Aw, man. This bums me out more than anything else when you consider that he is a star player of a certain age who was still having success on a huge contract.
BREAKING NEWS: According to off the record sources and non-official reports, dominican All-Star Robinson Cano will be suspended for Steroid Use, could be announced today.#ZDeportes @z101digital @ZDeportes
— Héctor Gómez (@hgomez27) May 15, 2018
Source confirms: #Mariners’ Cano will be suspended 80 games for violating baseball’s joint drug agreement. https://t.co/rIcEp7Sztd
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) May 15, 2018
Cano suspension is for a diuretic, which is seen as a masking agent. suspension is treated as a PED tho.
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) May 15, 2018
Cano, 35, signed a 10-year, $240 million deal with the Mariners before the 2014 season and had produced at an above-average clip – usually well-above-average – since then. Now, not only is all of that going to be subjected to deep suspicion, but his legacy going forward will similarly be tainted. Fair or unfair, that’s how it is when this happens to a guy who has performed very well. Cano was already a borderline Hall-of-Fame-caliber talent and it looked like he would continue to be successful for years to come. Maybe he still will be, but in the current climate, he has no chance of getting into the Hall with a PED suspension on his record.
Cano recently broke his hand, so he was going to be out for a while anyway, and he will now additionally be ineligible for the postseason should the Mariners make it.
Although I’m one of those guys who has sympathy for players who used PED during the wild west days of the 90s and early 2000s – the league borderline encouraged it – I have much less sympathy for players who do so in the current era. This doesn’t mean Cano is a bad guy or that everything he did was PED-inflated, but it does mean that he has apparently being doing something that is clearly against the rules. And he’ll be punished pursuant to those rules.
I imagine we’ll get an explanation of sorts in due time.
And the suspension is official:
Mariners 2B Robinson Canó suspended 80 games after testing positive for Furosemide. He will start the suspension immediately. pic.twitter.com/cQs41P6tfD
— MLB (@MLB) May 15, 2018
Also, I don’t believe this kind of explanation is going to fly:
— Robinson Cano (@RobinsonCano) May 15, 2018
He was taking a medication for a medical issue, but didn’t simply get league clearance when there was $12 million in salary at stake in a suspension. And we are to believe that was just an oopsie? I have trouble with that.
Also, this doesn’t look good:
according to the basic agreement, failing for a diuretic/masking agreement doesn't trigger an automatic ban. the IPA (independent program administer) is charged with ruling on whether the player intended to mask. the IPA must have ruled that cano did intend to mask.
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) May 15, 2018