At least one MLB player is expected to be suspended in the coming days for the use of the drug Turinabol, according to T.J. Quinn of ESPN.com, with two sources revealing to Outside the Lines that the “positive test is one of a handful being processed.”
That means more suspensions are likely to follow, per Quinn’s report, and the “unnamed players who tested positive have been informed, and MLB officials are still wrapping up the administrative process required to suspend them.”
Thus far, both Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Chris Colabello and Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Daniel Stumpf have tested positive for Turinabol, an “old-fashioned steroid developed by the East Germans in the 1960s as part of a government doping program,” per Bob Nightengale of USA Today.
Both players were suspended 80 games by MLB for use of the drug.
The recent spike in positive tests for Turinabol can likely be attributed to more sophisticated testing protocols and procedures.
“The window of detection has moved out to, typically, several weeks, and in some rare circumstances up to months after administration,” Daniel Eichner, the president of the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory in Utah, told Quinn about the testing for Turinabol.
In the past, athletes who were taking the drug knew that it would break down “relatively quickly in the body and used to be undetectable after a week, and sometimes even less time,” per Quinn.
Victor Conte, the former founder of BALCO—which infamously was in the middle of one of the biggest doping scandals in sports history—is surprised to see any athletes still trying to cheat the system by using Turinabol, as he revealed to Nightengale:
“If you’re smart, you’ll never get caught. The research shows that if you go home from the ballpark, and take a fast-acting testosterone, it will peak at 1 in the morning, get down before the 4-to-1 TE ratio by 4 in the morning, and by the time you get to the ballpark, you can’t test positive. That’s what (Alex Rodriguez) and all of those guys in Biogenesis were doing.
So to get caught now, you’ve got to be pretty dumb. And to use Turinabol, that’s dumber than dumb. Nobody with any brains are using Turinabol. That’s just stupidity.”
With these allegations, it would seem that a fairly substantial number of MLB players didn’t get the memo.
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