News of Starling Marte’s suspension Tuesday brought baseball’s performance-enhancing drug controversy back to the forefront, allowing some players, both past and present, to show how fed up they are with “cheating” in the game.
Marte, one of the Pirates’ brightest stars in a playoff-hopeful year, was given the center-field job this season over five-time All-Star Andrew McCutchen, who was shuffled off to right. Marte handed it right back to him when the league announced the 28-year-old had tested positive for Nandrolone and would be hit with an 80-game suspension.
Former Athletics and Cardinals pitcher Mark Mulder lamented McCutchen’s situation: learning he lost his position to someone who apparently wasn’t playing by the rules.
Count former Indians pitcher Jensen Lewis and Cubs slugger Anthony Rizzo as those more offended by Marte’s attempt at an apology Tuesday, in which the Pirate said he “unintentionally” ingested the banned substance.
In addition to doubting Marte’s confession, Rizzo saw the suspension as one piece in the convoluted puzzle of MLB’s drug-testing policy, which he believes requires dire improvements to weed out the real users.
“It kind of makes you angry as a player because you know there are still flaws in the system,” he told Yahoo Sports Tuesday afternoon. “You know there are still guys getting away with it. For me, I’ve been drug-tested zero times this year. Not one since the beginning-of-spring-training standard drug test. Guys are going to get away with it as long as they can and obviously everybody’s going to say they didn’t know they were doing it.”
Still others called for MLB to set a precedent by hitting Marte with a harsher punishment. Rangers reliever Jake Diekman and former Athletics perfect-game hurler Dallas Braden preached about taking money out of unclean players’ paychecks to teach them a lesson.
Marte, an All-Star last season, will lose about $2.5 million in salary during his suspension — not enough for many anti-PED crusaders.