Twins await minor leaguers' test results

BY GORDON WITTENMYER
Pioneer Press

SEATTLE — Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said he scanned every name on the list of minor leaguers suspended over positive drug tests Monday and quietly pumped his fist.

"Yeah, no Twins there!" he said after finishing the list.

He then was told that the 38-player list represented only the testing results from the 12 organizations that train in Arizona.

"%&##!!"

As of Tuesday, results from the 18 organizations that train in Florida hadn't been announced, and baseball Commissioner Bud Selig told reporters in New York on Tuesday that he's not sure when they will be.

Twins minor league director Jim Rantz said doesn't think the Twins' minor leaguers have been tested yet.

Whatever the results from their organization and whatever the timeline on releasing them, Twins officials embrace the first-year practice of publicizing the names of those who test positive for banned substances, even if it took last month's congressional hearings on steroids to prompt the action.

"Nothing wrong with that," Twins general manager Terry Ryan said. "You've got to be accountable. It's against the rules. Maybe that'll deter some players. Maybe it'll be a blessing that they ended up going public."

Testing in the minor leagues is nothing new. The policy, which includes testing for amphetamine-class drugs not in the new major league program, has been around for five years and is stricter at several levels than the major league policy. Minor leaguers are not members of the Major League Baseball Players Association.

The 38 players who drew suspensions — all suspended 15 games as first-time offenders except for Oakland farmhand David Castillo, who got 60 games as a third-time offender — represent 4.1 percent of the 925 players randomly tested in Arizona and during the offseason.

However small or large one considers that percentage, it surprised few in the game.

"If you didn't think it was going to happen, you were probably fooling yourself," Gardenhire said. "They set forth the policy now, and they're trying to take care of things. And it's all going to come out, and that's good, and that's what baseball wants, so we can get it straightened out and go from there."

Twins shortstop Jason Bartlett said he was surprised the percentage wasn't higher. Bartlett, who was in the minors during the first four years of the commissioner's testing program there, suggested some of the older minor leaguers might be getting better at avoiding positives.

But neither Bartlett nor Ryan said he thought steroids represented a large portion of the positives.

Recreational drugs also are part of the testing program.

In fact, the Twins are one of the many teams who began testing minor leaguers on their own about 15 years ago, more as a response to the Pittsburgh drug trials of the 1980s that focused on cocaine use and distribution.

"We didn't test for steroids, but we did test for all the other drugs," Rantz said. "We were real fortunate we didn't have a lot of positives."

Since the commissioner's office imposed the policy throughout the minors and included steroids and substances such as ephedrine on the banned list, the Twins have had no more than two or three test positive for any substance in any given year.

"We've had a clean bill of health a couple different years," Rantz said. "We've had some guys. Most of it was marijuana."

By comparison, the Seattle Mariners had eight players and the Chicago Cubs seven on Monday's list.

"It's not like a slap in the face for an organization. It's a personal thing," Gardenhire said. "I read where the Mariners had eight guys. Well, that's not a Mariners policy. They want their players clean, and they're right there with the rest of baseball, trying to straighten this thing out."

Ryan points out that teams such as the Twins have gone to great lengths to try to educate their players from the lowest levels of the minors about the dangers and other drawbacks associated with drug and steroid use, even before testing policies were in place.

"Testing or no testing, we've always been of the opinion that you don't take shortcuts or put things in your body that can ultimately come back and haunt you," he said. "And we've always been aggressive in making sure we try to educate players in the wrongdoings."

With Tampa Bay's Alex Sanchez drawing a suspension for a violation of the major league policy as well as dozens of minor league violators being exposed, it's a story that promises to have a long shelf life this summer.

"That's all right," Ryan said. "Keep it out in the forefront and maybe we can clean it up.