HGH is a helluva drug

[J. Walter Weatherman]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7255517/new-major-league-baseball-cba-include-testing-hgh-according-sources

Major League Baseball's new collective bargaining agreement will include blood testing for human growth hormone, sources confirmed to ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney.

A report in the New York Times, citing two league sources familiar with the deal, said testing would begin in February during spring training. According to the sources, the penalty for a positive HGH test will be the same as a positive steroid test -- a 50-game suspension.

MLB would become the first major professional sports league in North America to test for HGH. The NFL agreed upon on HGH testing in its latest CBA, but has yet to implement it.

MLB already conducts random testing for HGH in the minor leagues, a program it began last year.

Other CBA stuff of note...

Baseball's new labor contract also will include a rise in the minimum salary to $480,000 and luxury taxes on both amateur draft signings and international free agents coming to the major leagues.

There also will be a slight increase in the total of players eligible for salary arbitration after the 2012 season, when there also will be a new method to determine compensation for clubs losing top major league free agents. There also will be modifications to the luxury tax on high-payroll teams, but the threshold will remain at $178 million next year.

...

As part of the deal, baseball's minimum salary will go from $414,000 this year to $480,000 in 2012 and $500,000 later in the deal -- matching what the average salary was in 1989.

Owners gained one of their chief objectives: a restraint on the bonuses paid to amateur free agents, both those entering professional baseball from high schools and colleges and those coming to MLB organizations from abroad.

A tax of 75 percent to 100 percent will be imposed on the amount a team exceeds a threshold, and teams exceeding the threshold by higher amounts could lose first- and second-round draft picks.

For international free agents, such as players from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, there will be a separate threshold and tax with penalties, and there will be a study committee that could put a new system in place later during the agreement.

...

Starting next year, teams will have to make a "qualifying offer" of a one-year guaranteed contract to their players eligible to become free agents in order to receive compensation if the player signs with another club. That amount will be at least $12.4 million and could rise by next year, depending on a formula. The new "qualifying offer" does away with the statistical formula for ranking free agents that has existed since the 1981 strike settlement.

...

And the addition of two more wild-card teams likely won't be the only significant change to baseball's postseason structure. A source told Olney that a past rule that teams in the same division can't play in the Division Series round likely will not be part of the new agreement.

[Quality Start Machine]

No wonder LaRussa retired.