MLB players were given 2,500 additional drug tests last season
Baseball isn’t in the “Steroid Era” anymore, but there are many fans who still want to believe any player who hits a lot of home runs or shows a big improvement year over year is juicing. Such is the nature of sports.
In Major League Baseball this past season, though, drug tests reached a new high — as the league administered 7,929 tests to its players between the first day of the offseason and the last day of the World Series. That’s 363 days, the equivalent of 21.8 drug tests per day.
They’re not distributed equally, of course, considering at least 1,200 of those occur during spring training when every player on every team’s 40-man roster is tested. But the 7,929 drug tests given to MLB players is 2,538 more than given to players for the 2013 season. This year’s total is more than double the 2008 total of 3,486.
So when commissioner Bud Selig brags about MLB’s aggressive drug-testing policy (and he likes to), Big Bad Bud really means it. MLB juiced up its drug-testing procedures (see what we did there?) before the season, and the results were released Monday in the league’s annual report on such matters.
The rate of failed tests stayed about the same. In 2013, eight players failed tests and were suspended, which is about one in every 674 tests. In 2014, there were 12 failed tests, a rate of one in every 660 tests.
Two of the failed tests this season were for performance-enhancing drugs, everything else was for stimulants. In 2013, all the failed tests were for stimulants. In the 20 failed tests the past two seasons, 15 were for Adderall, which is prescribed to people with ADD.
Alex Colome of the Rays and Ji-Man Choi of the Mariners were the players busted for PEDs. Among the players suspended for using Adderall this season were Cameron Maybin of the Padres and, perhaps the most high-profile case, Chris Davis of the Orioles. In both cases, they could have applied for a Therapeutic Use Exemption and likely would have been grated one.
MLB issued 113 such TUEs in 2014, according to the annual drug report, which is down from 122 in 2013. Of those, only four weren’t for Adderall. All four were for hypogonadism, a low-testosterone condition.
With the prominence of Adderall — both in failed tests and allowed use —it’s time we stop thinking about baseball players as being “juiced” and instead think of them as being hyperfocused.
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Mike Oz is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
