It looks like Major League Baseball is set to crack down on some baseball players who have been linked with performance enhancing drugs.  Major League Baseball is working with Tony Bosch, who will provide the names of players who he supplied performance enhancing drugs through his rejuvenation clinic Biogenesis of America.  Some of the players linked to the Biogenesis scandal include current and former Yankees Francisco Cervelli, Jesus Montero, and Alex Rodriguez, who of course has admitted to doping in the past.  These players join the list of other current and former Yankees who have been connected with doping in sports, including Jason Giambi, Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco, Andy Pettitte.  So the question here is; do the Yankees have a PED problem within their organization, or is the fact that many of the players in question are from the Yankees organization just a coincidence?

I think a case could be made for coincidence, or an organizational problem.  The Yankees have long been known to pay as much as they have to in order to acquire the best free agents on the market.  Is it possible that part of the reason some of these free agents were so coveted to begin with was because they were doping before they became Yankees?  That case certainly could be made for Rodriguez, who has only admitted he used steroids while he was with the Rangers from 2001 to 2003.  Canseco also admitted to using steroids beginning in his time with the Athletics, well before he was ever a Yankee.

Part of the reason so many Yankees are associated with performance enhancing drugs was due to the Mitchell Report from 2007.  The Mitchell Report was perhaps the most revealing single event regarding steroids in sports, as over 80 players were named in the report linking them to steroids or human growth hormones.  The reason so many Yankees were named in this report was because one of the main sources George Mitchell used to compile the data for his report was the testimony of Brian McNamee.  McNamee was a former strength and conditioning coach for the Yankees, so it seems only natural that most of the people he supplied performance enhancing drugs to were Yankees players.  This might suggest that the reason so many Yankees have been implicated in steroid use is simply because they were the main source of the biggest steroid report to date.

You could make a case that perhaps the extremely high pressure of playing for the Yankees could lead some players to turn to performance enhancing drugs, if their time in New York isn’t going as planned.  I really doubt that would be the reason so many Yankees have turned up in doping investigations. 

I think the simplest explanation you could give for one team having so many players involved in using performance enhancing drugs could be; when you go out and sign the best free agent sluggers in baseball, naturally some of those players will be inevitably linked to steroids.  While it seems performance enhancing drug use has calmed down in baseball recently, I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of these steroid discoveries.  Only time will tell if the Yankees continue to be a main part of the drug use discussions in the future.