Porcello Pissed About PED's
Photo by Adam Glanzman/AP Photo |
Ryan MacLeod (RyanMacLeod15)
Contributing Writer
Rick Porcello is pissed off, and maybe that is the reason he is off to an extremely hot start this season. Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED's) are once again becoming an issue in Major League Baseball, and now players have started to speak out against them. Porcello is now the second starting pitcher in the Major Leagues to speak out about PED usage and how players are always a step ahead of the testers.
Just a few weeks ago, Justin Verlander discussed how he thought it was unfair for players who have tested positive for PED's to be able to play when they are appealing their mandatory suspension. Porcello echoed these thoughts, saying "I have an absolute problem with them playing under the appeal or due process because you’re taking a guy who has tested positive for something, clearly playing with that advantage at that particular time, and he’s impacting games. The whole idea behind the system is to prevent guys who tested positive have an unfair advantage in a game, then why would they be allowed to play during the appeal process when they clearly have that in their system. To me, that doesn’t make sense."
There have already been five players busted after testing positive for PED use this year, most notably Dee Gordon, of the Miami Marlins and last season's National League batting champion. Gordon was suspended 80 games earlier this year. While Porcello is unhappy about the entire situation, he does see that Major League Baseball is doing more to catch PED users. He said that during the last two years the testing has become, "more thorough, more frequent". The Red Sox own David Ortiz said over this past weekend that it seems like whenever he has a good game, there will be people there to test him the next day.
There seems to only be one easy solution to this problem, the punishments must become more strict and the testing must occur more frequently. The players are in the clubhouse hours before games, would it really be that difficult to test players every single day?
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