuts for him… I just can't root for a lying, cheating, sociopathic, narcissistic scumbag. You know what the real problem is? Fans who support PED users. Show some integrity. Jesus.


I think PEDs should be legal.


Never going to happen, especially now that so many players in the game strongly support the testing policy.

It's been a pretty amazing turn in beliefs by both the union leadership and players overall. Not long ago they fought hard against testing and now many of the loudest and harshest critics of Braun has been players throughout the league. It got to the point where players were complaining that Braun's suspension wasn't tough enough and some players supposedly wanting to see him kicked out of the league. If my memory is correct, the players also strongly supported going to blood testing, not just urine testing.

That doesn't mean that some players aren't still trying to beat the system, maybe even including some of the guys ripping on Ryan. Either way, the attitude of the union and players as a whole has changed so drastically in favor of very strong testing policies that if anything, i could see then voting to next time around to make penalties for failed tests harsher. Maybe something like a full season for a first offense and lifetime ban for a second offense.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#148 » by BUCKnation » Wed Jul 24, 2013 9:30 pm

If that OTL article is true, then it re-enforces my ambivalence towards this situation.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#149 » by ReasonablySober » Wed Jul 24, 2013 9:55 pm

El Duderino wrote:
ReasonablySober wrote:
luss54321 wrote:If you told me Ryan Braun would hit .400 with 60 home runs next year, I wouldn't trade a bag of peanuts for him… I just can't root for a lying, cheating, sociopathic, narcissistic scumbag. You know what the real problem is? Fans who support PED users. Show some integrity. Jesus.


I think PEDs should be legal.


Never going to happen, especially now that so many players in the game strongly support the testing policy.

It's been a pretty amazing turn in beliefs by both the union leadership and players overall. Not long ago they fought hard against testing and now many of the loudest and harshest critics of Braun has been players throughout the league. It got to the point where players were complaining that Braun's suspension wasn't tough enough and some players supposedly wanting to see him kicked out of the league. If my memory is correct, the players also strongly supported going to blood testing, not just urine testing.

That doesn't mean that some players aren't still trying to beat the system, maybe even including some of the guys ripping on Ryan. Either way, the attitude of the union and players as a whole has changed so drastically in favor of very strong testing policies that if anything, i could see then voting to next time around to make penalties for failed tests harsher. Maybe something like a full season for a first offense and lifetime ban for a second offense.


Craig Calcaterra brought up something interesting yesterday. Lotta people want language written into a contract that allows teams to void deals. Imagine the first time a guy on a team friendly deal commits a violation. Or a guy wants out of a town or wants a new deal and decides he's gonna get caught to facilitate it.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#150 » by MartyConlonOnTheRun » Wed Jul 24, 2013 10:43 pm

ReasonablySober wrote:Craig Calcaterra brought up something interesting yesterday. Lotta people want language written into a contract that allows teams to void deals. Imagine the first time a guy on a team friendly deal commits a violation. Or a guy wants out of a town or wants a new deal and decides he's gonna get caught to facilitate it.

I think that is highly unlikely. That's a huge risk for the player and his reputation for something with little reward. If it is so team friendly, I bet the team rides it out and trades him later and wouldn't consider voiding the contract. With more testing and more people getting caught, teams are less likely to take a PR hit.

If it's only a little team friendly, then there is no upside for the player since missing a half year salary would negate the difference, not to mention his market will be destroyed by the PED test failure.

ETA: Say Braun was making 2 mil a year. The Brewers aren't gonna void his contract. They would trade him or just wait it out. Now say it was 13 mil, which I would say is team friendly. He is going to lose $5 mil the first year due to the suspension and his next contract is going to be way lower than if he played at the team friendly contract for 2 years and signed as a clean FA.

But I think you are onto something. Part of me thinks the Yankees have been pushing MLB hard with ARod. They stand to save tens of millions of dollars if he gets a lifetime ban. All of sudden you want to get rid of a player and you know he's on PEDs, that makes more sense economically.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#151 » by El Duderino » Thu Jul 25, 2013 1:07 am

MartyConlonOnTheRun wrote:
ReasonablySober wrote:Craig Calcaterra brought up something interesting yesterday. Lotta people want language written into a contract that allows teams to void deals. Imagine the first time a guy on a team friendly deal commits a violation. Or a guy wants out of a town or wants a new deal and decides he's gonna get caught to facilitate it.


I think that is highly unlikely. That's a huge risk for the player and his reputation for something with little reward. If it is so team friendly, I bet the team rides it out and trades him later and wouldn't consider voiding the contract. With more testing and more people getting caught, teams are less likely to take a PR hit.


I agree with you. Teams would likely evaluate each situation on it's own merits. If they felt it was still in their best interest to keep the player, they would take the PR hit and keep the contract. If though a player had an ugly contract like say A-Rod, Pujols, Hamilton, etc, they'd dump that contract faster than a virgin busts his load getting tail for the first time.

To me, if baseball and the players/union really want to lessen the amount of PED use, in the next CBA just really jack up the penalties.

1. Allow contracts to be voided

2. First failed test, a 150 game suspension

3. Second failed test, lifetime ban

4. Include any failed tests which happened in the minors to carry over to the majors so say a guy gets caught and serves 150 games in the minors, if he gets caught again in the majors, he's banned for life.

Mix in the huge damage to the reputations of players caught in today's MLB, something like that above i think would make players have to think much harder before trying to beat the system, even though new drugs will continue being created which make it tougher for testers to catch.

Whether it's MLB or the NFL, the current penalties are just to soft to be a really major deterrent against athletes rolling the dice on getting away with using PED's, especially for non-super high profile players. A 4 game suspension in football and 50 game suspension in baseball is pretty much a slap on the wrist for guys making pro sports money. The only guys which a first time offense can hurt bad are very high profile baseball players given they get savaged in the media to the point their reputations get ruined and i do think that hurts big time for guys like Braun. He's clearly a prideful and very goal orientated athlete. It has to really sting knowing that he was well on his way to being in the HOF after he retired and now that's almost assuredly down the toilet, along with being despised by most of his peers in the game.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#152 » by HurricaneKid » Fri Jul 26, 2013 10:24 pm

All it would take would be to give the team the option to void the remainder of their contract and the risk would skyrocket. Guys with 100M guaranteed deals would never risk getting caught.

But the union is entirely in control of that and I can't imagine, even if their base want PEDs out of the game, that they cave to that level.



I think there also needs to be a different line drawn in regard to PEDs. Everyone will be using HGH in 20 years. And some of the other designer stuff doesn't hold the risk that 70s and 80s steroids did. It just helps athletes play 3 or 4 days in a row which their bodies would otherise reject. On the other hand, the horse steroids some guys have been caught with are completely unacceptable. Seems like an arbitrary line but its also more reasoned that the current lines.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#153 » by HurricaneKid » Fri Jul 26, 2013 10:25 pm

The other thing you can do with testing is delay the actual test 5 years until testing has caught up with what the players have taken. If you take a big enough sample you can continue to test it. Lance Armstrong was dirty as hell but passed 500+ tests. Braun and ARod never even failed tests.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#154 » by blazza18 » Sat Jul 27, 2013 2:46 am

He comes out of all this looking like the biggest DH on earth. Not sure how he's going to get the clubhouse to ever trust him again.
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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#155 » by Ayt » Sat Jul 27, 2013 6:30 pm

blazza18 wrote:He comes out of all this looking like the biggest DH on earth. Not sure how he's going to get the clubhouse to ever trust him again.


I think the interview with LuCroy is very telling.

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Re: Braun suspended for the remainder of the season 

Post#156 » by ReasonablySober » Sat Aug 17, 2013 1:34 am

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Re: Braun to admit to PED use on 8/19 

Post#157 » by ReasonablySober » Sat Aug 17, 2013 1:41 am

Braun, according to his friends, is ready to soon admit that he used performance-enhancing drugs in parts of the 2011 season, the reasons why he did it, and publicly apologize for the lies and deception.

His friends, who spoke to USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity because Braun has yet to make the announcement, said he plans to apologize to everyone from Commissioner Bud Selig to urine collector Dino Laurenzi Jr. to his teammates and peers.


Guessing what we get is he was injured, the Brewers were in a playoff race and he used what he could to get back.

That's just my guess, and maybe I'm saying it because in my opinion it's the best possible case for Braun. It would also be very telling. I've long assumed that there would be no way MLB would let him make that statement unless it was all they had on him and the evidence didn't show otherwise.
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Re: Braun to admit to PED use on 8/19 

Post#158 » by blazza18 » Sat Aug 17, 2013 2:19 am

Hopefully that is all it is.
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Re: Braun to admit to PED use on 8/19 

Post#159 » by humanrefutation » Sat Aug 17, 2013 7:06 am

I wouldn't believe him.
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Re: Braun to admit to PED use on 8/19 

Post#160 » by paulpressey25 » Sat Aug 17, 2013 12:10 pm

humanrefutation wrote:I wouldn't believe him.


The other dude from Miami is now suing him, claiming he was juicing at Miami as well. This isn't just smoke but his entire house is on fire.

I don't think MLB cares what type of statement Braun wants to make at this point. They already nailed him. Let Braun spin whatever yarns he wants. As George Costanza said, "it's not a lie if you believe it"
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