What happened to the rumors that his hormones were messed up because of medicine he was taking to treat herpes?Originally Posted by eddhead
I do not believe it is as simple as that. Yes, FedEx offices were opened, but the courier had reason to beleive that FedEx would not actually ship the samples until Monday. Under those circumstance, the guidance is to store them in a cool controlled environment rather than have them sit over a long weekend in a FedEx office. I believe that is the reason the courier was not disciplined.
Just wanted to make sure what you're referring to.
I was listening to talk radio yesterday, and one caller's job was transporting samples to testing labs. He gave a good description of procedures.
He is the only one in the room when the sample is handed over to him, sealed and signed in his presence. From that point on, he is the only person in possession of the sample until it's delivered either to the lab or a shipping company, who don't know what's inside.
He said he doesn't have a contract with MLB, but if their delivery protocol is 24 hours, then that has to be followed. He said the 24 hour rule isn't standard; but there are special protocols depending on the contract.
Doctors have said that the sample isn't altered by temperature or time. Braun's willingness to have his DNA tested at a later date is worthless; there's no DNA imprint that marks testosterone levels.
Braun's original defense was that he was taking medication for a "sexual problem" that may have elevated his levels. He's not talking about that anymore, now that this ruling fell in his lap.
Since MLB has this protocol and given they do a lot of testing, they should have contracted a dedicated courier service to personally deliver the samples.
I don't know why Braun wasn't advised by his lawyer to accept the fortuitous ruling and just shut up. His whining about being a victim gives the implication that MLB was out to get him; it's absurd that they would railroad the league MVP. Reminds me of Palmiero wagging his finger at Congress.
Maybe now, they will be out to get him.
As far as public opinion, he better not have a down year.
Drug Test Collector in Braun Case Says He Followed Protocol
Laurenzi also said that in taking Braun’s sample, along with those of two other players, to his home for safekeeping, he was again following standard procedure. That procedure was in place because it had been determined that it was better to keep the samples in a secure location rather than leave them in a FedEx office where they could have been tampered with or not properly stored
This validates a previous post of mine wherein I suggested the guidance where samples could not be mailed out right away is to keep them rather than dropping them off.
BTW, Bruan's character assasination of this poor guy is reprehensible.
“There were a lot of things that we learned about the collector, about the collection process, about the way the entire thing works, that made us very concerned and very suspicious about what could have actually happened,” Braun, who did not name Laurenzi, said Friday at the Brewers’ camp in Phoenix.
February 28, 2012
Drug Test Collector in Braun Case Says He Followed Protocol
By KEN BELSON and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Dino Laurenzi Jr. has a bachelor’s degree in athletic training, a master’s degree in sports medicine and another master’s in business administration. He is the son of a pharmacist and runs the rehabilitation services department at a health care facility in Kenosha, Wis. He is active in his church and a mainstay in Pleasant Prairie, his hometown.
Since 2005, Laurenzi has also collected more than 600 urine samples from players in Major League Baseball, a later-life bit of work that has thrust him into a firestorm over Ryan Braun’s successful appeal of his 50-game suspension for testing positive after a drug test taken in October. Last week, Braun became the first major league player known to have his suspension overturned. Braun successfully argued that Laurenzi’s decision to store the urine sample at his home as he waited for a FedEx outlet to open did not comport with the letter of the protocols laid out in baseball’s drug-testing program.
Braun, recognizing that his legal victory did not remove suspicions that he had indeed cheated, held a news conference last Friday during which he all but accused Laurenzi of mishandling or tampering with the urine sample, which ultimately showed very high levels of synthetic testosterone.
“There were a lot of things that we learned about the collector, about the collection process, about the way the entire thing works, that made us very concerned and very suspicious about what could have actually happened,” Braun, who did not name Laurenzi, said Friday at the Brewers’ camp in Phoenix.
Braun offered no evidence and failed to make clear to the public what baseball officials and Braun’s representatives agree on: Braun, when making his case to an independent arbitrator, never argued that he or anyone else had details that Laurenzi tampered with the samples, deliberately or otherwise.
As a result, Braun’s comments have ignited a highly unusual — and highly public — spat between baseball and one of the sport’s rising stars, one who just happens to be the winner of the National League Most Valuable Player award. In questioning not just Laurenzi, but the entire drug-testing protocol, Braun has prompted uncharacteristically angry responses from baseball officials, who have defended Laurenzi and their testing regimen.
Major League Baseball has promised to close a loophole that Braun’s legal team exposed, and will now require that urine samples be taken only when collectors are certain they can immediately have the samples shipped to a laboratory. The Braun case may also lead baseball and the players union — which jointly administer the drug testing program that has been in place since 2003 — to more closely scrutinize collectors and Comprehensive Drug Testing Inc., or CDT, the company from Santa Ana, Calif., that collects samples from players.
For now, though, Laurenzi and how he handled Braun’s sample will remain at the center of the escalating quarrel between Braun and Major League Baseball, which continues to insist that it runs the most airtight drug-testing program in sports.
Laurenzi, 51, has hired Boyd Johnson III, a former federal prosecutor. In a statement issued on Tuesday, Laurenzi denied tampering with Braun’s urine sample and said that he acted professionally when he took the sample home for the weekend instead of sending it immediately to a laboratory.
“I followed the same procedure in collecting Mr. Braun’s sample as I did in the hundreds of other samples I collected under the program,” Laurenzi said. “At no point did I tamper in any way with the samples.”
Laurenzi also said that in taking Braun’s sample, along with those of two other players, to his home for safekeeping, he was again following standard procedure. That procedure was in place because it had been determined that it was better to keep the samples in a secure location rather than leave them in a FedEx office where they could have been tampered with or not properly stored.
“The protocol has been in place since 2005 when I started with CDT and there have been other occasions when I have had to store samples in my home for at least one day, all without incident,” Laurenzi said.
Many collections are done at night because that is when most games are played, although when Laurenzi collected Braun’s sample on Oct. 1, a playoff game between the Brewers and the Diamondbacks began just after 1 p.m. Laurenzi said he completed his collections at Miller Park in Milwaukee at about 5 p.m., which is also the deadline for giving FedEx shipments to stores in the Milwaukee area that could be flown out that night.
Laurenzi said that after arriving home, he put the samples in a Rubbermaid container in his basement office that, he said, “is sufficiently cool to store urine samples.” No one other than his wife had access to the samples during that time. All three samples were kept in the same sealed, tamper-proof package.
Braun has never asserted, either in his case before the arbitrator or in his news conference last Friday, that the samples tested in a lab in Montreal bore any evidence of having been compromised. One person with knowledge of the Braun case said a union representative on Braun’s behalf was present in Montreal for a critical moment in the testing process, and never raised any concerns about the sample.
Representatives for Braun would not comment Tuesday about Laurenzi’s statement.
Testing procedures are rigorous. Collectors do not know whom they are testing until just before they arrive at the ballpark. An employee known as a chaperon monitors players after they are told they will be tested — in this case, Laurenzi’s son played the role — and before they produce a sample. A coordinator supervises the process. The collector uses an electronic device to record each step of the process.
Inside the collection room, players select an individually wrapped collection cup and are told to wash their hands. Collectors must have a clear view of the player when the sample is produced. The player puts a cap on the bottle after the sample is produced and then selects a sealed collection kit and opens it.
The collector pours the urine from the cup into two sample bottles and snaps the caps on top. The player is asked to verify that the I.D. number on the chain-of-custody form matches the number on the seals. The player is given a statement that verifies his awareness of the process.
The two sealed bottles are put in a plastic bag that is sealed and placed in a specimen box, which is also sealed with a security sticker. The box is placed in a FedEx package for shipment. The player’s name is not on any of the containers.
Laurenzi said the sealed samples were never removed from their shipping container and “it is my understanding that the samples were received at the laboratory with all tamper-resistant seals intact.”
At the laboratory, Braun’s sample showed that his testosterone to epitestosterone ratio was higher than 4 to 1, which triggers another test. According to the testing program’s rules, Braun or one of his representatives could watch technicians in Montreal test the second sample. A players union representative was present for that second test, according to the person with knowledge of Braun’s case.
Laurenzi, who was called an “extremely experienced collector” by Major League Baseball, was regarded highly enough that he was invited to work at the World Baseball Classic. He has collected samples from players on 10 other clubs, including the Cubs, the Dodgers and the Yankees, and worked during the postseason in 2008, 2010 and 2011, according to a person in baseball, who added that the program administrator picks the best collectors to work during the postseason.
Major League Baseball and the players union do not have a direct relationship with testers like Laurenzi. But CDT does background checks on its testers. While Braun has raised questions about why Laurenzi’s son was present at the drug test, and implied that his presence meant that a wider group of people had access to his sample, Laurenzi’s son was working as a chaperon, responsible only for escorting players waiting to be tested.
Anthony Laurenzi, 22, lives in Pleasant Prairie. He is a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he is studying in the Athletic Training Education program, which requires classes in chemistry, human anatomy and physics. Ethics training is woven into the classes, according to Jennifer Earl-Boehm, the program director.
“I have worked hard my entire life, have performed my job duties with integrity and professionalism, and have done so with respect to this matter and all other collections in which I have participated,” Dino Laurenzi said in his statement
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/sp...gewanted=print
Going a bit off topic here, probably should be moved to a general baseball thread
Probably, but then again there's probably less than ten of us following this thread regularly. Plus Zippy started this tangent by imagining how this story might have played out if the controversy had been about Arod.
To return to that point: Arod has been treated more harshly for his personal / love life, or when he legally opted out of his big contract.
I don't think an occasional drift to a more general baseball discussion justifies another thread. We have a Red Sox vs Yankees thread that's been forgotten.
Maybe we should revive it, since Bobby V has already tossed a few grenades in Florida.
We can call the new thread "Ryan Braun Is A Punk"
I think it is neither of those. To me, Arod has always been perceived as having Reggie Jackson syndrom without the actual Reggie Jackson performance. That has hurt himmore than anything.
Personally though, I'll take him.
Hal Steinbrenner plans to lower payroll to $189MM - Avoiding Luxury Tax
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Hal Steinbrenner plans to lower payroll
Associated Press
TAMPA, Fla. -- New York Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner says it's his goal to lower the team's payroll to $189 million over the next few years.
Under baseball's new labor contract, the luxury tax threshold will be at $189 million after the 2013 season.
"Is it a requirement with baseball that we hit 189? No, it's not a requirement, but that is going to be the luxury tax threshold and that's where I want to be," Steinbrenner said on Thursday. "I don't think it's an unrealistic goal. My goals are normally considered a requirement."
Steinbrenner said this season's payroll is around $210 million. He feels the Yankees can be successful at a lower level with a strong player-development system.
The Yankees were hit with a $13.9 million luxury tax last season. New York's final 2011 payroll was $212.7 million.
"I'm just not convinced we need to be as high as we've been in the past to field a championship-caliber team," Steinbrenner said. "We'll see who comes off (salary-wise) in the next couple years."
New York has a number of promising prospects, including pitchers Dellin Betances and Manuel Banuelos.
"We'll see how these young kids perform towards the end of this year and into next year," Steinbrenner said. "The young kids are going to play a big part of being able to lower this payroll. I am going to need some of these young pitchers to step up."
Steinbrenner again reiterated that he's not planning to work on any in-season contract extensions.
"Right now I just want to get through this season before we talk to anybody," Steinbrenner said.
Steinbrenner gave his support to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, who had a difficult personal offseason.
Cashman's wife filed divorce papers last month, a day after prosecutors charged a woman with stalking him and extorting money over an extramarital affair. "I'm not going to get into personal situations of employees," Steinbrenner said. "It's not Yankee business. I can only say that we're here to support him."
As for the upcoming season, Steinbrenner is upbeat about the defending AL East champions.
"I'm excited," he said. "I think we've got, on paper, definitely a better team than we did last year. I think our starting pitching is improved, and that was one of our goals during the offseason."
New York has added starting pitchers Michael Pineda and Hiroki Kuroda.
The Yankees open spring training play on Friday with an exhibition against the University of South Florida.
http://espn.go.com/espn/print?id=7633938&type=story
Yankees are going to see a significant drop-off in ticket sales this year for the first time in a long time. Looks like the Yankees are starting to prepare for that
Huh? A "significant drop-off in ticket sales this year?" How'd you figure that?
I think Hal is talking about the new CBA agreement regarding luxury tax limits for the 2014 seaon. Nothing to do with ticket sales this year.
I dropped my 4 full season tickets this year, as did many many people I know. Since scalping laws were abolished and stubhub established an efficient secondary marketplace, ticket prices have been coming down significantly. For many weekday games in the past couple seasons, tickets could be had for literally 99 cents. Tickets with a face value of over $250 were selling for 40 bucks. People who bought ticket plans for extra seats for resale have dropped them, and people who are using them personally have dropped them as well in order to take advantage of the cheaper prices.
This pricing pressure means that the Yankees will be taking in less revenue in the foreseeable future based on less sales and inevitably reduced prices and additional discounts (such as lat year's Mastercard 65% off sales). Hal is not stupid (though I have my doubts about Hank), he sees the projections squeezing profit margins and going over the luxury tax at a 50% penalty is not sustainable for them in the long run
What GG says is true, but it's more of a problem for some weak market teams that are having trouble selling any season packages.
MLB signed an agreement with Stub Hub, giving them exclusive resale rights. Beyond the upfront money, it has come back to hurt MLB finances. There is talk of not honoring printed tickets at the gate; the reseller would have to send you the original tickets. This would put a significant dent in resales.
I think MLB is going to just let the agreement expire - the 5 year deal runs through 2012. On that basis, I don't think Steinbrenner's decision is as much influenced by gate receipts, although a saturation point in ticket prices may have been reached (you think?).
The majority of Yankee revenue comes from sources outside ticket sales; the relationship of the brand to media driven revenue is important. So the team is an entertainment product that has to keep winning. To do this in competition with other teams like the Red Sox that are doing the same thing gets expensive. So I do think it is more driven by the new CBA.
Also, while the Old Man paid the luxury tax as just part of doing business, he hated that the owners getting the money weren't required to spend it directly on players.
Where did you hear about not honoring paper tickets at the gate? All teams offer some sort of print-at-home feature form their online accounts. If they decide not to honor tickets, that means they would stop offering print-at-home tickets. I could see it happening if they dropped stubhub, that would make it more difficult to resell on third party websites, but at the same time would make it hard for them to offer their own secondary marketplace since any paper tickets they sell could be sold elsewhere. They would need to offer some sort of hard ticket box office option for re-issued barcodes. That would be a monopoly practice but as we know MLB has a longstanding exemption from ant-trust legislation
I heard it on sports radio. But it sounded like one of those things that get mentioned when a problem is under discussion. MLB knows they got taken by Stub Hub, who might challenge them on it.
At any rate, it'll be moot in 2013, so I think MLB will just eat it. There'll still be downward pressure on ticket prices, but it won't be the same as what is going on now.
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