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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 in media reports to Biogenesis 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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Other players may not be disciplined because MLB investigators could not dig up enough evidence to warrant penalties.
It remains unclear how many of the players will accept the suspensions and how many will fight MLB’s decision, although A-Rod’s attorney, David Cornwell, has indicated that Rodriguez will appeal the looming suspension.
Tuesday’s sit-down represents one of the last steps before Rodriguez and other players linked to the now-defunct Coral Gables clinic will be formally disciplined in what will be the most aggressive and comprehensive anti-doping action in the history of the sport.
MLB is expected to announce the suspensions by the end of the week.
STEVE NESIUS for New York Daily News
A-Rod may want to run and hide by the end of this week, as sources tell the Daily News that is when he and eight other Major Leaguers will be suspended for connections to Biogenesis.
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MLB executive vice president Rob Manfred and other baseball executives huddled with Players Association officials and the players’ representatives to inform them about the pending suspensions, sources familiar with the meeting told the Daily News.
In the case of Rodriguez, sources say that MLB investigators have gathered overwhelming evidence that he used performance-enhancing drugs in 2010, 2011 and 2012. MLB officials are believed to have gathered hundreds of emails, text messages and phone records that prove the aging third baseman continued to use banned drugs long after he acknowledged in 2009 that he used steroids from 2001 to 2003, his years with the Texas Rangers.
The investigation that will likely result in Rodriguez’s suspension began in August 2012, when the Daily News reported that Cabrera and his associates attempted to avoid a 50-game suspension for doping by claiming that a legal product had caused a positive drug test.
MLB investigators quickly determined that Cabrera and his associates were bluffing, in part because a website for the product Cabrera claimed had caused his positive test had been created shortly before he met with baseball officials.
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That investigation ultimately resulted in the suspension last week of former National League MVP Ryan Braun for the remainder of the season.
Rodriguez had his longest workout at the Yankees’ Tampa complex since team physician Christopher Ahmad diagnosed him with a Grade 1 strain of his left quad on July 21. The aging infielder – Rodriguez turned 38 on Saturday – didn’t look like an athlete suffering from a quad injury on Tuesday; he showed far more mobility and energy during agility drills, wind sprints, batting practice and infield practice than he displayed during his minor league rehab assignment earlier this month.
Rodriguez, who has missed the entire 2013 season after hip surgery in January, is scheduled to play in a simulated game on Thursday and could join the Yankees as early as Friday in San Diego. But at this point it seems unlikely that Rodriguez will ever step foot on a major league diamond again.
STEVE NESIUS for New York Daily News
Rodriguez takes ground balls on Tuesday, but it is likely all for naught.
If Rodriguez indicates that he will appeal his looming suspension to stay on the field and protect his contract, commissioner Bud Selig is prepared to invoke his rarely used right to suspend a player to preserve the integrity of the game – a power enshrined in Article XI, Section A1b of the game’s collective bargaining agreement. Doing so would effectively bypass the joint drug agreement between MLB and the union. Such a suspension would be effective immediately.
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While Rodriguez could theoretically appeal such a suspension within 30 days, Selig himself would be the one to review the appeal in a hearing and “render a written decision as soon as practicable” afterwards. All told, that process could potentially keep Rodriguez off the field deep into September.
If the punishment Selig were to impose in such a scenario was excessive, Rodriguez could turn to another provision of the basic agreement that gives him the opportunity to ask arbitrator Frederic Horowitz to review it; Horowitz, however, does not have the right to stay A-Rod’s suspension.
So invoking the Article XI would effectively sideline A-Rod for much of the remaining season. MLB is also expected to hit Rodriguez with an additional suspension for doping.
By using Article XI, Selig would risk a federal court case or a reopening of the collective bargaining agreement. If the Players’ Association decides to reopen the CBA to negotiation, the union would still find it difficult to defend Rodriguez because many of its players have abandoned support for the Yankees’ disgraced third baseman.
Another possibility is for Rodriguez to follow Ryan Braun’s lead and settle for a suspension that would take him off the field for the rest of this year and possible the entire 2014 season as well. A-Rod would serve the ban without collecting pay, but would still have a chance to collect the remaining $ 60 million the Yankees would owe him from 2015 to 2017.
But it is unclear if MLB officials would even agree to such a penalty.
Cornwell told ESPN radio on Monday that MLB officials had not then approached Rodriguez’s advisers about a settlement, but he never ruled out a potential deal, saying instead that A-Rod was focusing on what to do after a suspension is handed down.
“We are focused on an appeal,” Cornwell said.
