Well, his name is Braun (sic), not BrainsOriginally Posted by Vottomatic
I don't think this guy ever goes down. He's got an answer for everything. Teflon Braun.
Stick to your guns.
Ghosts of 1990 (02-06-2013),Krawhitham (02-06-2013),NCCardfan (02-06-2013)
I don't see any way he gets suspended for this. Now, is he guilty? Sure, he's guilty as can be, but pretty much everyone knew that last year. The only reason he got off was because of some "chain of command" issue.
Eh...I don't really see the Brewers being much of a threat with that starting staff anyway.
No matter how good the rest of Ryan Braun career will be (which should be really damn good if he stays healthy).
These allegations will forever put an asterisk mark by his name, and should probably never be considered for the hall of fame (if he puts up the numbers to do so) for his cheating.
MLB can suspend anyone for "just cause" if they believe they used PED's. A positive drug test isn't necessary for a suspension. Not sure they will play that card, but they have it, if they want to.
Hoping to change my username to 75769024
guilty by association
whats interesting is that he admits using Bosch as a consultant. My question is just why would ever associate with Bosch... unless... well maybe the folks from Balco were busy.
cincinnati chili (02-07-2013)
Exactly, I was appalled that Will Carroll, who I like a lot, went on Clubhouse Confidential today and said that Braun's explanation is plausible.
If you're paying $500/hour attorneys to handle your appeal, you don't hire a drug dealer to work as your retained expert/consultant. You hire a freaking M.D.
Stick to your guns.
There is a big piece missing with HGH use. Most players are not just using HGH. There is of course a debate in the medical community of it's effectiveness with people in their 20's and 30's (the vast majority of baseball players). We can fight all day about that and there will be no answer until there is some sort of consensus from the medical community.
Yet there is one thing we will never know, and that is how HGH is used in conjunction with anabolic steroids. Within the performance enhancing community, it is pretty much agreed upon steroids used with HGH maximizes the benefit of steroids. Much of this is the theory that steroids make your muscles grow too fast for your body to adjust to it, and HGH lets the rest of your body grow to accomodate the larger muscles.
The reason we will never know is anabolic steroids are an illegal drug that cannot be tested legally. So there are no scientific studies that can confirm or deny the effectiveness of HGH when used with steroids. Yet for people who are into performance enhancing, it's something they all will do and swear by it. So while you can say HGH is not much of a benefit, the vast majority of the time it's used in combination with steroids. I think we all can agree steroids helps baseball performance, and if you don't think steroids helps a person get stronger and therefore hit the ball harder or throw it harder, along with reducing recovery time, well, I can't help you there. Testosterone is also used in cycling of steroids to make up for the hormone imbalances.
So while testosterone and HGH might not have proven benefits and even the studies saying they improve lean muscle mass claim it minimal, they are often huge red flags for steroid use. On top of that, it's well known they are illegal and agreed upon with the union to be performance enhancers that are not to be taken by the players.
As for contaminating someone's food, I am not sure you can just put testosterone into someone's food and it will go up. I am sure the tablets used must get past the stomach (the stomach will destroy it), and you can do that with enteric pills. Yet you would know you swallowed a pill. The other ways are creams, gels, sublingual pills, and of course injections. Injections are a no brainer (you will know), and creams and gels would take some serious covert stuff to get someone to take the continual doses necessary. Sublingual pills, once again, would be really tough to fool someone into taking. This really comes down to the player realizing how these things get into their system and making sure to do their due diligence. Yet even then it would be really tough to fool anyone into taking the doses needed.
As for false positives, you have to realize this testing has been agreed upon by the players union. They know full well the accuracy of these tests (which are extremely expensive and have a very high accuracy). On top of that, they take b samples in case of a positive test. If a person tests positive, they then test the b sample. The possibility of 2 false positives in these tests are astronomical. The problem with Braun is both samples were of course not sent in right away per protocol. Yet the possibility of 2 samples both increasing testosterone is simply not plausible (especially since he tested positive for synthetic testosterone, which just doesn't happen naturally). The reason it was overturned is the possibility of tampering with the samples since protocol used to prevent that was not followed. So it's up to you to believe if the tester tampered with the samples.
Anyway, that is my more than 2 cents on some of the stuff talked about here. HGH and testosterone are not simply nothing, mostly used in combination with steroids, and in the end are still against the rules of baseball. It's also highly unlikely to have 2 false positives and to have someone spike your food to cause a false positive. All of these things have been gone over for years, and have been dealt with for decades to eliminate these possibilities. Nothing is 100%, but it's really close. In the case of Ryan Braun, he had synthetic testosterone in both of his samples. That does not happen naturally no matter how long the samples sit. The decision was based on the fact the samples could be tampered with. It's up to you to decide if that was possible, or should I say probable.
Last edited by scott91575; 02-07-2013 at 05:06 AM.
mdccclxix (02-07-2013)
One of Braun's attorneys confirmed that his defense team did in fact hire Bosch as one of many consultants early in the exploratory phase of their preparation. He said Bosch's input was worthless and so the defense team moved forward without using Bosch as an expert witness.
Essentially, Braun's team screened several people to see if they were qualified to be expert witnesses for the defense. Bosch was one of the candidates and he was deemed not worthy.
Last edited by AtomicDumpling; 02-08-2013 at 02:33 AM.
Bosch charges $20-30k, at minimum, to be screened? Nice line of work.One of Braun's attorneys confirmed that his defense team did in fact hire Bosch as one of many consultants early in the exploratory phase of their preparation. He said Bosch's input was worthless and so the defense team moved forward without using Bosch as an expert witness.
Essentially, Braun's team screened several people to see if they were qualified to be expert witnesses for the defense. Bosch was one of the candidates and he was deemed not worthy.
Consulting can be extremely lucrative.
"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner
Out of curiosity what would keep one of these perfomance enhancing drug companies from extorting top players? I'm not saying Braun and others linked to such entities aren't guilty or shouldn't be implicated, but that thought crossed my mind.
Ryan Braun, Yasmani Grandal, The U connection, ARod...I'm sorry, but when does Yonder Alonso's name show up?
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