Melky Cabrera suspended for 50 games for positive testosterone test

Big, big news out of San Francisco that could have major playoff implications: Melky Cabrera has been suspended 50 games for a positive testosterone test.

That knocks him out for the rest of the season — the Giants only have 45 games left — and presumably the postseason. Though I’ll check to see whether suspensions can be counted off with postseason games. If they can. He’d be available for a theoretical NLCS.

Oh, and it appears that Melky lied to Andrew Baggarly of CSNBayArea.com about it too, so that’s fun.

Cabrera is hitting .346/.390/.516 on the year and, until Buster Posey’s hot streak of late, was the Giants’ offensive MVP for most of the season. Now … he’s gone. And it hurts not just the Giants: Cabrera will be a free agent after the season is over, and now his free agent money drive is all gone.

UPDATE: Cabrera just made a statement and he made no excuses:

“My positive test was the result of my use of a substance I should not have used. I accept my suspension under the Joint Drug Program and will try to move on with my life. I am deeply sorry for my mistake and I apologize to my teammates, to the San Francisco Giants organization and to the fans for letting them down.”

Wow. Can’t remember many violators who actually owned up without caveat.

Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark met the press late this morning and covered a wide array of topics.

One of them: free agency, which he referred to as being “under attack” based on the slow market for free agents last offseason.

“What the players saw last offseason was that their free-agent rights were under attack on what has been the bedrock of our system,” Clark said. He added that they “have some very difficult decisions to make.” Presumably in the form of grievances and, down the road, a negotiating strategy that seeks to claw back some of the many concessions the union has given owners in the past few Collective Bargaining Agreements. CBAs, it’s worth noting, that Clark negotiated. We’ve covered that territory in detail in the past.

Of more immediate interest was Clark’s comment that the idea of a universal designated hitter is, among players, “gaining momentum.” Clark says “players are talking about it more than they have in the past.” We’ve talked a lot about that as well.

Given that hating or loving the DH is the closest thing baseball has to a religion, no one’s mind is going to be changed by any of this, but I think, practically speaking, it’s inevitable that the National League will have the DH and I think it happens relatively soon. Perhaps in the next five years. The opposition to it at this point is solely subjective and based on tradition. People like pitchers batting and they like double switches and they like the leagues being different because they, well, like it. If the system were being set up today, however, they’d never have it this way and I think even the DH-haters know that well. That doesn’t mean that you can’t dislike a universal DH, but it does mean that you can’t expect the people who run the game to cater to that preference when it makes little sense for them to do it for their own purposes.

Anyway: enjoy convincing each other in the comments about how the side of that argument you dislike is wrong.

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