As you no doubt recall, last year, Major League Baseball was rocked by the revelation that a number of big league players had been working with a clinic in Miami that was alleged to have (and, in MLB’s eyes, proved to have) distributed performance enhancing substances to those players. A rash of suspensions ensued, and it was all pretty incredible. (Incidentally, do you remember how it was all coming to a head right at the Trade Deadline, and it was unclear whether we would learn of the players’ identities before or after the Deadline, resulting in rumor craziness? That was nuts.)
If a new ESPN/Outside the Lines report is accurate, we could be in for another wave of revelations and suspensions.
OTL, which broke a number of the original Biogenesis-related stories, has a piece on the DEA arrest of Tony Bosch, the man behind Biogenesis. Embedded within, there are things like this:
Multiple law enforcement officials told Outside the Lines said the names of several professional baseball players not previously identified came up in the investigation. The names have not been released, but the sources said the names likely will be in discovery filings.
And reporter T.J. Quinn tweeted this:
Two law enforcement sources tell me investigation revealed previously unnamed MLB players. Names will be revealed. Expect more suspensions.
— T.J. Quinn (@TJQuinnESPN) August 5, 2014
Oh boy.
In these situations, of course we’ll all follow with rapt attention, but I can’t help but feel a little sick in the pit of my stomach. The last thing you want to see is another black eye for baseball, and, BABIP gods forbid that any Cubs player is caught up in this thing.