Tuesdays with Brownie: Prospects, drugs and pace of play

(A weekly look at the players, teams, trends, up shoots and downspouts shaping the 2015 season.)

On stanozolol 4, pace of play, and two 20-year-olds in Toronto:

A new drug wave?
I don’t get all of my information from Wikipedia, but these two mentions caught me eye:

• “Veterinarians may prescribe [stanozolol] to improve muscle growth.”

• “Stanozolol has been used in U.S. horse racing.”

Presumably not by the jockeys, though you never know.

On March 27, David Rollins, a Rule 5 pitcher for the Seattle Mariners, was suspended 80 games after testing positive for stanozolol. In the prior year, MLB suspended five others – all minor leaguers – for the same. If it seemed odd at the time that a dangerous and easily detectable anabolic steroid would be discovered in Rollins’ system, we were just getting started. Within two weeks, MLB announced the suspensions of three more pitchers – big leaguers Arodys Vizcaino, Ervin Santana and Jenrry Mejia – for stanozolol.

That’s nine in a year, all pitchers, eight of them from the Dominican Republic along with Rollins, a Texan who played winter ball in the offseason but in Puerto Rico, not the Dominican Republic.

And here we thought stanozolol – a bodybuilder’s drug, a horse drug, an IQ test drug – had gone out with pay phones.

The folks at MLB have noticed, of course. Did four players take stanozolol and four get caught? Did 104 take stanozolol and four get caught? We’d be naïve to think there weren’t another Biogenesis (or 10) out there, and we also know drug regulations in the Dominican are somewhat more lax, but that doesn’t explain why an established big leaguer – Santana, for one – would, for all purposes, slap a big, red “S” on his forehead, walk into training camp and pee in a cup. Did he think he wouldn’t get caught? Was a supplement tainted? Do we suppose each of the four recent positives took stanozolol a single time – intentional or otherwise – and got popped?

MLB says it is investigating and that it has yet to discover a common thread, other than, “Really? Stanozolol?” And here we go again.

Picking up the pace
In spite of a full-on, nationally televised Red Sox-Yankees series, the average length of a nine-inning game is down eight minutes from last season, from 3:02 to 2:54 over the first week, the commissioner’s office said Monday.

Hitters have been hustled into the box and at least 10 have received warning letters for violations of the pace-of-play initiative. Next, if we could keep some pitchers from circling the mound after every pitch, we’d be getting somewhere.

Pair of surprises
Not that long ago, the Toronto Blue Jays’ bullpen seemed a reasonable candidate to undermine the Toronto Blue Jays’ season. Aaron Sanchez was needed in the rotation after the Marcus Stroman injury, Brett Cecil had a spring shoulder issue, Steve Delabar was optioned out, and the real depth was in a pair of 20-year-old right-handers who’d topped out last year in A-ball and probably would return there to start 2015.

Well, meet Miguel Castro and Roberto Osuna, who were both born in the mid-’90s, who both throw at least that hard, and who’ve so far accounted for seven scoreless innings and two saves (from Castro) and three holds (two from Osuna) in six games.

They are close friends with similar backstories. Osuna was signed out of Mexico when he was 16; Castro out of the Dominican Republic when he was 17. With his signing bonus, Osuna bought his mother a house and put his siblings through school. With his, Castro bought his father prostate surgery and himself braces.

Sticking around
The Detroit Tigers were too old and the Kansas City Royals were too fluky, and yet the Tigers pasted the Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Indians, and the Royals did the same to the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Angels through the first week. The only gimme in there would seem to be the Twins (whom the Tigers outscored 22-1 in three games), while the Royals reprised their division series against the Angels precisely, winning two close ones and then hammering C.J. Wilson for the kill shot.

The overlap? Hit and win.

Over six games, the Tigers OPSed a league-leading .983 and scored 47 runs. The Royals had a .936 OPS and scored 40.

And what’s gotten into the AL West, in tiny sample size division? Only the Oakland A’s were in the top 23 in batting, and none has played a cold-weather game yet.

And pitch and win.

Tigers pitchers did not allow a home run in the first week (the Pittsburgh Pirates hit three against them Monday afternoon in Pittsburgh), and Royals relievers didn’t allow a run in 16 1/3 innings.

He’ll be here soon
Kris Bryant was batting .381 with two homers, seven RBI and a 1.089 OPS at Triple-A Iowa through Sunday, while Chicago Cubs third basemen were batting .143 with one home run, one RBI and a .536 OPS.

And it was still the right thing to do.

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