Via FoxSports, this is ominous:
More PED busts are coming from Major League Baseball. (via @OTLonESPN) https://t.co/zGEPD6pOak
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) May 4, 2016
From ESPN:
MLB officials are examining what connections might exist between the players to explain Turinabol’s apparent resurgence but have not found any so far, a source told Outside the Lines. But two possible explanations exist for why positive tests are spiking, sources said: better testing technology and/or a supplement taken by athletes.
The supplement route seems unlikely:
Besides the improved testing, there is another possible culprit for the recent spike in Turinabol positives, though sources told Outside the Lines it’s a bit more speculative.
The supplement Alpha-4D, sold by Shredded Labs, includes an oral form of Turinabol. None of the players who tested positive has said he used the product, but it was placed on the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s “high risk” supplement list in March 2014 and is the one over-the-counter product that has been identified by the agency as containing the drug.
Players are supposed to get notice on tainted supplements so they can avoid them. I suppose the substance could have made it’s way into another supplement, but we’ll see. Most likely is the new testing caught players unawares:
“The window of detection has moved out to, typically, several weeks, and in some rare circumstances up to months after administration,” said Daniel Eichner, the president of the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory in Utah, which works with most major sports leagues.
As a result, players who might have used it without detection for years are finding themselves suddenly vulnerable to testing.
So rather than cleaning up the game, PED testing led to an arms race where players get undetectable drugs, and the enforcers develop better tests.
Players are given a list of approved supplements which are NSF certified. However, NSF certification does not guarantee anything.
This drug is not an undetectable drug, its been around since the 70’s and nobody in their right mind that has to be tested uses it.
MLB has recently went from doing CIR testing only when T/E ratio was high to doing CIR on everyone once a year regardless. CIR will always detect trace amounts of a contaminant like this while the T/E ratio may still be below the threshold.
Its likely players have been using contaminated supplements from the beginning, but at levels low enough that the T/E ratio would not trigger a CIR test, but are now being detected because of more CIR tests