Ryan Braun: Steroids & Speculation

As you are most certainly aware of if you follow baseball in any capacity during the offseason, Ryan Braun has seen his name become the latest casualty in the recent pandemic of performance enhancing drug speculation this winter. Apparently, Braun's name has appeared alongside other all-stars such as Alex Rodriguez and Gio Gonzalez on a list of major leaguers who apparently have received PEDs from "Dr." Anthony Bosch of the Miami Biogenesis "Anti-Aging" clinic.

Now, here's where things get tricky. If we look at Ryan Braun's statement issued shortly after his name arose in the accusations, he says that his attorneys merely used Bosch as a "consultant" when going through Braun's successful appeal over a failed drug test last season which threatened to revoke his 2011 NL MVP award.

If you are like me, this seems believable, given that Bosch allegedly was the one who provided Manny Ramirez with the PEDs which led to his 50 game suspension a few years back. Braun was trying to prove that the results of his failed drug test were inaccurate and/or tampered with and therefore could not be credibly used to punish him. His attorneys used Bosch as a supposedly confidential consultant for I-don't-know-what, because, well, nobody except them presumably knows what. However, again presumably, it had something to do with how a drug test could be beaten or tampered. Bosch, as he is in the business of providing professional athletes with performance enhancing drugs, probably knows a thing or two about beating a drug test, more then say, a legitimate straight shooting doctor would. Therefore I will use this analogy: if you are trying to get away with committing a crime, would you rather go to the known con, or the police for advice?

To clear that up a little bit, we turn to fangraphs.com writer and former practitioner of law, Wendy Thurm. In Wendy's excellent piece on fangraphs she attempts to explain to us the term "consultant" in a legal sense, as well as a bunch of other legal issues. I will not get into this myself but I recommend reading Wendy's piece.

I'm not sure I completely believe Braun and I don't think I will until the full story has been investigated and uncovered, but I want to believe him, and I think his story seems legitimate enough. But, there are many that are not like me. Unfortunately, there are always going to be the simple, closed-minded, trolling masses of idiots on the internet, and that really is a shame.