Former All-Star closer Eric Gagne, who has been on the comeback trail since participating in the WBC over the offseason, has signed on with the indy ball Long Island Ducks, the team announced. Gagne reportedly drew some interest from MLB organizations, but ultimately wasn’t able to find a minors deal.
Gagne, 41, will look to use his stint with the Ducks as a platform to returning to affiliated ball. He has seen brief Canadian indy ball action in the past two seasons, though this seems to represent a more concerted effort at making it back to the majors.
It would obviously represent a surprise if the former closer is able to accomplish his apparent goal, though certainly plenty of players have engineered similarly unexpected comeback tales. Gagne last pitched in the bigs in 2008, and you have to go back to 2004 to find a fully healthy and effective season. His career ultimately unraveled as he struggled to stay healthy after Tommy John surgery in 2005, all while embroiled in PED-related controversy. (He later admitted using HGH, alleging that he was far from alone among his peers.)
At his peak, though, Gagne was a rare force from the back of the Dodgers’ pen. After moving out of the rotation for good in 2002, he engineered a three-year run in which he compiled 247 innings of 1.79 ERA ball with 13.3 K/9 against 2.1 BB/9. He racked up 152 saves in that span and took home the National League Cy Young Award in 2003 — his best-ever campaign.
HGH is not a PED. MLB needs to stop with its witch hunt and start paying attention to actual science. Drugs that don’t enhance performance don’t need to be banned.
Hey buddy, you just blow in from ignorance town?
You’re just trolling, right?
You’re trolling, right?
Pretty sure HGH encourages muscle growth among other things, therefore improving performance.
Because guys with lots of muscle are good at baseball.
He’s not wrong, in studies done on HGH, people with normal levels of it didnt see any changes in muscle growth or performance; though people with low levels or thyroid issues saw fantastic benefits. It is also worth noting that the studies samples were fairly small
Exactly, any scientific study that has a unreasonable sample (aka a small sample size) should be almost immediately discarded. I mean, unless the case is isolated where there is only a possibility of a small sample size (like creating a new element) most “scientific” studies with small sample sizes are pretty much hogwash. Also, it’s not like there is a small sample size of people who take HGH, so a study like this on a topic so broad and it has a “fairly” small sample size should raise some red flags imo.
It’s like me polling 100 people out of the 90,000 people in my city and asking them who’d they’d vote for mayor, and then actually take that sample seriously.
Basically, HGH is a steroid. And it has been linked to significant muscle growth for most people who take it. And should be banned as a PED under the current drug rules.
Not a steroid* it’s a growth hormone. Gotta love 6:00 comments.
I mean it had a small sample size for safety reasons, so you’re not going to get a sample in the thousands. I believe that it’s banned purely for safety reasons, and that the performance effects aren’t really that great, but it should still be banned nonetheless
It helps you muscles recover or something, giving you an advantage over everyone else so it needs to be banned
Neither is blood doping but both are banned in international competition.
Why is this guy even news. He’s been done for years. There’s more interesting stories out there.
I felt the same about the Adam Jones story so I did this incredible thing called ‘not reading it’.
Quack Quack
How is he coming back after he hasn’t pitched in the majors since 2008 and hasn’t actually been good since 2004?
Perfect signing opportunity for Sandy Adlerstein. The Mets have two simple requirements which Gagne meets:
Cheap contract
Freak show potential
I saw him in the WBC. If the plate was two feet more to the right of the catcher, he would have been pretty good.
I imagine not pitching in a decade would leave you a bit rusty, though.
What’s he got to lose? Good for him.
He’s pitched in the past decade, in a third rate much not league and struggled there. Why he thinks he can pitch in the majors is jut silly.