MLB Prepares to Suspend 9 Players

Major League Baseball officials told union leaders during a meeting at the Players Association’s midtown Manhattan offices on Tuesday that they plan to suspend Alex Rodriguez and eight other players who allegedly obtained performance-enhancing drugs from a South Florida anti-aging clinic.

Most of the players will be suspended for 50 games, but some – including the Yankees’ embattled superstar — face stiffer penalties for lying to MLB investigators or interfering in baseball’s year-long Biogenesis investigation.

Not all of the players linked to Biogenesis in media reports face discipline, sources have told The News. Two former Yankees — Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Melky Cabrera and Oakland A’s pitcher Bartolo Colon — will not be punished because they already have been suspended as a result of their links to Biogenesis and its owner, self-styled “biochemist” Anthony Bosch.

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This doping has to be curtailed. It's reaching the point where no one trusts player's stats and sportswriters are refusing to induct people into the Hall of Fame because of the (frequently justified) suspicion that they are frauds. In short the epidemic of chemical cheating poses the most direct threat to the integrity of major league baseball since the days of gambling and fixing the World Series. My view is that it should be dealt with in a similar manner, a zero tolerance policy. And no this is not an ant-libertarian position. MLB is not the government and we are not talking about prison. Employers have a right to hold employees to standards relevant to their job.