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Hey this is great news!! Now the Lions need to keep an eye on Barry Sanders Jr.Comment
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I am gonna catch H-E-L-L when I wear my TIGERS hat around MILWAUKEE this Summer!!! LMFAOComment
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There goes the Tribe's shot at the central.
not to be bitter at the tigers, and their fans, good for you, for spending cash to make your team better.
It sucks balls though as a Tribe fan, when your team is stuck with a pretty good FO and a GREAT farm system, and not an owner willing to spend cash to either get some players to improve their team, or keep those that came from the system.Still waiting for a relevant Browns TeamComment
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9 year deal? Damn, I thought my team had the worst contract in sports with A-Rod.......at least Fielder can dh on the back end but that dude needs a personal trainer.Comment
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Signing Fielder makes sense for Detroit. With Cabrera and Verlander in the prime of their careers, this is the time when a marquee player like Fielder can really help them. But that contract - whoa! It's really going to be an albatross in the later years. Players with Fielder's body type don't age well, either.ROTH ARMY MILITIA
Originally posted by EAT MY ASSHOLE
Sharky sometimes needs things spelled out for him in explicit, specific detail. I used to think it was a lawyer thing, but over time it became more and more evident that he's merely someone's idiot twin.Comment
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Scott Boras once again proves why he's the best agent in pro-sports - 9 years at A-Rod/Pujols money?
Yeah, Fielder is a beast and he can rake, but he's sub-par with the glove, and his body-type will not age well due to his girth. The Tigers will be lucky if Fielder can sustain his current level of production by year 5 of this contract.Comment
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Eat Us And Smile - The Originals
"I have a very belligerent enthusiasm or an enthusiastic belligerence. I’m an intellectual slut." - David Lee Roth
"We are part of the, not just the culture, but the geography. Van Halen music goes along with like fries with the burger." - David Lee RothComment
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After 17 Seasons, Posada Announces Retirement
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What a stud Posada turned out to be. Switch hitter, power, average, defense... I remember watching him in 1991 when he was playing for (A) Greensboro with Andy Pettitte before Jeter got called up there. The ball would explode off his bat. Just a natural hitter, I think.
I appreciate that he walked away now instead of DHing and risking having a subpar end to an otherwise outstanding career. Best of all, in this day of free agents and blockbuster trades he managed to stay in one place longer than almost any other player in his era. In the full presser, you can see how much pride he takes in being a Yankee and he even mentioned never wearing any other uniform. That's a testament to loyalty, something the Yankees and many of their players almost never seemed to give a shit about over the years.
Good for him. 4 Rings, a ton of Silver Slugger's and a season best .338 ba in 2007.
Hip, Hip- Jorge!!!You're gonna hear the angels sing...Comment
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"I gotta question for y'all first, wheres the closest mcdonalds at?"Comment
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Random testing? Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista given 16 drug tests over two seasons
Jose Bautista should buy some lottery tickets.
Based on the way the Major League conducts its random drug testing, either the Toronto Blue Jays slugger is really lucky — or somebody has some serious suspicions about him — if he’s really been drug tested 16 times over the past two years as he revealed at a banquet in the Dominican Republic recently.
The Major Leagues’ leading home run hitter the past two seasons made the remark at the banquet, according to a report in Spanish published in the Dominican newspaper “Hoy.”
Former pitcher Pedro Martinez was talking to a group of Dominican baseball players at a dinner given by President Leonel Fernandez when the hurler praised Bautista for his hitting success and then asked him how many times he had been tested.
Bautista answered by saying his increased testing for banned performance enhancing drugs coincided with his sensational two seasons of hitting home runs. He said that he had been tested nine times in 2010, the year he led the majors with 54 homers, and was tested seven times last season when he hit another 43 home runs.
In the two previous seasons, he had only been tested three times, Bautista said.
Baseball’s testing policy is considered the strictest among professional sports and will include blood testing in 2012 (the first of the four major sports to do so).
Under Major League rules, each player on the 40-man roster must undergo at least two random mandatory tests, once in spring training and again during the regular season. There can be at least two more random tests during the season so a player could be tested up to four times. Also, there are additional random tests in the playoffs.
Players’ names are also pulled randomly from a computer for testing throughout the year. There is no limit on how many times their names can be spit out of the computer, like a home lottery.
So in a sense, if they’re lucky enough to be unlucky, they could be tested numerous times.
According to Major League Baseball, about 1,200 random drug tests are administered during a regular season on the roughly 750 players, with 375 more tests given in the offseason.
If a player is found to have been in violation of the drug policy over a stimulant, he is subjected to six more random tests over the next year. Positive tests for stimulants are not make public.
Unless Bautista was exaggerating, you’d have to think he’d have to be really lucky to hit the drug testing lottery 16 times in the past two seasons. Unless somebody thinks there is a “reasonable or probable cause” or “suspicion” that he might be taking something.
But those additional drug tests are usually conducted based on a player’s sudden change in appearance, or demeanor, or if somebody saw something either in or outside the dressing room, or the player gets into trouble with the law.
Suddenly hitting home runs at a remarkable rate wouldn’t cause a drug test or a player to be specifically targeted, according to a Major League source. However, any player, who has previously failed a test, is subject to increased testing.
The Blue Jays third baseman/outfielder declined to comment on the matter via the team on Thursday but a team source said Bautista was neither upset about his testing nor wished to make an issue out of what was said at the banquet.
Bautista’s agent, Bean Stringfellow, told The Star on Thursday that he has no idea how many times his client has been tested.
“He doesn’t tell me, but he doesn’t have anything to hide,” he said in a telephone interview. “That (16 times) may seem like a higher number than norm . . . but it is what it is. I don’t think there’s a set number as to how many times you can be tested.
‘Jose has never complained one time about how many times he’s been tested or anyone in our (Performance Agency). Like I said, he’s got nothing to hide.”
Despite suggestions that Bautista must be taking something for his newfound power surge, he has never tested positive. Also, his appearance and body hasn’t change since he became one of the most feared hitters in baseball over the past two seasons with the Jays.
Major League Baseball also declined to comment on Bautista’s claim to have been tested 16 times, indicating that drug testing is a privacy issue and officials never comment on specific individual. The only time results are ever revealed is if a player tests positive. MLB also never reveals how many times an individual has been tested.
Last June, Bautista spoke about the testing process and doping allegations in a radio interview.
“Not everybody on then team gets picked every single time that they test but our team has gotten tested once a week for the last four weeks and I’ve gotten tested twice in that span,” Bautista told Jim Bowden’s Sirius XM radio show last June.
“I know what kind of person I am and how I achieve things so I have no problem answering these questions. If playing good baseball and playing good and hitting a lot more home runs and being successful leads to people asking these questions, I have no problem answering them because I know I haven’t done anything wrong.’
Bautista had hit 59 home runs over six seasons as a part-time player before exploding to strike for 54 in 2010 with the Jays. Last season, he hit 43 and led the majors in combined on-base and slugging percentage, with a 1.056 mark.
Bautista has also won the American League’s Hank Aaron Award, given to the league’s best hitter, the last two years. He finished fourth in MVP voting in 2010 and placed third last season.
Bautista isn’t the only heavy hitter to get tested frequently.
Albert Pujols, now of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, said he was tested six times in 2008 as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals and that he would give back his salary if he ever failed a drug test.
“My house is always open,” Pujols told ESPN.com last year. “They can come any time they want during the off-season. I challenge them to try training with me during three months and a half. They can come and check everyComment
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