Marlins right-hander Paul Campbell has been suspended for 80 games for violating Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program, the league announced. Campbell tested positive for Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone (DHCMT).
Originally a 21st-round pick for the Rays in the 2017 draft, Campbell was selected out of Tampa Bay’s organization by the Marlins in last December’s Rule 5 draft. Making his big league debut this season, Campbell had an 8.74 ERA over 11 1/3 innings for Miami, with a below-average 21.3% strikeout rate but with some respectable hard-contact numbers. Control was also an issue, with six walks allowed in Campbell’s 11 1/3 frames.
Via the MLB Players Association, Campbell released a statement about his suspension, saying he “never knowingly, willingly, or intentionally ingested this substance in any form, nor have I ever heard of DHCMT prior to this situation.”
“Due to the fact that I do not know the origin of how this substance has entered into my system, I currently have no viable defense in support of my innocence. I have unfortunately become one of the many athletes, across multiple sports, who are presenting themselves to the world and asking for members of the anti-doping world to help us find answers as to why this metabolite is continuing to show up in athletes’ bodies and ultimately costing them significant detours in their careers.”
DHCMT has been a subject of controversy in recent years, as The Wall Street Journal’s Jared Diamond explored in a piece last August. Kent Emanuel, Tres Barrera, Chris Colabello, and Alec Asher are a few of the other MLB players who have been suspended for DHCMT, and Emanuel recently stated (hat tip to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal) that the league rejected an MLBPA proposal stating that a player couldn’t be suspended unless he had more than 100 pictograms of DHCMT in his system.
Who?
Whoever he is, I’m 99% sure he said he has no knowledge of taking any banned substance.
They almost always claim no knowledge of taking PED’s. This is getting tiring.
Somewhere, there is an actual athlete who has accidentally ingested one of these and really has no idea how it happened. It probably isn’t this guy or the other 99.9% of them, but there has to actually be one…maybe.
He definitely has no idea how the banned substance showed up in a test. He has never knowingly taken any prohibited substances, and he intends to turn over every stone in finding out how this could have happened. Any further questions should be directed toward his agent, Chris Colabello.
@Le Grande Orangerie
Well said. I’m still waiting for David Ortiz’s investigation to be concluded. He has either the dumbest investigators on the case or his investigators are amazing geniuses to be running up the bill for this long.
David Ortiz NEVER tested positive for steroids. But popcorn court has already convicted him.
He allegedly test positive by an unsubstantiated report. A list that basically was every power hitter in baseball at the time. If I made up a fictional lists, those are the names I’d put on it too.
It was an experimental list, that had no appeal process, and was suppose to be strictly confidential.
This took place back when PEDs weren’t scientifically precise (Many health supplements had PEDs in them, but didn’t list on packaging, other health supplements,which werent banned, caused false
positives).
Ok Popcorn Court let’s hear your, ‘but it’s obvious’ rebuttal.
But the I hate Red Sox
@dennyd
Big Papi essentially confirmed it himself when he said he would investigate why he tested positive in that test sample survey that was done.
Also, he was another one of Angel Presinal’s clients. That was well known. And Big Papi himself confirmed that he used Presinal’s shakes.
I wonder what side of this is common sense on.
And I hate to break up your world of innocence, but nearly every power hitter from that era were indeed using something. While the rules of MLB were not clear, the use of PEDs have been against U.S. laws. And another caveat in this is that these players have access to the best medical treatment in the world, but they choose to go to those quacks like Presinal, Anthony Galea, etc. Sorry, but when you have access to the best healthcare in the world through your insurance, your wealth, and your team’s health providers, but you choose to go to these known PED dealers, you’re not looking for general or quality healthcare – you’re looking for something else.
In closing…BTW, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens never tested positive for PEDs either.
Perhaps somebody spiked Campbell’s soup?
Well played, Aaron!
Andy Warhol’s atmosphere is really being disturbed by this news.
I don’t really know much about him or the Marlins… how much does this hurt the team?
He was in their rotation but he hasn’t been pitching well. They seem to have a lot of depth in the rotation though (or at least young guys that can get looks)
He’s a rookie long reliever/spot starter with an era over 8 in 11+ innings this year. Seems to have been a marginal option for them with little impact on the roster
well he’s 0-2 so not much?
he was a rule 5 pick and not too good, shouldn’t affect the club much
Judging by his early numbers this will actually help them.
Not at all.. he should’ve never made the team to begin with. He’s a rookie
Addition by subtraction. This is one of those PED suspension that a fan base is happy about.
Some front office people are obsessed with him because it his spin rates. He throws 93 at the hardest with normal breaking ball velocity but apparently has “godly untapped” spin rate potential. So teams have kept up on him for a while. I never wanted him . I wanted Anthony Bender on the team. And now we do. Bender and Pop have Nick Anderson stuff so they could be our crazy bullpen finds this season.
8.74 era! This DHCMT stuff doesn’t work too well.
Oh that stuff works. It just can’t overcome super sucktitude. Imagine how bad he’d be without them.
i love the excuse of “I only had a little bit of banned substance in my system.” how about stop taking banned substanced. Emanuel can get out of here with his supposed vindication or whatever.
That’s not how that works. Not only is that a minuscule amount that wouldn’t impact performance anyways, but it’s incredibly easy for companies that manufacture acceptable supplements to cross contaminate with ones that are banned by the MLB. That’s where picograms come in, I’m no scientist or anything but if somebody is actually cheating, they’re not going to have trace amounts that small in their system.
I’m not sure MLB should be suspending players for DHCMT until the sports world has a better grip on this.
How would this affect his rule-5 status? Like would the Marlins have to carry him an additional 80 days next year now in order to retain his rights?
Curious of this as well.
Suspension doesn’t affect his Rule 5 status. Marlins are probably partially pleased that they get to keep him and not play him, and get to use his roster spot for someone else.
Agree. In some ways it was a godsend. With an ERA approaching 9.00 they couldn’t have sent him down without offering him back to the Rays. Hopefully he’ll take this time to figure things out and come back more effective than he’s been so far.
So to answer my own question, it is now my understanding that a player has to have been on the active roster (as opposed to injured or suspended) for at least 90 days in order for the rule-5 status to end and the selecting team to get full control. Since there’s 172 service days in a season, an 80 game suspension means Campbell can just barely clear that 90 day active mark, assuming he goes back to the active roster after the suspension.
So yeah, in a weird way this could actually work out for both Campbell and the Marlins. The Marlins were probably about to return Campbell since he wasn’t doing to well, but now they’ll at least have the option of carrying him as added depth again at the end of the season should they need him. And for Campbell, while he’ll earn nothing for the next 80 days, if he can prove himself again and the Marlins do end up keeping him, the salary he’ll make in the last month or two of the season would beat the minor league salary he’d have earned had the Marlins cut ties now.
On a side note, this has to open up a roster spot for Anthony Bender now, right?
It’s official! Rejoice!!!
Heck ya, let’s go!
This PED didn’t work for him in the pros, but I’m curious how much it has helped in his minors. His story in Clemson simply wasn’t impressive and kinda shocking he was even drafted at all. Then he truly hasn’t pitched much in the minors and crushed it after never being good before? Maybe this is when he started the new PED? Idk. Pure speculation, but regardless. Odd story for the kid
For those of you who dont know what this drug is
“Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone” is also known as “Oral Turinabol”. As the name implies, it’s taken as a pill. It was developed and patented in 1961 by an East German Pharmaceutical company and used as a performance enhancing anabolic steroid for decades (known as “State Plan 14.25”, the extent and success of EG doping wasn’t fully understood until the 1990’s). Its one of those PEDs that’s mainly responsible for all those Communist gold medals handed out from then until tests were developed to detect it. It’s a bit unique in that it’s formulated so as to NOT cause the user to grow breasts. It does this by suppressing the feminizing hormone estrogen. If you’re a woman taking this stuff, over time you’re going to look and sound like a dude. Deep voice. Body hair. Acne. Inability to see dirt on furniture or dishes in a sink. In addition to these traits, you’ll also grow bigger muscles, gain speed, have much better endurance, and fancy a hammer drill as an accessory. As anyone can tell, the attraction to it for male athletes is going to be pretty profound.
Now, why NO ONE should be taking this crap.
First, these days it’s not made by a pharmaceutical company any longer. It was discontinued as a sanitarily produced, quality controlled, dose accurate compound back in 1994. It is only available through black market labs. Most, if not all, of these are going to have dubious sanitary quality control, dose accuracy, and even compound/drug formulation quality. You stand an excellent chance of poisoning yourself or becoming stupidly stomach sick. Then, should you actually get some of the real thing in a dose that’s correct and that won’t render you confined to your bathroom with The Scours, you stand an excellent chance of destroying your liver. Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone is well known to be very hard on the liver and many of the Eastern Bloc athletes dosed with it (often without their knowledge) suffered hepatic (liver) and renal (kidney) failure in later life as a result. Few lived long full lives after being on a regime of dehydrochlormethyltestosterone. The female athletes suffered perhaps worse than the males, too. Lastly, the tests to detect it are very good these days. If you’re a professional athlete and someone offers you this crap, you’ll need to walk away from it: your career is OVER if this is how you plan to cheat.
First, thank you for taking the time to share this info.
Second, I started to read the Wall Street Journal article linked, but you get a paragraph, then have to subscribe. I did glean that there was controversy in MLB about this one, and that the union asked that 100 picograms of the substance needs to be found in a player’s system before a test is deemed positive. A quick google tells me that one picogram, is one TRILLIONTH of a gram…
If these guys are being popped with suspensions for less than 100 picograms, it’s entirely possible that it’s unfair. As another poster mentioned, that’s such a miniscule amount of something in your system that you’d derive no benefit from it anyways. JJ954, do you have any additional info? I’ll be seeing what I can find.
Not saying all these guys are innocent, but it sounds like MLB’s testing policies for DHCMT need fixing. Please take the time to watch Kent Emmanuel’s video:
t.co/mrzbuh5yfK?amp=1
Yeah, company’s have been caught cutting their whey protein with this stuff. Kent and this guy may have a point
Looks like Jeter brought some of the good ole Yankees work ethic with him to the fish
You mean that ethic that Robinson Cano was happily let go of by the Yankees when no one knew why? And the Mariners were too happy to move on from?
Yankees were more than happy to employ Rodriguez, Giambi, Clemens, etc all while Jeter was there. Cano just left because he found more money elsewhere otherwise they would have gladly kept his spot at the juice bar
I mean with an average name like that, you’re probably average at baseball and need a boost…
Now anyone really believe these players who get caught violating the drug policies saying they would never knowingly take the illegal substance & don’t know how the drug got into their system.
They all need to admit they did something wrong & they got caught & quit making excuses for taking the illegal substance
Or maybe we should finally admit that modern anti-doping system is broken and highly hypocritical. On one side we have nonames who receive ridiculous bans for amounts of substances that should be considered as statistical error. On the other side, we have roid superstars, like Williams sisters and Simona Bales who considered clean athletes, because they have magic papers, saying those athletes have some cheesy medical condition. PEDs should be allowed to everyone or to no one with no exceptions.
I guess it’s good for the Marlins as they won’t have to worry about keeping him on the roster for the whole season
This actually helps the Marlins. The situation of having to return him to the Rays literally came up in the last couple of days, so now they can replace him on the roster, and not have to worry about that for now
Wow. Sounds like juicing really helped his era
Story should say “picograms”. A pictogram is a prehistoric drawing.
Thank goodness!
I can’t imagine how bad he would’ve been without using PEDs.
DHCMT has shown up in some company’s whey protein. He may, in fact, be telling the truth
Man there are some crazy comments on this article that make it seem Campbell could be innocent. The banned substance in question is a weird one (and one not professionally made anymore) and it takes like .000001mg of it in your bloodstream to get you to fail.
GONEcarlo posted a link to a video of a minor league who was suspended from it and it’s very interesting. Sadly this seems like something that people could mess with your career out if biterness or something… This should be fun
On the other hand my shining light Anthony Bender is on the roster now.