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Now that Randy has accepted an extension through 2008 with Arizona, and passed his physical, the trade is complete.
From the Daily Chronicle -
Randy Johnson took his physical Monday, and the Arizona Diamondbacks scheduled a Tuesday news conference as their deal to reacquire the Big Unit from the New York Yankees neared completion.
Although the Diamondbacks made no comment on the physical, the team scheduled a 3 p.m. EST news conference in the home clubhouse at Chase Field. The news conference didn’t mention Johnson by name, but Arizona already had confirmed agreements in principal with the Yankees last Thursday and with Johnson on Sunday, so the subject was clear.
Obviously, the sheduled press conference means Randy passed his physical. The returning players include Luis Vizcaino, a solid veteran reliever, and 3 minor league prospects. Scouting reports can be found at John Sickels’ site.
Just as the Yanks lost one lefty, they added another. Kei Igawa was introduced at a Yankee Stadium press conference on Monday. From MLB.com -
Kei Igawa debuted as a New York Yankee on Monday, donning a pinstriped jersey and — amid a flurry of camera flashes — proudly delivering the speech for which he’d been rehearsing.
To recite his brief introduction in English, Igawa had put in about two days of study. But the moment was one he’d been preparing for all his life.
“Today, my lifelong dream became a reality, to be a Major League Baseball player,” Igawa said. “I want to thank the New York Yankees, especially Mr. Steinbrenner and Mr. Cashman. I will give you my best as a Yankee. I’m here to do my best to win the championships for this great city, New York.”
Igawa, 27, was officially introduced in a Yankee Stadium press conference after recently returning to the United States from Japan. The left-hander agreed to a five-year, $20 million contract with the Yankees on Dec. 27, following the Yankees’ reported $26 million bid for exclusive negotiating rights a month earlier.
With the Yankees, Igawa will wear uniform No. 29, the same number he wore for his former club, the Hanshin Tigers, as one of the top pitchers in Japan’s Central League.
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Randy Johnson agreed Sunday to a $26 million, two-year contract with Arizona, leaving physicals and final approvals to complete his trade from the New York Yankees back to the Diamondbacks.
What’s next for Yankees?
Johnson most likely will take his physical Monday, and the trade probably will be finalized Tuesday. Arizona general manager Josh Byrnes confirmed the agreement but otherwise declined comment until after the medical information is reviewed.
New York, which acquired the Big Unit from Arizona two years ago, would receive reliever Luis Vizcaino, minor league right-handers Ross Ohlendorf and Steven Jackson, and minor league shortstop Alberto Gonzalez.
“We’re very excited and very happy for Randy, We think it’s a win-win for everybody,” said Alan Nero, who represents Johnson along with Barry Meister. “It was very complex because there was a lot of legal work — it was the third time the contract has been redone. Other than that, I think it went very smoothly.”
Johnson, a 43-year-old left-hander who lives in the Phoenix area, was owed $16 million this year in the final season of his January 2005 contract with the Yankees, a deal that called for $1.5 million to be deferred without interest until 2010.
Because of the cash involved, commissioner Bud Selig must approve the trade. The players’ association also might want to review the restructuring of his contract.
If the trade goes through, Johnson would join an Arizona starting rotation that includes reigning Cy Young winner Brandon Webb, Livan Hernandez and Doug Davis. In their only other major move in the offseason, the Diamondbacks acquired the left-handed Davis from Milwaukee in a six-player deal that sent catcher Johnny Estrada to the Brewers.
His new deal calls for a $12 million signing bonus, of which $3.5 million is payable this year, $500,000 in 2008 and $4 million each in 2009 and 2010, a baseball official with knowledge of the negotiations told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the terms weren’t disclosed in Sunday’s announcement. Johnson gets salaries of $4 million this year and $10 million in 2008.
As part of the trade, New York would pay $2 million of Johnson’s salary this year. That means Arizona would be responsible for $24 million: $5.5 million this year, $10.5 million in 2008 and $4 million each in 2009 and 2010.
In addition, the Diamondbacks owe the five-time Cy Young Award winner just over $44 million, including accrued interest, from 2007-12. That money was earned by Johnson when he pitched for Arizona from 1999-2004, winning four Cy Youngs.
Johnson had until 5 p.m. EST Sunday to reach an extension under a 72-hour window granted Thursday by the commissioner’s office. His agents held several telephone discussions with the Diamondbacks to reach the agreement.
Johnson’s new agreement came two years and one day after he agreed to his extension with the Yankees. He went 103-49 with the Diamondbacks and helped them beat the Yankees in the 2001 World Series, going 3-0 against New York. He went 17-11 with a 5.00 ERA last season, and had back surgery Oct. 26.
He failed to win both of his postseason starts with the Yankees, and on Friday the Daily News ran a back-page headline that read: “GOOD RIDDANCE.”
Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press
Pending a physical, the Randy Johnson trade is done. Great news for both Yankee fans and Diamondback fans alike, not to mention this is great news for Randy Johnson who is going to get a boat-load of money in his mid-40s.
Looks like the Randy Johnson-Arizona deal is a go. Here’s the article from ESPN.com and the Associated Press.
ESPN.com news services
NEW YORK — The New York Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks reached a tentative agreement Thursday on a trade that would send Randy Johnson to Arizona, a move that allows the Big Unit’s agents to get him a contract extension.
The teams informed the commissioner’s office of the specifics of the trade, a baseball official told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Arizona would send pitcher Luis Vizcaino to the Yankees along with minor league pitcher Ross Ohlendorf and shortstop Alberto Gonzalez, another baseball official said, also on condition of anonymity. The Yankees also might receive another minor league pitcher, the official said, and would pay between $1.5 million and $2 million of Johnson’s $16 million salary this year.
A source told ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark the unidentified minor league pitcher was Steven Jackson.
The Yankees also had discussed trading Johnson to San Diego.
Barry Meister, one of Johnson’s agents, told ESPN’s Steve Phillips that a 72-hour window has been granted by the commissioner’s office, and it began at 4 p.m. ET on Thursday. Teams are granted the window to close tentative deals.
“When we have been granted that window, we would be willing to discuss everything with the Diamondbacks,” said Alan Nero, who represents Johnson along with Meister, before the window was granted. “Once that window is open, we will do our best to work out a deal.”
Newsday reported Thursday that Johnson had agreed in principle through “back-channel conversations” to a $10 million contract extension for 2008.
Arizona also might want to rework the slightly more than $44 million it must pay Johnson for 2007-12. Johnson pitched for the Diamondbacks from 1999-2004 and deferred parts of his salaries during those years.
In another move, first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz and the Yankees reached a preliminary agreement on a one-year contract worth about $1.5 million. Mientkiewicz, who spent 2005 with the crosstown Mets, must take a physical for the deal to be finalized.
Vizcaino, a 32-year-old right-hander, was 4-6 last season with 3.58 ERA in 70 games. He has a 25-23 career record with a 4.24 ERA in eight seasons, playing for Oakland, Milwaukee, the Chicago White Sox and Arizona.
Ohlendorf, a 25-year-old who went to Princeton, was 10-8 with a 3.29 ERA at Double-A Tennessee last season and 0-0 with a 1.28 ERA at Tucson.
Gonzalez, a 24-year-old right-handed hitter, batted .290 in 129 games with Tennessee with six homers, 50 RBI and 20 doubles. He also hit .200 (3-for-15) in four games with Tucson.
Jackson, 24, was 8-11 with a 2.65 ERA in 24 starts at Tennessee.
Johnson was 17-11 with a 5.00 ERA last season, and the 43-year-old left-hander is coming off back surgery on Oct. 26. Although he has gone 34-19 during the regular season in two years with the Yankees, he is 0-1 with a 6.92 ERA in three postseason appearances.
New York’s projected rotation includes Chien-Ming Wang, Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte and Kei Igawa. The Yankees also have oft-injured right-hander Carl Pavano and hope Roger Clemens can be persuaded to follow Pettitte back to New York. Clemens hasn’t decided whether to pitch this year. If he does, the 44-year-old right-hander might follow his 2006 schedule and not start his major league season until mid-June.
Johnson, who lives in the Phoenix area, went 103-49 with the Diamondbacks and helped them beat the Yankees in the 2001 World Series, going 3-0 against New York.
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report
Randy Johnson is headed home. USA Today‘s Bob Nightengale:
The Arizona Diamondbacks expect to complete a deal with the New York Yankees by the end of the week to bring back pitcher Randy Johnson, a high-ranking Diamondbacks official familiar with the negotiations told USA TODAY.
The clubs have agreed on the package of players the Diamondbacks will send to the Yankees, according to a club official from each team — two minor league pitchers and a major league reliever. The deal has not been completed because of money issues, including how much the Yankees will pay toward Johnson’s $16 million contract in 2007.
The Diamondbacks official also said they would like to sign Johnson to a one-year extension that would be a pay cut from his ’07 salary, as well as restructure the $40 million deferred payments the left-hander is owed from his 1999-2004 stint with the team.
A lot of things could still go wrong with this deal, although it seems that both sides really want to make this happen.
This is a good move by both teams in my opinion. The Yanks now have the money (as if they didn’t anyway!), roster spot, and the team gets younger. The players I believe the Yanks are getting are reliever Luis Vizcaino, minor league SP Dustin Nippert, and possibly minor league SP Russ Ohlendorf.
The Diamondbacks now get someone who can bring in ticket sales, could get his 300th win in a D-Back jersey, and a pitcher who still has flashes of dominance and gets to face pitchers not DHs anymore.
The biggest obstacle is obviously the money. The Yanks will have to pay some his ’07 salary, especially since they are getting a major league reliever and two of Arizona’s top pitching prospects.
I think the deal will get worked out and both clubs, especially the Yanks, will come out winners in this deal.
Ennuipundit adds:
The clubs have agreed on the package of players the Diamondbacks will send to the Yankees, according to a club official from each team — two minor league pitchers and a major league reliever.
The major league reliever could be any of the D-Backs bullpen, including Juan Cruz, the much traveled former Cubs farmhand who pitched well in Arizona. Arizona had already improved their rotation dealing Johnny Estrada for Doug Davis in a six-player deal this offseason. Johnson would join Davis, Livan Hernandez and staff ace Brandon Webb leaving one spot left for one of Arizona’s pitching prospects. MLB’s Diamondbacks site describes that young pitching depth.
The D-backs had planned on entering Spring Training with Edgar Gonzalez, Enrique Gonzalez, Dustin Nippert, Ross Ohlendorf, Micah Owings, Dana Eveland, Evan MacLane and Juan Cruz competing for the final two spots in the rotation….
Nippert is the best of the lot and I would expect the D-Backs to hold on to him. Enrique Gonzalez and Micah Owings are the next two on my list of Arizona pitching prospects, and both are very intriguing. They are power pitchers. Both have good minor league K-rates. Gonzalez tamed the batting inflating California League as he progressed through the system. Owings was undefeated as Tucson this season. The Cal league and the PCL are leagues that pitchers typically struggle in.
My guess is that Juan Cruz, Micah Owings and Enrique Gonzalez will be New York Yankees. Owings and Gonzalez would join Philip Hughes and Humberto Sanchez as young power arms being groomed for an extended stay in pinstripes. Arizona will insist on New York picking up some amount of Johnson’s 2007 salary, and in that case New York deserves some good talent in exchange.
The ever shifting balance of power in the NL West would get more murky. In a division without a dominant runaway leader, everyone has a shot. If they acquired Johnson, Arizona would have the best rotation, to go with a young talented lineup and a solid bullpen. They become the prohibitive favorites with San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco not far off pace.
For the Yankees this deal pares salary which could easily be used to acquire another aging right handed pitcher, one who has proven that he can handle the pressure of pitching in New York – Roger Clemens. As the Red Sox rotation looks set and the Astros have all but walked away from Clemens, the Yankees are the last best option for the future Hall of Famer. Clemens, Mussina, Wang, Igawa and Pettitte would be a fearsome rotation. And with Hughes and the young pitching talent acquired by dealing Sheffield and to be acquired in a Johnson deal developing to step in when Pettitte, Clemens and Mussina decide to stop pitching, the Yankees are poised to remain King of the Hill, top of the heap for the foreseeable future.
Depending on how much money the Diamondbacks want from the Yankees and how much money Randy Johnson is willing to sacrifice to get out of his New York nightmare, this deal makes sense for everyone involved. Most of the time those deals get done. Expect Johnson to be reintroduced to D-back fans soon.
By Amy K. Nelson
ESPN The Magazine
In the past week the Arizona Diamondbacks have offered a package of players to the New York Yankees in exchange for Randy Johnson, a baseball official said.
In need of starting pitching — and a marquee name that will draw more fans — the Diamondbacks have offered a package of at least three players, including a major-leaguer. They would also want a 72-hour window to negotiate an extension with Johnson, who is owed $16 million in the final year of his contract. The Yankees, according to the official, don’t want to pick up any of Johnson’s salary.
Johnson, 43, spent six seasons with Arizona and won four Cy Young Awards before being traded to New York in January 2005. At the time, Arizona was looking to shed payroll and bring in more youth.
Johnson had a full no-trade clause back then, as he does now. And it’s believed that if the Yankees were to move him, Johnson would prefer to be closer to his Arizona home.
According to Johnson’s agent, Alan Nero, the left-hander has not requested a trade.
“Randy would listen if the Yankees brought something to him,” Nero said. “But that has not happened. I don’t know what they’re doing. It’s still speculation as far as we’re concerned.”
The official said the San Diego Padres are also involved in trade discussions. It’s believed that right-handed reliever Scott Linebrink could be the centerpiece of a deal.
If he returns to Arizona, Johnson, with 280 career wins, could get No. 300 as a Diamondback. If he goes to San Diego, he’d join 333-game winner Greg Maddux in the rotation. That is, if he stays healthy. Johnson had back surgery this offseason and it’s unknown whether he’ll be ready for Opening Day.
Amy K. Nelson is a writer/reporter for ESPN The Magazine.
Not so sure this will work out. If the Yanks don’t pick up any of Johnson’s salary I don’t see the D-Backs paying Johnson that much, he would have to take a pay cut. This is not a very good move by Arizona unless they can restructure his contract and give up low-ceiling prospects. If that works than I think it’s a good move by both teams.
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| Saturday, October 21, 2006 |
Dan Wetzel argues that, conventional wisdom to the contrary, Major League Baseball, despite wild disparities in team salary, has far more parity than the National Football League and National Basketball Association do with their salary caps and revenue sharing.
MLB will crown its seventh different World Series champion in seven years, either Detroit or St. Louis joining the Chicago White Sox, Boston Red Sox, Florida Marlins, (then) Anaheim Angels, Arizona Diamondbacks and Yankees as winners this decade. Even more telling, the Tigers are the 11th different team (out of a possible 14) to reach the World Series during that time.
In comparison, the NFL, with its hard salary cap and “any given Sunday” motto, has crowned just five different champions the past seven years and also seen 11 different teams reach the Super Bowl. The NBA, which also boasts the kind of salary cap seemingly everyone claims baseball desperately needs, has seen just four teams win the title in the past seven years. Just eight teams have reached the NBA Finals during that stretch.
Making the MLB numbers even more impressive is the fact that baseball invites just eight of its 30 teams (26.6 percent) to the postseason. The NFL lets in 12 of 32 (37.5 percent) and the NBA goes with 16 of 30 (53.3 percent), which increases the likelihood of upset-driven diversity in the late rounds.
There is little question that big-market teams with big payrolls have an advantage in fielding a championship-caliber club; obviously, the Yankees have a better chance than the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. But baseball is a different kind of game, and stockpiling talent isn’t enough – as the Yankees’ six-year World Series drought has proven.
[...]
Baseball is a game where the highest-paid player, the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez ($25 million in 2006), can bat .071 against the Tigers. It is a sport where even the best player only gets up every few innings and the top starting pitcher can only go every fourth day, at best. It is basketball where a player can have an effect at both ends of the court on every single play. It is football where a player can impact at least half of the action.
In baseball, you can’t win without a team – a deep, clutch, close-knit, total team. And you just can’t buy that.
From 1991 through 2005, the Atlanta Braves won their division every year (with an asterisk for the strike-shortened 1994 season, when they were trailing the Montreal Expos but MLB awarded the penants to the team that had won the previous year). They had three Hall of Fame candidates, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz in their pitching rotation simultaneoulsy for most of that stretch. Yet, they won only a single World Series. By contrast, the 1992 expansion Florida Marlins never won a single division title, had losing seasons almost every year, and won two championships.
That’s not so much parity, though, but the nature of the game. In football and basketball, the better team almost always wins. In baseball, even the most dominant teams lose a third of their games. That’s because, as Wetzel notes, a single player can have a major impact every game.
By contrast, baseball is mostly about dominating starting pitching. Since a starter generally only pitches every fifth day, the dynamics are very different from one game to the next. The left hand/right hand thing matters a whole lot more with pitching and hitting, too. Hitters go through hot streaks and slumps in a way that quarterbacks and power forwards don’t.
This is a major reason why baseball experts agree that winning a World Series is partly about luck. A single football game is generally a pretty good test of which team is better, barring a freak injury to the quarterback. A best of seven series in basketball is virtually never won by the inferior team. That’s because a Joe Montana or a Michael Jordan aren’t sitting on the bench in the final minutes of a close game. Barring injury to Tom Brady, the New England Patriots would never start the quarterbacking equivalent of Oliver Perez in the AFC Championship game.
A great regular season baseball team is built around steady production on hitting and defense and a deep pitching rotation. In a 162 game grind, with maybe five or six days off a month, we get a pretty good idea who the best teams are in each league. In the playoffs, though, a team can ride two hot starting pitchers to a championship (see the Arizona Diamondbacks).
Regardless, however, “parity” isn’t so much a measure of which teams win the championship but which ones have a chance to compete. The only way the Kansas City Royals will ever go to another World Series under the current system is to either start spending a whole lot more money or have extraordinarily good luck in developing talent. By contrast, the New York Yankees can essentially buy themselves a ticket to the playoffs every year. That they’ve invested too much in aging superstars past their prime isn’t a testament to parity but bad management.
OTB
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| Thursday, October 12, 2006 |
Josh Levin takes an interesting look at the phenomenon of “clutch pitching.” While most SABRmetricians scoff at the concept of clutch hitting, there seems to be widespread consensus that clutch pitching exists. The rationale is reasonable enough:
Clutch pitchers certainly seem more likely to exist than clutch hitters. Pitching is an intellectual exercise. It makes sense that some guys would excel at setting up batters in the game’s anxious moments, and some would get undone by their sweaty palms. (As James, a clutch-hitting agnostic, told me: “Pitching is planned. Hitting is reactive. It’s much harder to plan a reaction than to execute a plan.”)
Measuring clutchness isn’t easy but Levin makes the case that Glavine exemplifies the quality for the modern era.
Nate Silver of the analytical Web site Baseball Prospectus agrees. He says a clutch pitcher is the same thing as a smart situational pitcher—someone who’s internalized that, with men on base, walks don’t hurt as much as extra-base hits. Silver says one pitcher has mastered these precepts more than his contemporaries: Tom Glavine.
If you watched Game 2 of the Division Series, in which Glavine threw six scoreless innings, you know the 40-year-old left-hander isn’t imposing. His fastball reaches only the high 80s. His main skill, and it’s no small one, is the ability to pound the ball to the outside corner. Glavine is particularly adept at doing this with men on base. According to Stats Inc., Glavine’s opponents have a .303 career on-base percentage and a .380 career slugging average with none on. With runners in scoring position, they have a .353 OBP and a .345 slugging average. In tense situations, Glavine uses hitters’ aggressiveness against them—take a walk if you want, but if you swing you won’t hit the ball square. It’s not as glamorous as a bushel of strikeouts, but it keeps runs off the board.
Silver suggests that another good way to measure clutchness is to compare a pitcher’s ERA—the number of earned runs he allows per nine innings—with what his ERA should be based on his peripheral statistics—the amount of hits, walks, and home runs he gives up, and the number of men he strikes out. If a pitcher consistently gives up a lot of hits but has a low ERA, Silver says, there’s some amount of skill involved—he’s doing something to keep those base runners off the scoreboard. Conversely, if the pitcher’s actual ERA is consistently higher than his peripheral ERA, he’s allowing more runs than he should.
When Silver used peripheral ERA numbers to create a clutchness toteboard, Glavine came out on top. Since 1990, he’s allowed 79 fewer runs than you’d predict from his stats, the best figure in the majors. On the other side of the ledger is Nolan Ryan, who allowed 100 more runs over his career than his peripherals would suggest. (To look at Silver’s list of the most-clutch and least-clutch pitchers since 1946, click here.)
Is Glavine, the crafty left-hander, really more clutch than the fireballing Ryan? I expected Tom House, Ryan’s pitching coach when he played for the Texas Rangers, to say that was malarkey. But House says the stats make sense. House says that Ryan always struggled with a tendency to try to strike everyone out rather than settle for ground-ball outs. Ryan muscled up with men on base, causing him to overthrow and lose command. Glavine, though, places his change-up and middling fastball on the outside corner rather than trying to blow hitters away. He doesn’t overthrow with men on base—he just keeps aiming for the outside corner.
Silver’s lists don’t suggest that strikeout pitchers can’t be clutch—Steve Carlton, for one, ranks high on the all-time clutch list. There is compelling evidence, though, that clutch pitching doesn’t correlate with the speed of your fastball. The top two guys on the clutchness toteboard—Whitey Ford and Jim Palmer—relied more on control and guile than velocity. The 5-foot-10 Ford, the winningest pitcher in Yankee history, relied on his legendary precision and a diverse repertoire of breaking pitches. Palmer, who famously never allowed a grand slam, told me that he owed his success to controlling his adrenaline. “You don’t have to throw every pitch as hard as you can,” he says.
Interesting.
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| Thursday, September 7, 2006 |
Marlins rookie Anibal Sanchez pitched the first Major League no-hitter in two years.
Anibal Sanchez was standing behind the mound when the scoreboard caught his eye, confirming what he already knew: He was one out from a no-hitter. He froze. For a couple seconds, the Florida Marlins’ rookie didn’t move. “I said, ‘Wow. This hitter is the last one,’” Sanchez said. Then he collected himself and, in this year of sensational rookies, finished up the greatest performance yet.
The 22-year-old Venezuelan brought the longest period without a no-hitter in major-league history to a close Wednesday night, benefiting from three defensive gems by teammates to lead the Marlins over the Arizona Diamondbacks 2-0. “This is the best moment of my life,” Sanchez said. “You never think that’s going to happen.”
One of four rookies in the Florida rotation, Sanchez (7-2) walked four and pitched around an error. He struck out six and threw 103 pitches in his 13th career start. Sanchez finished it off in quick fashion in the ninth. He struck out Conor Jackson swinging on a 1-2 pitch, got Luis Gonzalez to pop out to third and then retired Eric Byrnes on a sharp grounder to shortstop Hanley Ramirez, who fielded the ball carefully on one knee before throwing to first for the out.
“The last groundball, I wasn’t going to flub that,” said Ramirez, another rookie. “It wasn’t going to get past me.” Before Ramirez even threw the ball, third baseman Miguel Cabrera began sprinting toward Sanchez and was the first to arrive with a hug. Players poured out of the Marlins dugout en masse and swarmed around the pitcher, with the jubilant mob collectively hopping as one between the mound and third base. “That was a lot of bouncing,” said Wes Helms, who caught Ramirez’s throw for the final out. “It’s once in a lifetime for a lot of people.”
It’s something special, indeed. For a rookie to do it is just unreal.
Here’s a list of every no-hitter in Major League history.
Additional comments by Florida Masochist- Sanchez is the 4th pitcher in the short history of the Marlins to pitch a no-hitter.(My boyhood team, The New York Mets, created in 1962, are still looking for their first) Al Leiter in 1996, Kevin Brown in 97, and AJ Burnett in 2001 were the others.
This is also just the most recent highlight in an incredible run by the Marlins. On May 21, the team stood 11-31. They are now 70-69 and 2.5 games back in the wildcard race. No one predicted Florida to be where they are today after the fire sale conducted by team owner Jeffrey Loria at the end of last season. With rookies and unknown talents, the team may have played the best in the majors since June 1. This is also incredible because of the turmoil going on at the moment. Loria, and Marlins manager Joe Girardi have been feuding for over a month.
All I say is go Marlins. A Mets-Marlins playoff series could be a reality in about a month. Talk about a showcase for my divided loyalties.
From AP-
NEW YORK – Embattled pitcher Jason Grimsley was suspended 50 games by Major League Baseball on Monday, less than a week after federal agents raided his home during an investigation into performance-enhancing drugs.
Grimsley was suspended for violating baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program, based on his statements to authorities regarding human growth hormone.
The Arizona Diamondbacks released the reliever last Wednesday and his agent said he did not expect Grimsley to play again.
If he returns, the penalty would take effect when he’s placed on a 40-man roster.
Last Tuesday, 13 agents searched his Arizona home following his admission he had used HGH, steroids and amphetamines.
According to court documents, authorities tracked a package containing two “kits” of HGH — about a season’s worth — that was delivered at Grimsley’s house on April 19. He failed a baseball drug test in 2003, documents showed.
Acting on those documents, MLB suspended him for his alleged possession, admitted use and intended use of HGH. Baseball toughened its drug program and penalties this season, but there is no test for HGH.
Grimsley’s career was as good as over. He was barely hanging onto a ML job at the time of his release. So what good is a 50 day suspension?
Why not just ban Grimsley for life? What does MLB plan to do when more players are discovered to be using HGH? I think we all know what will done. Little to nothing.
This story isn’t a joke. It is MLB that’s the joke. A not very funny one either.
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