The strong indications are Major League Baseball will announce all the suspensions in the Biogenesis case this week, including one that could cover the rest of this year and all of next season for Alex Rodriguez, The Post has learned.
It always has been MLB's plan to announce the suspensions at one time for the 15-plus players believed to be facing sanctions in the performance-enhancing drug case. MLB went early with Ryan Braun's suspension because of his willingness to accept the penalty without appeal.
It is expected other players will do the same this week. To that end, Rodriguez's representatives met with MLB officials in the past few days, The Post has learned. It is believed A-Rod's camp was trying to gain a better understanding of potential penalties. However, a member of Rodriguez's team told The Post yesterday it is "unequivocally untrue" that Rodriguez is seeking a settlement.
REUTERS
TIME RUNNING OUT: Alex Rodriguez was all smiles in Tampa yesterday on his 38th birthday, but he won't be smiling if commissioner Bud Selig hands down a significant suspension for A-Rod's reported involvement with the Biogenesis clinic.
It is believed MLB wants to make the suspensions formal this week before teams reach the point at which they have fewer than 50 games to play. The penalty for first-time offenders who fail a PED test is 50 games.
MLB apparently is willing to give the same sanction to first-time offenders in this case, in which the evidence does not come from a failed urine or blood exam, but rather from an investigation. The thinking is MLB wants to provide the first-time offenders this carrot: Don't appeal and you can serve the entire suspension this year and start with a clean slate for next season.
Rodriguez does not fit into this category. It has become evident MLB is going to demand Rodriguez's punishment far exceed Braun's. That is because MLB believes the combination of being a user and obstructing the case demands a much stiffer penalty — especially because Rodriguez has admitted to previous drug use from 2001-03 and because MLB believes Rodriguez subsequently lied to its investigators in previous interviews about his usage.
Bud Selig was at the Hall of Fame ceremonies in Cooperstown this week and was said still to be mulling what punishment to deliver Rodriguez. It is conceivable he could ask for permanent banishment, akin to Pete Rose. But the belief is no matter the level of evidence — and it has been portrayed that MLB has substantially more evidence on Rodriguez than it does on Braun — it would be hard to convince an arbitrator, if Rodriguez appeals, that Rodriguez's first suspension should be for life.
Keep in mind, though, that Selig could ask for life knowing the arbitrator could lower the punishment to a shorter duration — or even find that Rodriguez should not be punished at all.
But as a way to levy a sanction that will not be reduced, there was growing belief around baseball that Selig would request the rest of this season and all of next year.
That could be viewed as just about the death penalty for Rodriguez, at least for his playing career. He turned 38 yesterday. He has yet to play this year. The idea that he would not play this season or next season and come back able to play in 2015 after two hip surgeries seems farfetched.
The expectation was Rodriguez had hired a cavalry of lawyers, private investigators, crisis managers and spokesmen to fight any sanction. Publicly, his camp has been feisty — and more — in trying to mount a case that both MLB and the Yankees have tried to injure his reputation and keep him from playing.
The only reason, in theory, he would cease that strategy and accept a suspension would be if he felt the evidence was irrefutable and was seeking a way to protect as much of the roughly $97 million he is still owed on his record $275 million contract.
For example, Rodriguez is owed $61 million from 2015-17. Thus, if a punishment were offered to him that extended through 2014, he might accept that to protect the $61 million. If he does accept the punishment, though, the Yankees could try to mount a case to void the rest of the deal based on fraud (a team cannot punish a player for illegal drug use; only the commissioner can do that).
If Rodriguez fights the suspension, he apparently is going to have to counter — among other things — alleged communications between him and the Biogenesis kingpin Tony Bosch that delineate usage of PEDs. It is believed that is just part of MLB's case and also that MLB will limit the scope of its suspension attempts to proving Rodriguez used PEDs and worked diligently to try to prevent MLB from finding evidence of that.
There was some anticipation that MLB might go after Rodriguez for serving as kind of a Pied Piper for Biogenesis or financially supporting the clinic, but it appears that will not be the case.
joel.sherman@nypost.com
kdavidoff@nypost.com
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