Miami Marlins second baseman and NL All Star Dee Gordon, 28, tested positive for two types of performance enhancing drugs and was suspended for 80 games, MLB announced today. The news comes on the heels of Gordon’s early-season six stolen bases, .266 batting average, and a clutch tying run against the Dodgers last night.
Gordon’s was the second PED-related suspension in eight days—the other was Chris Colabello, another player coming off the best season of his career after hitting .321 for the Blue Jays last season. Gordon last year won a gold glove and led the league in stolen bases and hits with a .333 batting average.
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Gordon—son of former MLB pitcher Tom Gordon—tested positive for Testosterone and Clostebol, a synthetic steroid that was popular among East German olympians in the 1960’s. Gordon tested positive on March 13, made an appeal that was denied on April 22, but still played until last night. He dropped the appeal, and made the following statement:
Sports medicine expert Will Carroll reports that Gordon tested positive for a “stack” of multiple drugs, including the commonly-prescribed testosterone derivative cypionate, often used in hormone replacement therapy. Carroll spoke to a source who suggests that Gordon’s particular stack might have been promagnon, a compound substance that is not banned outright by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
This is all to say that there’s a potential that Gordon may have actually “not [done] so knowingly,” but given the fact that he accepted the consequences, his plausible deniability just seems like a way for him to come out on top in the eyes of his teammates and fans. Don’t do drugs, kids.