In Little League, if you use an ineligible player, you forfeit the game.
In college, if you use an academically ineligible player, it sometimes (maybe more often, I don’t know) results in giving the wins back and forfeitting conference titles, bowl victories, and I would imagine even National Titles.
What about if a ML ballplayer is found to have used steroids, that team forfeits games between the time when it can reasonably be established that they ingested or injected them until the point of the suspension?
Using the O’s an an example, it has been reported that Palmeiro tested positive well before his 3000th hit game, and wasn’t suspended until well after it. Shouldn’t Baltimore have to forfeit those games and say the games from a week before (assuming that even if this was his first use, it would have had to have been about a week before it was detectable)?
Naturally, the players union would fight this tooth and nail, but doesn’t it seem like a just thing to do, or at least attempt to get done?
That opens everything up. Establishing time-frame would be a disaster. Instead, just nuke the player. I’d modify Selig’s proposal to skip Step 2. First Offense: 50 game suspension without pay. Second Offense: immediate termination of contract, forfeiture of all monies owed by MLB, and banned for Life +20 years from baseball. Plus jail time. Plus removal from any recordbooks to date. Erase them from baseball. Take a page from the USSR and make them “non-persons.”
OK, so maybe the week lead time is bad, but who’s going to inject the night before a test? So if they test positive June 30 but aren’t suspended until today, any game in which they appeared in the lineup in whatever capacity from June 29 until August 2, is deemed a forfeit.
I’m being collectively punished because the starting point guard on the NCAA Championship team, of which I was a backup forward (10.3 ppg, 7 reb, 2 blks, by the way ), failed Basket Weaving 101 (survey course) and we had to give back the conference title and National Championship.
Please, it’s not like the Orioles have even won that many games between the testing positive and the suspension of Raffy Palmerio. Hell, as bad as they have been, forfeiting the games might have made their record better.
Forfeit the games of June and July (20 wins), and while their record suffers, the teams they played in those months improve, and there’s possibly a more compelling playoff picture.
Looking quickly at the contenders, Boston picks up 4 games, extending their division lead to 7.5 games because NYY gets 1 back, as does Toronto. Cleveland and Minnesota each pick up a game on Chigago, not that it really matters. It’d still leave them 13 games back. But Houston gets 3 back, cutting STL’s lead to 6 games, as if that division wasn’t getting interesting enough.
Palmeiro’s ineligibility impacts not only his team, but the teams around them, even if they didn’t play each other.
Again, that’s just foolish. In what way is the team implicated here? As Chuck says, the NCAA analogy doesn’t wash because the team and school in college athletics have the role of providing an education and character-building and suchlike.
In baseball the players are adults and are resposible for their own actions.
Though in addition, you’re unfairly upsetting the race by effecting differing teams in differing ways. Imagine if Baltimore had gone 20-0 against Tampa by a fluke…does Tampa suddenly gain 20 games in the standings? I think NOT!
What happens in games that Giambi plays against Palmeiro?
In other words, what happens when two players are suspended from two different teams that have played against each other?
What happens when a player tests positive and then a second test comes up negative? You are essentially forcing the manager to bench their best player for at least a couple of weeks for fear of risking forfeiting those games.
The team benefits when the player who tested positive three weeks ago but hasn’t begun serving his suspension hits the game winning home run, or accounts for 3 RBI in a 4-2 win. Baseball is not an game of individual skill. Well, it is, but a team’s individuals collectively benefit the team as a whole. Curt Schilling didn’t win the WS last year, his team did. Do you see what I’m getting at?
Granted, MLB players are adults, and should be responsible for themselves, but the game is ultimately about the team and not the individual.
I actually thought of this thread when Giambi hit his HR in the 9th last night. He hasn’t tested positive yet, as far as we know, but I’d say it’d be similar to “no contest” in boxing. No win for either team, no loss for either team, no refunds for the fans :eek: .
It’s my understanding that the sample is split. If the first test comes up positive, the rest of the sample is tested. If that also comes up positive, then the player is suspended.
Yeah, but it’s not like the TEAM has control over when the information gets out. That’s the commissioners office. Again, you’re punishing the group for the actions of an individual. And there is simply no means for the team to control each player. Look at the drug scandals of the 1970s and 1980s. Those are, in a legal sense, far worse than steroid use and no one gigged the teams there.
Should the players be punished? Yes. Should the team? No.
Plus, woof, we’ve had what? 10 players suspended this year? By the time it’s all done Atlanta will win the NL East with a 10-8 record.
I remember reading that it was done immediately. I was under the impression that the results were pretty quick to come back. I really don’t know how it works.
How do you determine division and wild card winners when the teams have played an uneven number of games?
[/QUOTE]
Well, when I’m commissioner, I abolish the Wild Card, as much as it would have taken the Sox out of contention last year.
But I’m not here to talk about the past.
The division and wild card races would be figured the same way, with forfeits counting as losses.
But if two teams played against each other that ended up both having a juiced up player, you said those games wouldn’t count. So at the end of the season it would be possible to have a couple of teams that had officially played only 158 games. How do you determine their standings against teams that played 162?
I never really thought it out that far. Hell, I didn’t really expect this much of a discourse. Maybe I am being foolish, like Jonathan Chance said. I suppose it sounded like (still does, with some tweaking, actually) a good idea at the time.
Would you fellas be interested in ruling MLB as a triumvirate?
It doesn’t make sense to eliminate the games AFTER the positive test unless you think he’s so stupid that he got caught and kept using it. Games BEFORE the positive test are the ones that would be forfeited, except that that can’t really be determined. Palmeiro continued to play because he was appealing his suspension, as he should be allowed to do.
), failed Basket Weaving 101 (survey course) and we had to give back the conference title and National Championship.