Would Braun’s recent concession that he has made mistakes in the past and the fact that he has been known to have used PED’s be a basis for Milwaukee rescinding their contract with him? Assuming there is evidence out there that he had been using these PED’s when the contract was negotiated.
Almost certainly not- the players union would never stand for that.
It’s a moot point, though, because the Brewers won’t want out of the contract. This season was probably a wash anyway- they’ll let him sit out the remainder of a season in which they weren’t going anywhere, and hope he comes back strong next Spring.
When he does, Brewer fans will give him a long, loud, standing ovation. Braun will be booed on the road, but so what? He would be booed on the road anyway. As long as his hometown fans still love him (and they will), he’ll be happy.
They probably can’t void his contract unless there is something in the contract that says the deal can be voided if he’s caught cheating. I assume there is nothing like that in there.
plus, as of yet, there hasn’t been a legitimate positive drug test from him. that we know of.
Braun’s suspension was not under the drug testing rule; it was a suspension at the discretion of the Commissioner’s office. The 50-100-etc. game suspensions are for specifically failing a drug test; MLB can suspend a player for varying lengths of time for PED use if it is proven in other ways.
Obviously, it is virtually certain the standard MLB contract would not allow a team to release a player for being suspended. If it did, you’d create a perverse incentive for a team and MLB to collude to suspend a player for some minor incident if the team wanted out of the contract.
Or rather, there hasn’t been a positive test that Braun didn’t wriggle out of.
No, but wouldn’t you love to be the courier’s lawyer right about now…
BTW, if there are any actual lawyers who might want to comment on this I would be curious. I am not talking about weaseling out of a contract because the guy jay walks, I am talking about the right to rescind the contract because the parties were not bargaining on an equal basis due to the misrepresentations made by Braun during the bargaining process.
I would agree. But we’ll need more info, like how far back the records show he was doping. And his play would have to drop off precipitously in the future. Then you have a case. Btw, I live in the Milwaukee area and everybody here is pissed off about this. He lied to our faces.
No. Seriously no. This comes up everytime a baseball player gets caught for steroids or really any other bad activity and the answer is always the same. Braun’s contract cannot be voided. Arod’s contract cannot be voided. If the Brewers/Yankees wanted to buyout the contract, maybe they could get away with paying only 99% of it.
There are a few reasons for this. One RickJay alluded to earlier, you don’t want to give teams $100 million incentive to get one of their players to fail a drug test. The 2nd and most basic is that voiding contracts is not part of the cba that the players and owners agreed to, and you don’t get to rewrite contracts because you are really angry with a player. Really though, even without that the owners wouldn’t have a case, becuase owners are not willing to release players who fail steroid tests which have favorable contracts. If Braun was 24 and under contract for 500,000 there would be no thought of releasing him from his contract and letting him be a free agent. Additionally, owners have shown they are willing to give contracts to players who have failed steroid tests. You can’t really argue that Braun being suspended prevents him from fulfilling the rest of his contract, and thus the contract remains valid.
I don’t know if you are intentionally refusing to understand what I am saying or what, but the argument is not that he failed a drug test, but rather that he was doping when he accumulated the record that caused Milwaukee to want to hire him long term and that this fact was unknown to the Brewers. I don’t know how recognition of the right to rescind a contract in this situation would cause other teams to break contracts due to players currently doping. There is no connection between those two situations.