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Outside The Confines: A new steroid era? Probably not.

The ongoing CBA debates have caused some unexpected lapses.

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Daily Life In Playa Del Carmen Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

While you will see as we get into the news that there are plenty of headline-grabbing legal news bites that have come out over the past two days, the one we’re going to lead off today’s links post with is an unexpected side effect of the ongoing lockout while MLB and the MLBPA struggle to come to terms of the new CBA.

For the first time in nearly 20 years, Major League Baseball is no longer testing its players for steroid use. The rules regarding MLB’s ability to test players were part of an existing contract, and with the expiration of the sport’s drug agreement at midnight on December 1, 2021, there are no longer rules in place to allow for player testing.

Considering this is just a lapse in the agreement, and there is little doubt it will be restored once negotiations are completed, it seems unlikely that most players would take the risk of using PEDs, especially seeing the consequences it has caused for players like Barry Bonds, who missed his shot at the Hall of Fame last month thanks to his lingering PED scandal (Bonds may still have a chance for entry with the Eras Committee). Still, it’s hard to imagine a player willingly taking such an enormous risk for only short-term gain.

Read more on the lapsed drug policy here:

Now on to the rest of our links, starting with some other fairly heavy topics.

  • Things are going to get very serious in the Tyler Skaggs wrongful death trial very quickly.
  • The Skaggs trial isn’t the only legal situation involving MLB players this week, as Los Angeles courts finally reached their conclusion in the Trevor Bauer sexual assault charges.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster. Make it so.