Giants OF Melky Cabrera Suspended 50 Games For Testing Positive For High Testosterone Levels

Giants OF Melky Cabrera, the second leading batter in Major League Baseball, has been suspended for 50 games, the rest of the regular season, for testing positive for high testosterone levels, MLB announces.

Cabrera, the All-Star game MVP, is batting .346/.390/.516 for San Francisco this season and has even been in outside discussion for the NL MVP award. Cabrera is a .284 career hitter but he hit .305 for Kansas City last season and seemingly turned a corner. He also had 60 RBI’s, 13 steals and 10 triples in 113 games played.

Cabrera, 28, admitted his guilt in a statement: ”My positive test was the result of my use of a substance that I should not have used.”

The suspension is a crippling blow to a Giants offense that has struggled to score over the course of the season, but had turned the corner since the All-Star break. Now they’ll need continued success from Buster Posey and Hunter Pence. Cabrera would be eligible to return in the sixth game of the playoffs, but Ken Rosenthal points out that Cabrera would not be in any sort of game shape.

Did the Giants know about the positive test when they acquired Pence from Philadelphia? They acquired him on July 31 and Comcast Sports Net’s Andrew Baggerly tweeted that there was a rumor that Cabrera tested positive on July 28. Baggerly later apologized for the accusation, but he has ultimately been proven correct. “There’s NO DOUBT the Giants heard about the possibility of Melky failing test at the time they acquired Pence,” New York Post columnist Joel Sherman tweeted.

With the suspension, San Francisco should now be considered the second best team in the NL West to the Dodgers, and we will see if the Giants offense can recover from this loss.

See Also: Giants Contender Report