MLB Suspends NY Met Robinson Cano For Doping

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Robinson Cano of the New York Mets bats against the Miami Marlins on August 17, 2020. MLB banned Cano for next season following a positive steroid test.

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Cano’s 162-game suspension comes during the coronavirus pandemic and raises an interesting question. If, like during this past season, baseball plays a reduced schedule in 2021, will the ban have to be completed by spilling over into the following season?

For baseball’s pandemic-shortened 2020, MLB and the players union reached an agreement that said some suspensions longer than 60 games — the length of that 2020 regular season — would not carry over into the following season. There’s no word if this might apply to Cano. With coronavirus cases spiking throughout the country, baseball hasn’t yet made a determination how long the 2021 regular will last.

As of today, though, he has to serve a 162-game ban for testing positive for Stanozolol. It’s a powerful steroid used as a performance enhancer by some athletes. And it has an infamous past in the sporting world. In one of the most notorious doping incidents in Olympic history, sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of the 100 meters gold medal at the 1988 Summer Games after testing positive for the substance.

• New York Mets
• Major League Baseball
• MLB