Dodgers righty Josh Ravin has received an 80-game PED suspension, according to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). That is the penalty for a first-time offender under MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Agreement.
Ravin, 28, was on the 60-day DL after breaking his non-pitching arm in a car accident during the offseason, so he wasn’t expected back for some time. Now, he’ll be unavailable until late July, at the earliest.
Last year was Ravin’s first at the major league level. He allowed seven earned runs on 13 hits in 9 1/3 innings of relief, but did impress with a 12:4 K:BB ratio and showed an upper-90s fastball. Ravin spent most of 2015 at Triple-A, where he worked to a 3.86 ERA in 28 frames with 12.2 K/9 against 5.1 BB/9.
Just make PEDs legal…
Why
Dodgers won’t recover from this one.
Time for the fire sale.
His suspension will be over before his arm is healed.
Except he’s gotta be active…
I don’t think so. You can be suspended while on the disabled list. It just means he won’t get paid.
who?
So he can serve his suspension while he is already out on the 60 day DL? Doesn’t seem to be much of a penalty to me.
He gets paid on the DL, doesn’t get paid on the restricted list.
I think he loses pay. 60 days rehabbing with a nice income v. 60 days rehabbing and hoping you’ve been saving those AAA paychecks.
He loses pay but not service time. I don’t think I explained myself totally, but the perks of continuing to accrue service time (future pension, arb eligibility) totally outweigh the $50k you might earn if sent back down to the minors.
That’s why I think these fringe players are going the PED route as soon as they get the call-up.
He just lost a hall of fame vote!
There’s something screwy with MLB’s policy that is resulting in all of these AAAA players getting nabbed for PEDs.
Think of it, you’re a lifetime minor leaguer making around $50k per year, you get the call up to the Majors and get a minimum salary of $507,500. If you get nabbed for PEDs, you get to accrue a half-year of MLB service time (if on the DL like this guy). If you don’t get nabbed, you collect that paycheck that’s 10x your minor league pay.
Most fringe Major Leaguers would be almost crazy not to be at least tempted to go the PED route. This needs fixed in the next collective bargaining agreement.
Tell that to a guy like Carlos Peguero, who was as strong as a bull, but couldn’t get his shit together at the majors league level. There are still other skills you need to prosper at the major league level, most of which aren’t speed and strength.
It’s just hard to go after the players in a way that doesn’t become a big financial advantage to the teams.
This isn’t meant to condone steroid use, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he used them to try and get back quicker from his injury.
That’s basically all that steroids have ever done… enable players to work out harder and more often. You can do that to bulk up, or to rehab from an injury.
So his PED use got him to an ERA of just under 7?
I would find the receipt and take back those syringes!
He likely used them to recover quickly from his injury
I think contract nullification is the solution– all future money on the contract plus all money earned on that contract. Sounds extreme, but noone would do it any more.
That opens to door for some serious shadiness from teams. Have a guy signed to an albatross contract, give him a supplement he doesn’t know about, boom. Off the books.
Not saying they would for sure do that but I mean, come on. With hundreds of millions in possible savings it’s not out of the question.
What they could do is rather than eliminate the contract, they pay an exorbitant fine to the MLBPA. That way the teams are still paying. I do think some reprieve for the team is fine, though.
I am generally in favor of having contracts be a little less guaranteed as teams simply don’t get saddled with albatross contracts in other sports, to the degree that it happens in the MLB. That there’s basically no reprieve at all for a team with a Howardish contract isn’t quite right.
What if they get a certain percentage of their salary “taxed” or fined by MLB? That way, the player is still punished but it doesn’t give teams an advantage. There are certainly problems here as well but in my opinion, it seems to help the problem without creating too many more.
I’m open to the idea of voidable contracts for PED use, especially if we tweak it a bit to keep teams at least partly on the hook still, but I couldn’t disagree more about “Howardish contracts.” I think if you sign a player you should pay him, and the solution to Howardish contracts is to stop signing them. It’s not exactly an unknown phenomena for players to begin an often steep decline as they approach their mid 30s. Howard’s decline may have started a bit earlier than anticipated but it wasn’t exactly unexpected.
Pacheco to the rescue
Sorry, i posted this in the Mesoraco article and the app put the comment here.