If this were a ballgame, it would’ve been a blowout. And a shutout.
Independent arbitrator Fredric Horowitz’s explanation behind his 162-game suspension for Alex Rodriguez hit the public domain on Monday, after the beleaguered Yankees star included it in his latest Manhattan federal court lawsuit filed against Major League Baseball (and commissioner Bud Selig) and the MLB Players Association. The write-up is normally confidential, yet that changed after Judge William Pauley III declined a request by Team A-Rod (at the insistence of the Players Association) to seal it while using it as an exhibit in its lawsuit.
The decision, written by Horowitz and co-signed by his fellow panelists Rob Manfred (MLB COO) and David Prouty (PA general counsel), is a thoroughly scathing rebuke not only of A-Rod’s actions that led to the discipline, but also his legal team’s performance during the 12-day appeal hearing, and an equally complete validation of MLB’s investigative efforts and results. Literally not once did Horowitz either credit Team A-Rod (or the Players Association, which largely acted as A-Rod’s advocate) or knock MLB.
To wit:
- Horowitz noted repeatedly A-Rod’s refusal to testify on his own behalf hurt his case.
- He implied his calculation of 162 games came down to 150 games for his possession and usage of illegal performance-enhancing drugs — 50 games each for three different drugs — and 12 games for two counts of obstructing MLB’s investigation into Rodriguez’s connections with Biogenesis. Both A-Rod and the Players Association, Horowitz wrote, contended 50 games should be the maximum penalty since Rodriguez was considered a zero-time offender, and both argued in favor of eradicating the penalty in response to MLB’s aggressive tactics.
- Horowitz found MLB’s star witness, Anthony Bosch, to be eminently believable despite the deal that baseball cut with him and fully acquitted MLB’s investigative team of any wrongdoing.
“MLB has demonstrated with clear and convincing evidence there is just cause to suspend Rodriguez for the 2014 season and 2014 postseason for having violated the JDA (Joint Drug Agreement) by use and/or possession of testosterone, IGF-1, and hGh over the course of three years, and for the two attempts to obstruct MLB’s investigation described above, which violated Article XII(B) of the Basic Agreement,” Horowitz wrote. “While this length of suspension may be unprecedented for a MLB player, so is the misconduct he committed.”
The report also acknowledges Rodriguez passed 11 drug tests during the time in question, from 2010 through 2012 — Horowitz considered this information virtually irrelevant — and it details the involvement of A-Rod’s notorious cousin Yuri Sucart in the Bosch relationship. Not altogether different from Rodriguez’s earlier confessed illegal PED usage period of 2001 through 2003, Sucart helped establish the relationship between A-Rod and Bosch, in addition to picking up the drugs from Bosch until Rodriguez fired Sucart in late 2011.
Since baseball’s Joint Drug Agreement asserts Major League Baseball faced the burden of proof in this case, Rodriguez wasn’t required to testify. Team A-Rod floated the notion he would testify under oath, but that plan went by the wayside once Horowitz ruled Selig didn’t have to testify; A-Rod stormed out of the hearing in protest and never returned.
Because Horowitz found MLB’s case to be so compelling, he pointed out multiple times in his decision Rodriguez’s choice to stay silent made it easier for MLB to prevail. Specifically, A-Rod didn’t challenge Bosch’s assertions that 1) Rodriguez used and possessed the three aforementioned illegal PEDs; 2) Bosch personally administered illegal PEDs to A-Rod and 3) Bosch personally delivered illegal PEDs to Rodriguez, notably during the 2012 American League Championship Series in Detroit when A-Rod was enduring a brutal slump.
While A-Rod and the Players Association contended he should receive no more than a 50-game suspension because he had no official record of illegal PED usage — his confession of using from 2001 through 2003 fell within a period when there was no discipline attached to usage — Horowitz dismissed that argument by citing the JDA language that allows more leeway with non-analytical positives, or cases that don’t involve positive drug tests.
However, Horowitz tethered his final penalty back to the notion that a first-time offender usually gets a 50-game suspension. That’s for just one drug, Horowitz wrote, while MLB proved Rodrgiuez used three drugs. Therefore, he wrote, “(I)f the penalty structure (for positive drug tests) … is used as a guide to the appropriate discipline for violations involving multiple uses/possession of different banned substances, Rodriguez’s conduct would merit no less than a 150-game suspension.”
On top of that, MLB alleged several instances of A-Rod’s obstruction, and Horowitz decided that two of them met the burden of proof:
1) On Jan. 29 of last year, Rodriguez pushed Bosch to make a statement denying the Miami New Times report of the illicit relationship between the two men.
2) On May 31 of last year, A-Rod attempted to induce Bosch to sign a sworn statement he never supplied Rodriguez with illegal PEDs and had no personal knowledge Rodriguez used such substances.
The allegations Bosch and Manfred made in their Sunday night interviews with “60 Minutes” — that an associate of A-Rod’s threatened Bosch’s life — are nowhere to be found in the report.
Noting MLB’s originally assigned 211-game suspension would keep A-Rod out of action through the 2014 season, Horowitz wrote, “A suspension of one season satisfies the strictures of just cause as commensurate with the severity of his violations while affording Rodriguez the opportunity to resume his playing career in the 2015 season.”
As for Bosch, Horowitz wrote, “(T)he testimony under oath from Bosch about JDA violations by Rodriguez was direct, credible and squarely corroborated by excerpts from several of the hundreds of pages of his personal composition notebooks that were stolen in late December 2012 or early January 2013.” The copies of those notebooks that MLB purchased, Horowitz followed, nevertheless sufficed along with the more than 500 Blackberry Messenger communications between Bosch and A-Rod.
Similarly, Horowitz turned away concerns about MLB’s arrangement with Bosch, its paying $125,000 for the Biogenesis information and investigator Dan Mullin’s sexual relationship with a female witness.
(Horowitz decision starts on page 44)