glennhoffmania said:
I agree with all that, but what I was thinking about was a punishment for a non-analytic positive plus something else, such as obstruction. Despite how inept Bud may appear at times, I find it hard to believe that the evidence against ARod is no worse than the evidence against the other guys. So hypothetically you have a player who has admitted to PED use in the past, was clearly linked to Biogenesis, and tried to destroy the evidence that he was a Biogenesis client. If that's all true, I'd be shocked if the suspension is only 50 games.
Quasi-Semantic clarification. Evidence by itself only establishes guilt or innocence - so if the issue was PED use, the weight of the evidence goes to how "proveable" the PED use is. If you've got one player looking at a suspension for PED use due to hearsay, it's less proveable (i.e., a weaker case in arb) than a player looking at a suspension for PED use based on hearsay, photographs, texts, emails, a financial trail, DNA evidence, etc.
So, whether or not A-Rod used PEDs is going to be proven (or not) by the weight of the evidence against him. And a simple PED use finding would, like AR suggested, put A-Rod in the same box with all the other PED use punishments.
However, the suspension was actually given out for multiple violations and obstruction:
Rodriguez's discipline under the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program is based on his use and possession of numerous forms of prohibited performance-enhancing substances, including Testosterone and human Growth Hormone, over the course of multiple years. Rodriguez's discipline under the Basic Agreement is for attempting to cover-up his violations of the Program by engaging in a course of conduct intended to obstruct and frustrate the Office of the Commissioner's investigation.
So Arod can appeal:
a) whether or not he factually used PEDs
b) whether or not he factually obstructed and frustrated the Commissioner's investigations
c) how much he should be suspended for due to using PEDs
d) how much he should be suspended for due to frustrating the Commissioner's investigations
Those are all separate issues. We don't know the weight of the evidence against A-Rod for the first two, or (though it would be easier to find out) the legal/factual scenarios which govern suspensions for the violation of the first two issues.
I can imagine vigorous prosecutions and defenses for each of those four. If we had a better idea as to the facts involved, especially for the obstruction issue, we'd have a better base to guess what will happen in arb. For example, if there's a true smoking gun that ARod knowingly bought incriminating documents to cover up his and other's involvement, the suspension will be upheld. On the other hand if MLBs case for obstruction is that one of ARod's friends did sketchy stuff, it might be harder to show ARod knew or should have known about it. We'll see what happens.
Thus far things are shaping up beautifully though - Yanks on the hook for salary, Yanks season lost (but late in the season so no great draft picks), Yanks must field A-Rod, A-Rods ultimate suspension could taint 2014, 2015 and 2016 (depending on how long the appeals process takes, and the Yanks, not knowing that, might make bad choices when it comes to getting or not getting coverage at 3B.