New Steroid-Testing Program

[All-Night John]

Baseball players and owners have reached a new agreement on steroid testing, and the much-harsher penalties for players testing positive will include suspensions on the first offense.

The agreement is expected to be announced Thursday from the owners' meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Penalties will be more severe than those built into the current agreement. Sources familiar with the negotiations have told ESPN.com's Jayson Stark that the agreement will include the following components:

Suspensions on the first offense will carry a maximum length of 10 games, a baseball source told ESPN the Magazine's Buster Olney. Under the system in place for 2004, a player would have had to test positive five times before the first suspension.

All players will be subject to year-round random testing. Every major league player will be tested at least once a year.
There are no stipulations requiring that a player be tested more than once. But an unspecified number of players will be selected at random to be tested numerous other times throughout the year. So unlike the current system, a player would not know, following his one mandatory test, that he had no future tests to worry about for the rest of the year.

Players can now be tested during the offseason. In the first two seasons of the agreement, testing took place only between the opening of spring training and the last day of the season.

A large number of substances would be added to the list of banned drugs, including THG and various steroid precursors. The new agreement does not address the issue of stimulants.
ESPN article (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=1965565)

Getting better, and it's about fucking time.

[Arandar]

Now only if they could do some work on the issue of a salary cap.

[All-Night John]

No chance of that happening until they have to negotiate a new CBA, and don't count on it happening that soon. Though the fact that the Yankees didn't even try to get Beltran shows that the luxury tax threshold is having some effect. They'll undoubtedly just renogotiate that.

[Arandar]

Its kind of funny how the Devil Rays are almost out of buisness because they suck so much that no one goes to their games, yet the Mets who suck even worse these past few years have all this money to spend of Pedro and Beltran. I just wonder if its going to do anything at all. I don't think we're going to this year, but I want to play the Mets so much. If nothing else then to just get Pedro to shut the hell up about him being "disrespected" and it "not being about the money."

[BLaz]

This steroid program will still fail. It will have to take a player to get in trouble 4 times with it until a good punishment is placed. 1st trouble = 10 days? Thats pretty stupid.

[Burr]

Its kind of funny how the Devil Rays are almost out of buisness because they suck so much that no one goes to their games, yet the Mets who suck even worse these past few years have all this money to spend of Pedro and Beltran.

Actually Vince Naimoli is pocketing some dough thanks to his cheapness. As for the Mets, well it's the New York market. You can do whatever the fuck you want, put a bunch of midgets on the field and you still get millions of dollars in revenue. To me what's more hilarious is the awful attendence the Marlins get, almost on par with the Rays despite winning TWO World Series in the past decade. If that's not a hopeless baseball market I don't know what is. People in Miami just don't give a shit.

[All-Night John]

Yeah, New York is an infinitely better baseball market than Florida. Though they finished with almost the same record, the Mets averaged close to 30,000 fans last year, wherease Tampa only got 16,000 a game, which was only better than the nomadic Expos.

The Mets also have their regional cable channel starting up, which should provide a sizeable amount of revenue. The YES network is what gives the Yankees such a huge advantage over everyone else.