ST. LOUIS — The announcement of Dee Gordon’s 80-game suspension for performance-enhancing substances came at 1:18 a.m. Eastern time Friday. So it wasn’t until later that morning that much of the baseball world, including the Nationals, saw the news about the Marlins’ speedy second baseman. The Nationals are in the same division as the Marlins, face the two-time all-star Gordon often and are very familiar with him.
“I knew his dad quite well and he’s one of my son’s heroes; he’s built like my son,” Nationals Manager Dusty Baker said before Friday’s game in St. Louis against the Cardinals. “And my son really likes his game because he’s a speed guy like that. So I just heard it this afternoon. It’s surprising and I’m sad for him because he’s a heck of a young man. Whatever’s happened — and I’m sure he’s learned his lesson — I’m sure he’s very remorseful for everything that happened. But I don’t know; nothing really surprises me too much anymore.”
“It’s definitely a disappointment,” Nationals right fielder Bryce Harper said. “He’s one of the best second basemen in the game, a big talent, a lot of fun to watch. It’s just disappointment, something you don’t want to see. Not good for the sport, not good for baseball. But he’s still one of the best players in the game and I’ve still got a lot of respect for him. But it’s definitely something that’s just tough.”
[Dee Gordon’s 80-game PED suspension alters Marlins season]
Gordon tested positive for “exogenous testosterone and clostebol,” both performance-enhancing substances, according to Major League Baseball. An ESPN report said Gordon tested positive in spring training and dropped his appeal Thursday, saying in a statement Friday that he didn’t knowingly ingest the banned substances but was accepting responsibility.
Gordon still played in Thursday’s game against the Dodgers and drove in the tying run in the win. His suspension was announced after the game. But like anything concerning this hazy world of PEDs, it is unclear when Gordon took the performance-enhancing substances and how it helped.
Gordon hit .342 in 19 games against the Nationals last season. He was 5 for 20 in six games against them this season, and the Marlins won three of them. He won the National League batting title last year, edging out Harper on the final day of the season. Both entered the final game hitting .331, but Harper went 1 for 4 and Gordon collected three hits to finish at .333 — 40 points above his career mark. Despite the cloud of performance-enhancing drugs now looming over Gordon, Harper refused to question history.
“I lost the batting title,” Harper said. “I lost it completely. I was hitting like .345 with three weeks left or so. I completely lost it. It was nothing to do with that. You’ve still got to hit the baseball. You’ve still got to perform. And he did that. I completely lost the batting title last year, so that’s all behind us.”
The news of Gordon’s suspension struck a chord with Baker, who recalled a heartbreaking interaction with his son — Darren, who is now 17 — a while back.
“It’s a sad day for me and for a lot of people that know Dee,” Baker said. “I had my son ask me one time a few years ago, when players were getting busted everyday, he asked me, ‘Dad is there anybody that’s not doing it?’ And I didn’t really know what to say. It’s a sad day for us all.”
Asked if he thought the penalties for PED use were appropriate, Baker deferred to the people in charge or the caught players. Harper was diplomatic, saying his fellow players and the union would address it. “I’m sure we’ll have meetings about that and we’ll talk about it when we need to,” he said.
The collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players’ union expires in December. Before Gordon’s suspension emerged, several prominent players spoke out to Fox Sports about the severity of PED punishments and the detection process, including Nationals starter Max Scherzer. He called PED “a dark cloud within the game.”
Scherzer told Fox Sports that “the science to cheat will always be ahead of the science to detect” and that players have to be open to changes to the Joint Drug Agreement. “If anything [more] can be done to detect illegal substances, we have to be open to that,” he said.
Players who can prove to an arbitration panel that they inadvertently used banned substances get a lesser suspension. Scherzer offered an alternative to Fox Sports that could serve as a deterrent: “Why can’t we up the punishment to PED offenders when it’s beyond reasonable doubt that they were taking designer drugs to avoid detection? If anybody has an incentive to cheat, they’re going to try and use the most scientifically concocted drug there is. To me, that’s premeditation. And when you’re talking about premeditation to cheat, that’s when we need punishment that mimics that.”
Stopped after batting practice before Friday’s game, Scherzer’s stance hasn’t changed. He declined to comment on Gordon’s situation but believes there something can be changed in the larger scale.
“All those words I said I meant,” he said. “I still stand by them. But until we know more about these recent cases and more details – because I think we’ve seen in the past that it takes month to get the full story – it’s unfair to anybody and everybody in the process to make any comments about a specific case. As for a generality, I still believe in trying to make the deterrent as tough as possible so that we don’t have these issues in the future.”
