Murray Chass: ARE RED SOX REELING ALREADY?

Shaughnessy is too good to have to invent anything. He neither invented anything in this instance nor accused Ortiz of using steroids and their cousins. What he did was take his skepticism and his curiosity, good traits for a newspaperman to have, and ask Ortiz about steroids. Ortiz’s responses did not indicate anger of being accused of wrong doing.

I would compare the Ortiz column to the columns I have written about Mike Piazza and my suspicions about his possible use of steroids. I didn’t accuse him of using steroids, but I was and continue to be skeptical.

In the Ortiz case, a person more prominent than the pedestrian bloggers came to the player’s defense. Tom Werner, the Red Sox chairman, posted his own column on Redsox.com last Friday, and it quickly spread to other sites. [...]

We are also in a new sports world. When I started in this business more than 50 years ago, we didn’t have anything like steroids to deal with. Before we caught on to widespread use, we were criticized for not paying closer attention and asking relevant, probing questions.

Now we are being criticized for paying too much attention and asking relevant, probing questions.

The news media are not responsible for asking, in what may be some circumstances, questionable questions. The players created this era and this environment. If players get caught up in being accused with circumstantial evidence, let them complain to Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. [...]

The questions Shaughnessy asked Ortiz were based on what we have learned from our belated entry into steroids coverage, certain types of injuries and improved production at an advanced age (see Bonds), for two examples.

Shaughnessy could have written his suspicions without talking to Ortiz, but what he did was far more acceptable and correct. When I tried to ask Piazza about his alleged use, he refused to talk about it. When I asked the editor of his recently published book and Piazza’s literary agent before publication if he would write about steroids, they refused to say.

“I’m not going to talk to you,” said David Black, the agent, whom I have known for years and who encouraged me to write a book so he could represent me.

Chris Getz removes name from list of homerless streaks

On Tuesday night against Atlanta, Royals second baseman Chris Getz did this for the first time since 2009, for the first time in 954 at-bats ...

That would be third home run of his career, which to date spans 1,350 plate appearances.

Getz’s rare clout calls to mind current notable homerless streaks—a list from which Getz has, of course, just removed himself. Here’s the rundown from FoxSports Kansas City’s Joel Goldberg:

Ben Revere it is! Revere, it should be noted, has no major-league homers to his credit. He did manage to tally five in the minors (over a span of 403 games), the last coming in 2011.

On Tuesday night against Atlanta, Royals second baseman Chris Getz did this for the first time since 2009, for the first time in 954 at-bats ...

That would be third home run of his career, which to date spans 1,350 plate appearances.

Getz’s rare clout calls to mind current notable homerless streaks—a list from which Getz has, of course, just removed himself. Here’s the rundown from FoxSports Kansas City’s Joel Goldberg:

Ben Revere it is! Revere, it should be noted, has no major-league homers to his credit. He did manage to tally five in the minors (over a span of 403 games), the last coming in 2011.

Alex Rodriguez Believed to Be Behind Purchase of Clinic Documents

The New York Times reported online Thursday that Major League Baseball had purchased documents from a former employee at the clinic, which operated under the name Biogenesis of America and is now closed, in an effort to uncover evidence that would link the clinic to the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs. The article also stated that one major league player had also purchased clinic documents from a former clinic employee so that they could be destroyed. That player was not identified until Friday, when the two people said it was Rodriguez, the 37-year-old Yankees third baseman currently rehabilitating from off-season hip surgery.

A spokesman for Rodriguez flatly denied the allegation Friday.

Steve Phillips: Suspensions soon

Suspensions? Steve Phillips? Brooke Hundley applauds this.

Former general manager Steve Phillips said he thinks Major League Baseball is poised to suspend players linked to the Biogenesis clinic in Miami, including Brewers leftfielder Ryan Braun.

Now with SiriusXM Radio, Phillips made his remarks about the potential suspensions during an interview with the Journal Sentinel on Friday about the upcoming baseball season.

“If I had a player named in the Biogenesis story, I’d be very concerned right now,” said Phillips. “The only guy I think might be OK is Gio Gonzales because they have documentation that all of his stuff was all legitimate - supplements and vitamins and not the other stuff.

“But the fact that they suspended a minor-league player ( Cesar Puello) who was associated with Biogenesis means that they believe there is enough evidence to do so, even without a positive drug test, and it’s a matter of crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s before they move forward with major-league players as well,” Phillips said. “That would be my assumption based on what has taken place so far.”

...Phillips said he thinks MLB’s suspension of players is imminent.

“I’ve got to tell you, my inclination is that there will be major-league players suspended, and I would include Braun as one of those strong candidates,” Phillips said.

Calcaterra: Ryan Braun is “MLB’s Public Enemy No.1”

“Milwaukee Melodrama” now playing at the Biograph Theater!

Bob Nightengale reports in USA Today about Major League Baseball’s efforts to investigate players named in the Biogenesis documents. Of somewhat surprising note: Nightengale says some 90 players appear in the records. Of less surprising note: it’s the big fish that MLB is clearly focusing on: Alex Rodriguez and, even more so, Ryan Braun:

  There might be plenty of minor leaguers to go down before this is over, maybe a few major league players, too, but there are really two players who captivate MLB’s interest. New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez and Braun. And Braun happens to be MLB’s Public Enemy No.1.

  His successful appeal of a positive testosterone test led to major revisions in baseball’s sample collection process last year. Baseball officials, from the top executives in New York to their field investigators, refuse to let it go. They want Braun — badly. They have been relentless in their pursuit, trying to make life as miserable as possible for him.

...But there is a troubling element to it. The biggest mistake of the Mitchell Report was how it was hellbent to get a list of names and make examples/token victims out of some while failing, almost entirely, to grasp what was really going on with PEDs in baseball in such a way as to actually combat their proliferation and use.  If, in this case, baseball has a monomaniacal focus on carrying out some vendetta against Braun and, because of it, fails to undertake a systematic investigation of the Biogenesis matter, it is once again going down the road of the Mitchell Report.

If Nightengale is right and there are 90 players named, there should be interviews and investigations of 90 players. Or, at the very least, investigations of enough of them to get a full picture of what’s going on down in Miami. The point should not be to settle some score with Ryan Braun. He should be meted out justice, if justice is so justified, in the same manner and measure as any other player involved.

Cesar Carrillo banned 100 games

The Detroit Tigers say minor league right-hander Cesar Carrillo has been suspended 100 games for violating baseball’s minor league drug prevention and treatment program.

The team posted a release on its website Friday, saying the commissioner’s office announced the suspension.

Carrillo’s suspension is effective at the start of the season. He is currently on the roster of Erie, which is Detroit’s Double-A affiliate.

Carrillo’s name was included in a Miami New Times report earlier this year, when the alternative weekly newspaper said it had acquired records from a Florida clinic the paper said sold performance-enhancing drugs.

What’s the next shoe?

Ostler: Colon and Cabrera: No shame in steroids

Ostlercization from the baseball community isn’t shame enough?!

Among the things that ain’t what they used to be: the shame and disgrace of being busted for steroids.

Exhibits C and C: Bartolo Colon and Melky Cabrera.

They’re both back in baseball - although Colon has five games left on his suspension - and will be earning nice paychecks, without having to go the Hester Prynne route (look it up, you lazy kids!) where you wear your sins forever.

When baseball had work stoppages, minor-league players who crossed picket lines were marked forever as “scabs.” But if you’re a convicted juicer, hey, play ball.

Colon and Cabrera are doing fine. Cabrera, now a Toronto Blue Jay, is tearing up the Grapefruit League, .361 with power. If he carries that bat into the regular season, how long before Moose-Melk Men appear?

...If any of Colon’s or Cabrera’s teammates have a problem with a teammate who just got sprung from the PED slammer, those complaints have not been heard.

And I wonder if Cabrera and Colon - and other juicers - might even earn a little quiet, dark respect from other players. Hey, he loves the game so much he’s willing to take risks. If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’, and I want teammates who are tryin’.

As for fans, there will be the odd catcall on the road, but it’s doubtful we’ll see anyone toss a giant syringe at Colon or Cabrera.

...The moral, I hope, is not that juicing is OK, even beneficial. Reputations and legacies are still tarnished, bodies are harmed in ways we don’t entirely know yet, team and individual triumphs are cheapened, character is compromised.

Juicing is not the way to go, kids. But punishment-wise, it beats robbing banks.

Rumor: Cano, A-Rod, Braun To Be Suspended for Failed PED Test

  Anonymous Source: Cano, Granderson, A-Rod and Braun will all be suspended for failing PED test this season.

  — Joe Bisceglie (@joebisceglie) March 4, 2013

You’d be inclined to be skeptical, and for fair reason — Bisceglie doesn’t name his source. This kind of story is explosive, and deserves tender care before people start going on witch hunts and throwing names out there with no rationale. But consider this: Bisceglie correctly prognosticated that Melky Cabrera would be suspended last season for a failed PED test almost a month before his suspension came.

  My sources tell me that Melky Cabrera will be suspended soon for violation of MLB’s PED policy

  — Joe Bisceglie (@joebisceglie) July 18, 2012

Davidoff: A conversation with Goose Gossage

Take his HOF plaque down! The red-winged Goose strikes again!

KD: Do you feel the same way about guys who used greenies?

GG: Oh, You’re not even talking about the same. …I used greenies. I’ve done them. I didn’t have to get up unless I drank a case of beer and stayed up all night. I might take a greenie just to stay awake in the bullpen. But it wasn’t a performance-enhancing drug.

KD: It was illegal, though, right?

GG: Yeah. Does the crime fit the punishment? Are you saying that greenies and steroids, you’re talking about aspirin and whatever.

KD: I guess, guys like (Bob) Gibson and Schmidt, Mike Schmidt, have said, “Hey, if we had access to steroids, I’m not sure I could have passed.” I feel like guys from the ‘60s and ‘70s used the best stuff available to them, which was greenies. And then the stuff got better.

GG: Greenies is like me drinking 10 cups of coffee.

KD: Yeah. Except it’s illegal.

GG: OK. So I’ll admit that I did it. It didn’t make me better. It didn’t make me throw harder. It made me stay awake. And I said this, too: If they deem it that greenies are on the same level as PEDs, then take my plaque down. I suffer the consequences like these __ do.

There’s DUIs and then there’s where you kill you somebody. Is there the same punishment?

Renck: Colorado Rockies’ Michael Cuddyer wants performance-enhancing cheaters hit hard

But Andrés Galarraga’s 1996 splits are okey-dokey.

“The sport keeps getting black eyes. You get through one storm and you get punched in the other eye with another one,” Cuddyer told The Denver Post after a weather-shortened practice. “It gets old.”

...Cuddyer wants a one-year suspension for the first positive test and a lifetime ban for the second.

“I think 100 percent guys would be for it. I can’t speak for everybody, but listening to certain guys’ comments and talking to certain guys, I think guys would be all for stiffer penalties,” said Cuddyer, 33, who is entering his 13th season in the majors, second with the Rockies. “That’s a full year’s pay and then you can never play again. If that’s not a deterrent, I don’t know what is.”

...The players I talk to want a tough, strong policy. They want a level playing field with major penalties for rogues.

“The game is getting clean, but when we continue to see stuff (like Biogenesis) pop up, it looks like we are not. It would definitely take clean players stepping up and asking for more (discipline),” Cuddyer said. “I firmly believe there’s more clean players than not. If we are serious about this, we should do it.”

Interestingly, Cuddyer cited Braun’s case last spring as a reason for more severe punishment. That Braun escaped suspension because of a chain-of-custody violation with his urine sample is proof the system works.

“You hear the argument: ‘What about a false positive?’ I get that. At the same time, we’ve seen guys admit to it and guys who have gone through the appeals process and not be suspended,” Cuddyer said. “That tells me if there’s a mistake, it gets righted in the end.”

...“If baseball players get held to a higher standard, that’s fine,” Cuddyer said. “I get tired of the continuing cycle of baseball getting punched in the nose.”

Edes: Sources say Schilling’s [PED] claims untrue

So, this is definitely a thing.

Curt Schilling’s claim in 2008 that a member of the team’s medical staff raised the possibility of treating his injured shoulder with a performance-enhancing drug was “completely baseless,” investigations conducted by both the Boston Red Sox and Major League Baseball concluded, according to two baseball sources with direct knowledge of the investigations.

...

The investigations were thorough, the sources said, and the players’ union was informed, and both probes came to the same conclusion.  “Completely baseless,” one source said. “It didn’t happen. The staff member did not say it, and he had no PED history whatsoever.”

Schilling told ESPNBoston.com there was no team probe into the incident.

“Schilling didn’t stand up enough [to investigators] for what he said happened,” one MLB source said. “Our investigation also discovered there was some [bad] history between Schilling and [Reinold].  “Investigators interviewed one witness to the conversation, who said he did not think in any way that [Reinold] said, ‘Hey, this is something you should consider.’ “

Murray Chass on Sports: CHEATERS DRESSED IN UNIFORMS AND SUITS

NOT FAIR THAT THE NEW YORK TIMES GOT THE MIKE PIAZZA BOOK BEFORE BLOGGERS, MR. PRESIDENT

Generally, however, the Daily News has done a far more impressive and aggressive job than The New York Times, whose sports section these days seems more interested in snowboarding and dog-sledding than legitimate news. For much of the run of the Bosch stories, the Times has quoted another publication or Web site.

In fact, the Miami New Times has appeared so frequently – 9 days in a 12-day span before Sunday – that the papers’ names seem to be blending and emerging as the Miami/New York New/Old Times or simply the New/Old Times.

At the end of that period, the Old Times, by its own admission, “has not independently authenticated the Bosch records….”

Does this mean the records are suspect? Or might it mean the Old Times has been unable to match the New Times’ report; in other words, the Old Times doesn’t have the documents so it doesn’t know if they are or aren’t legitimate?

There was a time when the Old Times would not give credence to another publication’s report if the Old Times couldn’t learn of the report’s information on its own. Maybe the Old Times has changed its policy because if it didn’t carry other publications’ reports, it would miss a lot of stories and deprive its readers of information readers of other newspapers would know.

This is not to say the Old Times has not had stories other papers haven’t had. Last Thursday the Old Times quoted “recent associates of Bosch,” who doubted that he was capable of being “at the nexus of a major doping scandal.”

My first thought was the Old Times, unable to match the New Times story, was trying to debunk it. That sort of gamesmanship has gone on forever in the industry, especially where there has been fierce competition, such as in New York with its two tabloids, the Daily News and the Post.

Will Carroll: Glossary of Drugs in Miami Biogenesis Clinic Records Tied to A-Rod, Others

The controversy surrounding the apparent client list of a Miami clinic that includes Alex Rodriguez, Melky Cabrera, and others continues to be a major story after more than a week after the Miami New Times released it. While the specifics are still under investigation and names leak out from various outlets, the heart of the matter is still poorly understood. What are these drugs that are listed near the names (or code names) of professional athletes?

This article will provide some answers. (Many of which I also provided in a Thursday appearance on MLB Network’s Hot Stove). Please note that I am going to try and keep this as simple and non-technical as I possibly can.

NY Daily News: A-Rod goes BATTY, feels Yankees and MLB are out to get him: sources

I guess there wasn’t enough room in the headline to use NY Daily News twice.

Alex Rodriguez is taking his wildest swing yet in his fight against steroid allegations: The Yankees and MLB are conspiring to push him out of the game.

Sources say the embattled Yankee star is “scared” that bigger forces are at work to try to discredit him and sink his career. Holed up in Miami, Rodriguez has been huddling with an army of lawyers and PR people as the performance-enhancing drug scandal enveloping him intensifies.

“He’s scared, because he thinks this is so unbelievably false, and he’s wondering who could be behind this,” said a source, referring to last week’s Miami New Times report linking A-Rod to an alleged Miami-area performance-enhancing drug scandal. “He thinks something could be going on larger than anyone might think.”

The source added that Rodriguez is wondering if the Yankees or even Major League Baseball are behind the latest controversy.

Le Batard: Issues of morality in sports exist in confusing gray area

We are OK with Kirk Gibson hitting one of the most famous home runs ever on one steroid (cortisone), but we slam the Hall of Fame door on the face of everybody else who might have used the anabolic kind. Granted, cortisone is not a banned performance enhancer, but it certainly enhanced Gibson’s performance, which wouldn’t have been possible without it. Lost in the shouting of “Cheater!” and “Fraud!” from a pill-popping America is how often athletes have to go through the pharmacy for the healing properties of hormones — not just to hit home runs but because what they do for a daily living really hurts…

But you have to admit we’ve arrived in a barbaric, confusing place when the following is true: Destroying your body by cutting off your finger or playing with a catheter in your penis is not against the rules, but using some kind of deer antler spray to speed up healing is, and we spend a lot more time questioning the morality of athletes than we do the morality of the athletic culture or its rules.

Murray Chass on Sports: YANKS CHANGE; NOTHING NEW FOR A-ROD

RUBEN RIVERA NO MAN OF HONOR, MR. KING FAYSAL.

Fay Vincent, the former commissioner, was skeptical of the denials.

“Who’s going to believe the players after Rose and Armstrong?” he asked, referring to Pete Rose, in whose banishment from baseball he was involved, and Lance Armstrong. “Some of them are telling the truth, but it’s difficult to believe them after everything.”

Vincent favors a drug-testing rule similar to baseball’s rule prohibiting betting on baseball. Violate the rule once, and you’re out.

“The rule has worked,” he said in a telephone interview. “That deterrent really works. I think we’re going to come to it in baseball. Three bites at the steroids apple doesn’t work.”

M.L.B. and the union have made testing increasingly harder for players to evade positive tests. The two sides have agreed to blood testing for the first time, and players, Manfred said, will find it more difficult to use the kind of drug regimen alleged Biogenesis players might have used.

Vincent, though, raised another deterrent, the one that is used in Saudi Arabia to stop people from committing any kind of theft. Thieves, he pointed out, have their hands cut off.

“Petty theft doesn’t exist with the Saudis,” he said.

NY Times: Baseball Officials Navigate Puzzle of Anti-Aging Clinics

In recent months, the [MLB] investigators have uncovered evidence that an employee for the player agents Sam and Seth Levinson was one of those intermediaries. Last summer, investigators discovered that the employee, Juan Carlos Nunez, had helped Cabrera hatch a cover-up scheme to avoid being suspended for testing positive for elevated testosterone. Cabrera received a 50-game suspension.

Baseball officials believe that the Levinsons knew about the plot, although the players union has cleared them of wrongdoing. After discovering the plot, Major League Baseball began to more closely scrutinize Nunez and the Levinsons. That led investigators to clinics in Florida.

Three of the players identified in the Miami New Times article — Cabrera, Gio Gonzalez and Nelson Cruz — were the Levinsons’ clients.

The two baseball officials said Friday that many of their investigators were trying to learn more about the clinic. “It’s all hands on deck,” one official said.

The investigators have sought to talk to Romero and Acevedo [Bosch’s former investor and partner in the clinic, respectively], among others, the officials said.

When baseball’s investigators began looking into Nunez, the Levinsons and the clinic last summer, they created an improvised war room in the commissioner’s Park Avenue office in New York, where they mapped out a web of people tied to the clinic. Acevedo was among those people, according to one of the officials.

Subtract Nelson Cruz from the Rangers’ opening day lineup

If I’m Nolan Ryan, if I’m Jon Daniels, then I’m privately moving ahead by immediately subtracting Nelson Cruz from the Rangers’ 2013 opening-season plans.

Nellie is going down. Going down for 50 games.

Matt Holliday calls for a player to miss an entire 162-game season for a first-time steroid offense

Holliday: Descension Day.

Steve Melewski: In this interview from MLB Network Radio, Matt Holliday of the St. Louis Cardinals calls for a player to miss an entire 162-game season for a first-time offense and be suspended for life with the possibility to apply for reinstatement with a second offense. I like how he thinks and perhaps it’s time to move in that direction.

Major League Baseball now has more stringent testing. Now the time has come for more stringent penalties for cheaters.

Nightengale: Clemens attorney: A-Rod will never get reputation back

Hardin: Nature and Man’s HOF Fate.

“What we did with Roger didn’t work. He denied it from every rooftop he could. What we discovered with Roger was that his denial just brought more scorn. After awhile, we just shut up. There was nothing more we could offer from the dialogue.

“But I will say that if a person didn’t do it, they shouldn’t cave in and say they did it, just to make it go away.’‘

Hardin realized even after being victorious in trial that the public perception of Clemens wouldn’t be dramatically altered, which was confirmed when the seven-time Cy Young award winner received only 37.6% of the vote in this year’s the Hall of Fame ballot.

“I don’t think nobody will ever look at the evidence before they cast their next vote,’’ Hardin says. “The trouble is that Roger was lumped together with (Barry) Bonds and (Sammy) Sosa. The other two guys, everybody knows they did it. There’s no question that Bonds did it. Everybody knows that. And Sosa proved positive. And since Roger was accused, he was thrown in the same group.’‘

Bonds testified that he never knowingly used steroids. Sosa tested positive in an anonymous 2003 test, according to the New York Times, but has denied that he ever used steroids.

“I don’t think anything is ever going to change,’’ Hardin says, “no matter what Roger says.

“You never get your reputation back.

“Alex Rodriguez will find that out.’‘

MSNBC: Fmr. Sen. Mitchell: Performance-enhancing drugs here to stay

The latest Mitchell Report: Electrolytes to Chuckolytes.

Mitchell, whose report helped lead to new rules regarding drug testing, said the problem isn’t going away. “Every society has laws against robbery and murder, yet everyone knows that robbery and murder are not going to end. It’s managing an ongoing human problem. That’s the case with performance-enhancing drugs,” Mitchell told Chuck Todd on The Daily Rundown. “It’s a problem of…keeping pace, reducing the incentives to use and…increasing vigilance, regulation and punishment for those who use.” Major League Baseball released a statement saying its in the midst of an “active investigation” into the latest allegations and noted that the developments amount to proof that anti-drug efforts are working.

Mitchell says the sport has its hands full trying to clamp down on cheaters. “In many parts of the world, including the United States, there are people engaged in illegal businesses trying to develop new performance-enhancing drugs that can escape detection. They try to stay one step ahead of the regulators and the testers.” Nevertheless, the former Senator says there’s no need to get the federal government involved. “Not at the moment, I don’t think so,” he said. “Let’s wait and see what happens.”

SI: Steroid Era, A-Rod won’t go away but give MLB a break here

Major League Baseball has suffered its share of indignities because of the Steroid Era: reacting slowly to a growing problem, issuing the heavily criticized Mitchell Report (which was maligned for being incomplete and seemingly ineffectual) and watching as cherished milestones were reached and records set by players later linked to PEDs. Just three weeks ago, a Hall of Fame ballot brimming with statistically deserving players failed to produce a single inductee.
But perhaps it’s time that thinking changed somewhat. In this case Major League Baseball—through its Department of Investigations, which was created on the recommendation of the Mitchell Report—was already aware of the clinic in the Miami area. Soon after the Miami New Times report was published, the league released a statement that began as follows:

“We are always extremely disappointed to learn of potential links between players and the use of performance-enhancing substances. These developments, however, provide evidence of the comprehensive nature of our anti-drug efforts. Through our Department of Investigations, we have been actively involved in the issues in South Florida.”

We don’t have to take just MLB’s word for it. The New York Daily News, citing a law-enforcement source, reported on Saturday that a league investigation into Anthony Bosch was already underway. The league’s investigation is continuing, and the players named by the Miami New Times will likely be interviewed about the allegations. The league’s capacity to conduct such an investigation comes from a recommendation of the Mitchell Report, which wrote that “the Commissioner should establish a Department of Investigations.”

SI.com—Verducci: Alex Rodriguez, game take another hit with latest PED allegations

Indeed, Rodriguez’s career never has been in more doubt than it is today. His health and reputation are in tatters. He turns 38 in July. The incentives the Yankees included in his contract for “milestone” home runs now stand as even more awkward reminders that his achievements are fraudulent.

What will become of him? The Yankees would wish he never puts on their uniform again, writing him and his contract off to the insurance companies or, if they have the stomach for it, to try to invalidate the agreement because of his use of PEDs, the way they once threatened to do with Jason Giambi. [...]

In any case, the news is worse for Rodriguez than it is for anybody else in the report, if only because of his stature and that 2009 confessional production under the tent in the Yankees’ spring training complex. Until now, Rodriguez was careful to shield the Yankees from his taint, telling the story about how he stopped using PEDs before he became a Yankee—as if it made perfect sense that he used for a last-place Texas team but suddenly would have no more use for performance enhancers upon being put on the New York stage. The story seemed to fly for many people. But now, with this story, the franchise and its 2009 championship are smeared by Rodriguez’s connection to PEDs. [...]

No matter the damage control Rodriguez brings, it is a terribly sad story. It is sad because the scouts who watched him play in high school will tell you they never saw a better, more complete player at that age. He needed no help. And now he stands as someone defined by his help, not by his talent. What is there left of him that is believable?

Linked to alleged PED supplier, Gio Gonzalez denies any usage

Giogenesis

Update II: Gio Gonzalez has issued a statement via Twitter denying any wrongdoing in regards to the usage of performance-enhancing drugs.

Here is that statement:

“I’ve never used performance enhancing drugs of any kind and I never will ,I’ve never met or spoken with tony Bosch or used any substance Provided by him.anything said to the contrary is a lie.”

Update: The Nationals have yet to comment on Gonzalez’s link to Biogenesis, and Gio Gonzalez has not responded to a voice mail, but Major League Baseball has released a lengthy statement, part of which you can read below.

“We are always extremely disappointed to learn of potential links between players and the use of performance-enhancing substances. These developments, however, provide evidence of the comprehensive nature of our anti-drug efforts. Through our Department of Investigations, we have been actively involved in the issues in South Florida. It is also important to note that three of the players allegedly involved have already been disciplined under the Joint Drug Program. ...

“We are in the midst of an active investigation and are gathering and reviewing information. We will refrain from further comment until this process is complete.”

MNT: A Miami Clinic Supplies Drugs to Sports Biggest Names

The mega Biogenesis (eat your heart out Jim Shooter!) story.

Then check out the main column, where their real names flash like an all-star roster of professional athletes with Miami ties: San Francisco Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera, Oakland A’s hurler Bartolo Colón, pro tennis player Wayne Odesnik, budding Cuban superstar boxer Yuriorkis Gamboa, and Texas Rangers slugger Nelson Cruz. There’s even the New York Yankees’ $275 million man himself, Alex Rodriguez, who has sworn he stopped juicing a decade ago.

Read further and you’ll find more than a dozen other baseball pros, from former University of Miami ace Cesar Carrillo to Padres catcher Yasmani Grandal to Washington Nationals star Gio Gonzalez. Notable coaches are there too, including UM baseball conditioning guru Jimmy Goins.

The names are all included in an extraordinary batch of records from Biogenesis, an anti-aging clinic tucked into a two-story office building just a hard line drive’s distance from the UM campus. They were given to New Times by an employee who worked at Biogenesis before it closed last month and its owner abruptly disappeared. The records are clear in describing the firm’s real business: selling performance-enhancing drugs, from human growth hormone (HGH) to testosterone to anabolic steroids.

Interviews with six customers and two former employees corroborate the tale told by the patient files, the payment records, and the handwritten notebooks kept by the clinic’s chief, 49-year-old Anthony Bosch.