Jenrry Mejia received a lifetime ban this offseason after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs for the third time in the past year. The former New York Mets reliever believes that the MLB orchestrated a conspiracy against him.
The 26-year-old failed the first test for stanozolol last April and was banned for 80 games by the MLB. He was set to return after the season's midpoint, but the organization announced that the right-hander was suspended for a full season on July 28 after discovering that he had failed another PED test, this time for Boldenone.
Mejia said that he was only responsible for the first failed test and believes the conspiracy began after the announcement of his second failed test.
"Mejia said that baseball officials told him that if he appealed the punishment for the second doping offense, 'they will find a way to find a third positive,' Mejia said through an interpreter," Ben Berkon of The New York Times wrote. "'I felt there was a conspiracy against me. I feel that they were trying to find something to bring me down in my career.'"
The MLB found a third failed test this offseason, and it was announced on Feb. 12 that Mejia would be banned for life after testing positive for Boldenone again. The Dominican native can apply for reinstatement, but even if Commissioner Rob Manfred were to grant him amnesty, Mejia wouldn't be able to return until 2018.
Apparently, the Players Association didn't do much to help him, either, as Mejia said the union "should have been there to defend me - because that's what they're there for. They should have found something to appeal for."
To be honest, who knows what happened. Was Mejia actually foolish enough to try and cheat the system three times, especially when the MLB has been (apparently) cracking down on performance-enhancing drugs in recent years? Possibly. Stars such as Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun tried to get away with it in recent years, so anything is possible.
Then again, to support all those conspiracy theorists out there, maybe the MLB wanted to make an example out of Mejia so the PED/steroid conversation wouldn't be able to persist if he were to rejoin the MLB and maintain success, because then, of course, people would be like "oh yeah, he's probably still juicing," which would give the sport a bad look. Baseball is working to get rid of the ugly stigma that rocked the sport on two separate occasions in the past 15 years, so someone like Mejia, who was an arbitration-eligible player and not a star such as Rodriguez or Braun, is certainly someone that the league can afford to ban without having it impact the sport in a major way.
Or maybe he didn't give the MLB some names in terms of where he got the drugs and/or if he knew any other players being supplied with those drugs.
Whatever the case, Mejia probably won't be able to return to the MLB until 2018 at the earliest, if at all. It's also going to be hard for him to fight the league, especially if he has little-to-no support from the MLBPA.
