Oakland A’s: Jake Diekman wants lifetime ban for PED users

Oakland A’s reliever Jake Diekman isn’t a fan of performance-enhancing drugs. He wants Robinson Cano to get a lifetime ban for his PED violation.

Oakland A’s reliever Jake Diekman has thoughts on the current performance-enhancing drug punishments and he’s not afraid to share them.

In the wake of Robinson Cano‘s second PED-related suspension, Diekman took to Twitter to call for a lifetime ban on Cano.

It’s a harsh call. But maybe it’s appropriate. Lifetime bans on players is a tricky subject. Sure, players who use performance-enhancing drugs are cheating the game and putting clean players at a huge disadvantage. And the current system essentially allows players to get away with PED violations twice before actually receiving that lifetime ban. For Cano, he’ll forfeit $24 million in 2021 but is still owed $40 million through 2023. He’s not exactly going broke after being suspended for the entirety of 2021.

But there’s also the element of taking a person’s job away. In some cases, the only job they’re really qualified to do. Many players are drafted as teenagers and go into professional baseball right away. That doesn’t leave a lot of room to develop other skills to bring to the regular workforce should baseball not work out.

Even worse, imagine being one of those kids and realizing that without performance-enhancing drugs, you’re not going to make it to the Major Leagues. After a lifetime of dedicating every waking minute to baseball, you’ll wind up falling short with no backup plan. All of a sudden, playing the game clean becomes a much more difficult choice when the alternative is not playing the game at all. Think of Diekman’s teammate Frankie Montas, who isn’t even arbitration eligible yet but already has a PED suspension under his belt. A lifetime ban on Montas would have ended his baseball career and cost him his family’s future financial security. That’s a huge punishment for a mistake that he may have thought he needed to make.

Regardless of the ethics of it all, it’s hard to imagine an immediate lifetime ban for PED-related offenses wouldn’t be an effective strategy. Sure, players will still risk using PEDs to make it to the league. But the thought of losing everything with one failed test would certainly deter a lot more from making that choice.

It’s harsh, but if Major League Baseball is serious about eliminating the use of performance-enhancing drugs, Diekman’s proposal of a lifetime ban is certainly the right choice.