A lot of people wanting to believe the great white hope is clean and totally didn't get off on the thinnest of loopholes. Bet most of them also think your boy Bautista is doping (full disclosure I think he might be too, I don't trust that anyone is clean at this point) absent any actual evidence like this and would be all over him in the same situation.

Could a sample even be spiked in some way?

If they're not, they should. There's little reason to trust any source close to Braun in a situation like this. He has every reason to curry media and public favor.

Or MLB didn't even bother dealing with such a bogus claim, knowing that the results were perfectly well within a normal PED user's ratio.

Nobody here knows the exact results of Braun's test. Let's not pretend we do based on a vague report months ago on the basis of a single source supposedly close to Ryan Braun. If the supposed "weirdness" of the sample played any real factor in this arbitrator's decision, it would have been a major factor, not a minor one.

thats kind of why the chain of custody issue is a really big deal. When the chain of custody in a crime scene or testing situation is broken, the defendent or player, even if they are guilty as hell, immediately brings up the spectre of the tainted sample. They don't even have to argue that it was done on purpose, just that no one knows what the hell may have been done to that sample over those few hours.

In this case, assuming the tweets are true, another couple days in the test collector's fridge (so we're not even talking about a guy not authorized to have possession of it) shouldn't be enough by itself, but coupled with an "insanely high" reading, its a problem.

You'd have to presume that they are cross-eyed drooling reeruns, because its not hard to come back with "they are lying, and here's the proof".

Maybe they assumed they didn't have to because no reasonable person would believe a claim like that without evidence from an untrustworthy source?

And of course, there's also the issue for MLB about how this entire process was supposed to be private.

Also, the appeals panel seems like a joke. You know day one how each person will vote, minus the independent arbitrator. I understand these things must be collectively bargained, but that's just stupid.

Heck I could probably see it clearer a player spiking his own urine to mask his use then a company hired to collect the samples destroying their own business(unless the price was right). Guess you could go as far as some 3rd party altering the sample while in the custody of the collector. But that would be James Bond kind of legend

Ha, that would be a bit more difficult than simply using masking agents or undetectable PEDs (which most athletes who use PEDs do).

MLB sources are certainly talking now.

The stories that are out today are saying that Braun's side is arguing that a 20/1 TE ratio was impossibly high.

To say that the result was "impossibly high" is not true, and all those stories about how he tested higher than anyone else in the history of that test is wrong, if the result really was 20/1. (unless they were only talking about MLB players, it could have been the highest MLB result in history)

From what I've read, 20/1 is definitely on the high side of a normal failure range, its rare to get a result that high, and its pretty much impossible if you are not taking anything. However, there were at least two results in US sports history with a result that was not just higher, but FAR higher than that.

I now think Braun was probably dirty.

It is possible that he was clean, in that every test has a positive failure rate, and if he was one of those 1 in a million people or 10 million people or whatever the odds are for that test to get false positives on both samples, then it sucks for him and he's the unluckiest man in all of sports (cancelled out by luck yesterday), but we have to accept a test with a very, very low false positive rate, especially with 2 samples. Someone somewhere someday probably in some olympic sport no one cares about will probably get screwed, but I really doubt that theoretical lottery-winner was Braun.

From what I know that 3rd party arbitrator was a moran. They found synthetic test in his 2nd sample and there are all kinds of drugs that will reduce estrogen while taking testosterone. Using a TE ratio to undermine the results is laughable and I see why the MLB is irate.

I'd be interested to know what his total T level was.

From the ESPN article the founds Synthetic Test in his 2nd sample and Brauns side didn't even dispute that. They just went after the TE ratio.

Yup. Truth is, that's all you really need to look at. Just establish a baseline that your total T levels can't exceed X amount. If they do, have them take a more advanced screening to see if that is just normal for that person. There are some dudes walking around with very high levels of test, naturally. However if you're rocking out 1800-1900 for total T you're using something.

I also read that it probably wasn't just a pee test divided into 2 samples, its more comprehensive than that, and he probably failed a series of tests. The last test was likely a sophisticated blood test.

All of those tests have false positive rates, but to coincidentally get a false positive on all of them is 1 in millions lottery type of odds.

I don't know this is physiologically possible, but I know a guy that was getting Dr prescribed test cyp and taking 300-400mg per week and was still testing at like 350-400. They had no explanation of where the hell it was going.

Ryan Braun, your 2011 MVP, cleared of doping charges.
Love it.

It will interesting to see his 2012 numbers.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/pl...raunry02.shtml

I don't see anything unusual about his 2011 numbers. Maybe someone sees something I'm missing?

he wasn't really cleared, was he?


'got off on a technicality' would be more accurate, wouldn't it?


chain of evidence problem ..... :spock:

I'm just saying now that he was basically busted for cheating if will be interesting to see if his numbers will decline or was the test taken sometime other then after the 11 season?

I see what you are saying. A decline from an MVP year isn't necessarily proof someone was doping.

My point was that his numbers didn't dramatically spike upwards in 2011, something usually associated with the onset of PED use. Guy has been putting up steadily nice numbers his whole career.
That, and his hat size didn't enter the Bonds Zone.

I was going by the press, Google "Ryan Braun cleared"

I think he's going to carry this turd with him forever. It will be interesting to see how he responds to the negative attention.

Oh, and **** the Brewers.

Right, but who is to say how long he has been using. I'm assuming it's not a recent phenomenon. If he has taking some moderate dosed test with an AI you aren't going to see a lot of dramatic changes. 200mg per week which is a high TRT dose, but 1/2 a beginners body building dose over months and years will still yield performancing enhancing effects. That's why I'm just curious as to what his Total T level was more then his Test to Estrogen ratio which tells you nothing.

Edit
It looks like it's Testosterone to Epitestosterone levels not estrogen that is checked.

I would still like to know the total T number though.

If his TE Ratio was 4-1 then he likely had T levels at about 2000. That's probably having 300-400 mg of test in his body. That doesn't seem that crazy to me, but I'm no expert.

His "insanely high" TE ratio was 20-1. From what I've read, its pretty high and you don't see it often, but it is not an impossible ratio at all.

Yeah, I found this little nugget. Basically if you are over 1100NG you are probably using synthetic test. The average male being about 400-500.

However, there’s a little twist to the story! Various studies reveal serious weaknesses in the T/E ratio test used by various anti-doping organizations as a biomarker. One of the reports published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism successfully argues that the production of TG from testosterone is primarily controlled by an enzyme (UGT2B17) produced by a specific gene that has many common variants coding for enzymatic variants with different levels of activity. So, wildly different testing results can be expected with the intake of same doses of testosterone! In lieu of this, the validity of T/E based testing has widely been debated and alternate methods of hormone testing have been suggested.



Read more: http://www.testcountry.org/how-stero...#ixzz1nKW9foWu

According to this ESPN article:

http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/s...b-drug-testing

The sample was in a tupperware container and sat on the collector's desk for the entire weekend. Turns out there were 12 FedEx locations open at the time, so it sounds like the collector royally screwed the pooch on this one.

I think he was taking something. I also think that the sloppy chain of possession opened the door to reasonable doubt (to use a court term).

Apparently the collective bargaining agreement is very anal about how these samples are to be collected and tested, so it is up to the collection agency to meet those standards. If they fail to do so, the MLB should not be surprised when the system lets a player off the hook.

I read that as well. I guess it was like triple sealed to obviously wasn't tampered with. He got very lucky.

The collector and MLB may have screwed up, but its understandable. I wouldn't go as far as to say they were bumbling fools, because apparently only MLB's policy is this strict. In every olympic sport and in most other professional sports around the world, no one would have cared if the collector didn't rush over to Fedex on a saturday evening. In MLB its apparently a deal-breaker.

To call it a tupperware container is both utterly false and deliberately misleading. They're numbered kits made specifically for this purpose with multiple safeguards against tampering. Not once was any evidence presented that the sample was tampered with or degraded. He got off on the fact that the MLB's specific policy gave him an out with how it was handled in spite of the handling being proper in any other doping program.

Just read about Braun's press conference, and there's nothing new. Basically harping on the collector having his sample in the fridge for 48 hours, and a lot of innuendo. Stuff like "hey, we don't know who has access to it, or if it was tampered with, we don't know if someone's got an agenda", etc.

Braun is either dirty or he's one of the unluckiest SOB's in the world. (by unlucky, I mean either some maniac genius biochemist with a grudge is out there, or he got a false positive on every test and re-rest)

This is ridiculous. Are we really supposed to believe that somebody so had it out for Ryan Braun that they broke into this guy's house, raided his fridge and somehow injected roids into a bottle of piss? Really?

That's about as believable as Mark Fuhrman planting evidence in the OJ trial.

I don't know...that ESPN article sure makes them look like bumbling fools to me. The collector was part-time MLB employee...is MLB so cheap they can't afford to have a full time professional do this? Considering the reputations and dollars that are at stake...having some guy do this as a side gig may not have been the best option.

Interesting read

http://deadspin.com/5869473/victor-c...bolic-steroids

The folks in Montreal are astonished. For the olympics and in other sports, they seem to be saying its fairly common to wait until Monday when collected on a Saturday.

Chief says Braun wouldn’t have been cleared under WADA code

Seems to me that the waiting till Monday is not the primary problem. It is the leaving the sample in the tupperware dish and putting in on the desk all weekend that is the problem.

Do I think Braun took some stuff he shouldn't have? Yeah. Do I think MLB was a bunch of idiots in how they conduct their testing...after reading about it, I would have to say yes. No reason not to have the most professional procedure in place to do this sort of thing. Having a part-time guy do it and keep the sample unsupervised at his house for a weekend raises an issue.

MLB agreed to the strict terms of the testing. It should have done everything in its power to insure those terms were met. It failed to do so, and lost the appeal.

Hopefully MLB will learn from this and do further tests in a more professional manner, and in keeping with their agreement with the players union.

You will need to explain why this is a "problem". The sample was not poured out into a tupperware dish, it was kept triple-sealed in its container, and refrigerated, which is what MLB and the player's union would have expected him to do if he collected on a Sunday.

Braun got off on a meaningless technicality.

Not really a surprise that the Braun camp tried to influence the media by stretching the truth or saying something that wasn't true. That's the way this works and it happens with every high-profile athlete that has ever tested positive for anything.


Yeah, that's what I've been trying to explain. The most reasonable explanation for his positive test is that he took something to trigger it. I never understood why some were giving him the benefit of the doubt that they didn't give to so many others.

Cleared of all charges and ready for 2012 spring camp. Objects in the rear view mirror are getting farther and farther away. LMAO

Why? If he's using PEDs, he likely wouldn't have just started last season and would likely continue using them in 2012 anyway. That isn't even mentioning that nobody still knows exactly what (if any) impact PEDs have on baseball performance.

Braun is going to be the same fantastic hitter he's always been. There's little reason to think differently.

PED users are just as likely to be the guys putting up steadily nice numbers throughout their careers as they are to be guys with dramatic spikes in performance.

This seems like common sense to me. Given its importance, should a urine sample be kept at some guys house on a desk in a tupperware dish? Again, there were 12...not one, not two...but 12 Fed Ex stations open from which the sample could have been shipped from.

Again, MLB agreed to the strict standard...they even agreed that the burden of proof regarding the chain of evidence was on them.

I agree that Braun got off completely on a technicality...but MLB agreed to the rules, and should be made to play by them. If the tables were reversed, management would not hesitate to hold the players accountable to the letter of the law.

I would not characterize the technicality as meaningless.

Thanks Patrick Arnold.

You might be misunderstanding me. I'm not necessarily saying the arbitrator made the wrong decision, I don't know the fine details of baseball's drug policy, baseball appeal precedent, etc. I'm not a Brewers fan or have any direct interest in the NL Central race, so I don't really care about that.

I'm interested in whether Braun was guilty, and whether the collector acted reasonably. The answer is yes to both, and Braun would have been nailed by every other sport who tests for this stuff in the world. I don't care if there were eleventy zillion Fedex locations open, I didn't know they were open on Saturday either. Its arguably this guy's job to know every fine archaic rule surrounding collection, but no one else has this idiotic "must ship immediately if possible or the test is void" rule.

It is a meaningless technicality because the violation of the rule had no impact on the result of the test.

Sorry, but it's lazy thinking to believe anything else.

Extremely difficult to write laws or rules that emcompass every possible scenerio. Guess that's why we have courts in this land. Can't hate on Braun for finding one. It's the American Way

You keep saying that but it doesn't actually make it true. They're serialized sample collection kits with rigorous safeguards against tampering and it was refrigerated. It was taken by someone who is a professional DCO who was being contracted by the MLB to administer the testing. I mean, this is the same guy that is full trusted to administer the actual testing in regards to getting the sample, preparing the sample for shipment etc. Not just some random dude that picked up a jar of piss and left it at home while he went clubbing. When every major agency in the doping control agency is saying this is a bullshit technicality that he got off on I'm pretty much going to side with them over anything coming out of ESPN who long ago sold off their thin veneer of credibility well before they let Craig James run Mike Leach out of Lubbock on their dime. I mean seriously, there is absolutely no evidence that the sample wasn't his sample, no evidence that the sample was tampered with or doctored in any way and no evidence that there was any degradation of the sample by the extra time it took to be shipped. He got off because the rules were worded poorly and didn't allow for what is standard operating procedure the world over in doping control testing.

what a ****ing reeruned press conference. I turned it after about 1min

I'm still not sure how the info from the supposed positive test was leaked? Sounds like MLB or someone might get sued big time. Hopefully whoever is responsible for leak get's what they have coming to them.

Vindicated?
 

Ryan Braun's 2012 Stats:

40 HRs (1st in the NL)
168 Hits (4th in the NL)
324 Total Bases (1st in the NL)
103 RBIs (2nd in the NL)
95 Runs Scored (2nd in the NL)

With those numbers, and with the Brewers surging to just 2.5 games back of the wildcard after an awful 3/4 of a season and being sellers (Grienke trade) at the deadline, he has to be firmly in the NL MVP discussion now.

:thumb:

Oh by the way, the 40 HRs (so far) this year is his highest total ever...

Completely vindicated. He has manned up in a season where all the doubt could have messed with him. Hands down Braun is the MVP again this year. Great story; glad you posted this.

He was still using and got off on a technicality.

Herpa derpa?

Eh, he cheated and likely still is. Look at all the test Lance passed. I would wager well over 1/2 of professional athletes still cheat to some point. He probably wipes on some Androgel and night let's the Test do is stuff then he is back to normal readings in the morning in case there is a test. I don't buy some errand boy jerked it into his specimen.

Yep. I'm just glad he wasn't able to cheat his way to the World Series. Luckily, St. Louis is still the place where Milwaukee's playoff dreams go to ****ing die.

We'll have to see about that this season, buddy. We're slowly, but surely catching up to you! :p

Braun is likely still using something, but he should be the NL MVP. Has had a great year.

Is Braun not being tested or do the tests just not work?

Common belief is the guys are using fast acting testosterone creams that spike levels for a short time 8-12 hours then return to normal. Perfect for at night when you know you won't get a call to be tested. That is what the head Balco dude was saying I believe.

http://deadspin.com/5869473/victor-c...bolic-steroids

Interesting theory, thanks.

Oops!

If he's on something he shouldn't of gotten it. IMO I don't care if guys use. Baseball was more interesting with home runs and offense

You can't handle the other parts of the game? I actually prefer it not being an arcade game.

http://hsrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=AkNj3VKU5...lBFL_PiC4bXWw-



Aaron Rodgers bet his salary that Ryan Braun was clean.

Kemp so ****ing screwed its ridiculous

fuck it, just legalize PED's and lets see who is the most dedicated to being the best. =P

Thank God for the Cardinals, eh? Otherwise, Braun would probably have a World Series ring.

Try again sport...What a fraud douchebag he is.

As a reminder - The Guardian is really, really stupid.

That is all...

Yeah he messed up for sure.

Hell, I don't mind the usage. They are all pretty much on it, but it's sad how he got the guy fired. Ridiculous. What a complete scumbag.

Lets see some basewars.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OvmuvHN8Hn...0/BaseWars.gif

Braun actually admitting he was on something does not change the fact the guy still mishandled the sample and should have been fired any way.

But here's the thing:

He didn't.

Shyam Das ****ed up that ruling. If you look at what he did and when he did it, the guy that handled the sample really had no other options available to him and he did take every step possible to ensure that the sample was protected.

At the very worst, the chain of custody requirements had some holes in them and/or contingencies that weren't considered. But Laurenzi did his job correctly given the rules at the time.

What people forget about that 3-member arb panel is that 2 votes were cast before the first piece of evidence was entered - one member is a union rep, the other a baseball rep. in Braun's case the MLB rep was Michael Weiner, who has now run screaming from Braun's case, but neglects to mention that he was instrumental in absolving him the first time; he was a guaranteed 'no' vote as the panel's Union rep.

The entire ruling came down to the opinion of one man: Shyam Das. It was a ruling that he got wrong, IMO. And Das promptly made an even more egregious reversal when he overturned Eliezer Alfonso's suspension for a 2nd failed test immediately thereafter on tenuous procedural grounds. Das became a rogue operator and it got him shitcanned as an arbitrator.

Braun's an asshole and Das is an enabler. Laurenzi was just some poor schlub that did his job as best as could be reasonably expected given some very nebulous and incomplete guidelines. And in the end, by my eye, from a chain of custody perspective for trial purposes, Laurenzi did a fine job of protecting the evidence and ensuring it's veracity.

Das got the ruling wrong.

haha, what a dick

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/toddsutton">@toddsutton</a> ya I&#39;d put my salary next year on it. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23ponyup&amp;src=hash">#ponyup</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23exonerated&amp;src=hash">#exonerated</a></p>&mdash; Aaron Rodgers (@AaronRodgers12) <a href="https://twitter.com/AaronRodgers12/statuses/172814847518572544">February 23, 2012</a></blockquote>
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