Major League Baseball's crusade against the players who are linked to Biogenesis founder Anthony Bosch is moving down to the minor leagues as a way to finally lock down those who have had any contact with the Miami-based clinic.
According to Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports, players in the minors are starting to provide info on dealings they have had with Bosch to Major League Baseball as a way to get immunity from suspensions if/when things move forward with the case:
"Under threat of suspension, the minor league players gave testimony that Major League Baseball plans to use to confirm the veracity of Bosch's story, the sources said."
The report also says that players not currently on a 40-man roster are not protected by the Major League Baseball Players Union, therefore making it easier for MLB to suspend them as it sees fit.
These players want to protect themselves, as well as help MLB (finally) drop the hammer on Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun and anyone else either named or allegedly connected to Bosch and the Biogenesis clinic in the report released by the Miami New Times back in January.
(Despite what MLB says, this is really a personal crusade against Rodriguez and, especially, Braun, who did fail a drug test in December 2011 but had his 50-game suspension overturned thanks to a technicality when it was revealed that his sample was mishandled by the collector.)
So with this testimony at MLB's disposal, the logical question becomes: What does this mean for the players who are alleged to have had dealings with Bosch and the Biogenesis clinic?
The short answer, at this particular moment, is we don't know. We have no idea what these minor leaguers are saying, what names they might be giving up, or if their story is going to make Bosch anymore credible.
Passan's report notes that this new testimony will help with the investigation and corroborating Bosch's own testimony. But there are still many questions about Bosch that have to be answered before he can be deemed a credible witness.
For starters, Bosch was being sued by Major League Baseball not long after the original Miami New Times report came out. He wasn't going to talk, so MLB did what it felt was in its best interest to make him talk.
Bosch also portrayed himself as a doctor and wrote out prescriptions, though he was found to have been a fraud.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, T.J. Quinn, Pedro Gomez and Mike Fish of ESPN.com reported last week that Bosch was going to cooperate with MLB in the hope that the league could suspend the 20 or so players connected to Biogenesis:
One source familiar with the case said the commissioner's office might seek 100-game suspensions for Rodriguez, Braun and other players, the penalty for a second doping offense. The argument, the source said, is the players' connection to Bosch constitutes one offense, and previous statements to MLB officials denying any such connection or the use of PEDs constitute another.
One day after the ESPN report came out, Teri Thompson, Bill Madden, Christian Red and Michael O'Keefe of the New York Daily News reported that Bosch asked Rodriguez for money to help cover his growing expenditures due to the MLB lawsuit and A-Rod refused:
When Rodriguez rebuffed Anthony Bosch’s request for money, believed to be in the hundreds of thousands, the self-styled “biochemist” turned to a strange bedfellow — MLB.
“A-Rod refused to pay him what he wanted,” said a source. “Baseball was worried about that."
Again, going back to the whole credibility thing, it is hard to find anyone who thinks Bosch can be taken at his word given the way this whole situation has gone down.
Having minor leaguers there to potentially back up some of the things Bosch says might help, but I have to believe a good lawyer could find a way to suggest that these players also lack credibility because they just don't want to be suspended and could say exactly what MLB wants to hear.
There are so many unanswered questions with this whole case that it is hard to suggest that because some minor leaguers are also talking, MLB finally has exactly what it needs to give the suspensions it is apparently so eager to hand out.
On top of all that, there is the MLBPA. One of the great things baseball has compared to other sports is a union that actually has a backbone. It is the strongest of the major sports in this country, whether Bud Selig likes it or not.
There is also the pesky matter of the collective bargaining agreement. Cesar Carrillo, a minor leaguer in Detroit's system, was suspended 100 games back in March for his alleged connection to the Biogenesis clinic.
But Carrillo was not on the Tigers' 40-man roster, so MLB decided to, per Passan's report, suspend him 50 games for "a non-analytical positive after his name was found in Bosch's logbook, 50 for lying to the league."
There was no one who was going to fight for Carrillo in court, so he really had no choice but to take the suspension. The MLBPA will undoubtedly bring its big guns to the table if/when Selig tries to suspend anyone in the union for just having a connection to the clinic with no positive test.
I don't know what it will take for MLB to get suspensions for the players named in the Miami New Times report. This whole thing is a complete mess that was a bit of a public relations black eye when it first came out, yet MLB has actually made it so much worse by bringing the whole thing back into the spotlight.
It is not as simple as, these players are alleged to have a connection to Bosch; therefore, they should be suspended. A lot of things have to go right for MLB to drop the hammer. By the sound of things so far, it doesn't look like a strong case is present.
Perhaps that will change in time, as Steven Marcus of New York Newsday reported that MLB has "tons" of people ready to build a case against the players allegedly involved in the Biogenesis case.
Maybe it is the minor leaguers Passan talks about in his report; maybe there is a whole different group of people ready to help make the case.
It all comes back to the same thing: We don't know. Testimony from minor leaguers probably won't be good enough. Bosch's own testimony certainly won't be, thanks to him having virtually no credibility, at least from the outside looking in.
This situation is turning into nothing more than a cheap witch hunt that really doesn't appear to have legs. That's not to say something won't turn around eventually, but right now things look flimsy for MLB.
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