NEW YORK — Baseball players and management hope to reach a new drug agreement this week that would increase initial penalties for muscle-building steroids and decrease suspensions for some positive tests caused by unintentional use, people familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press.
For future suspensions, the deal also would eliminate the loophole allowing Alex Rodriguez to earn almost $4 million during his season-long ban, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in recent days because talks are ongoing.
The sides hope to reach an agreement by Sunday, when the Los Angeles Dodgers open the U.S. portion of the major league schedule at the San Diego Padres.
While the lengths have not been finalized, the sides are discussing a 100-game ban for an initial testing violation and a season-long ban for a second, one of the people said.
“It will be a significant deterrent because players will know they’re not going to just easily walk back into a lineup,” Travis Tygart, chief executive officer of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “It probably is the best policy in professional sports.”
For inadvertent use, the penalty for a first testing violation would be cut in half to 25 games.
“What we’re all here for it to rid sports of the intentional cheats, those who are intending to defraud both the fans and their fellow teammates, the integrity of competition,” Tygart said. “You want to have provisions in place that allow for whether there’s an inadvertent or a truly non-intentional situation which may arise.”
Since the 2006 season, the Major League Baseball’s drug agreement has called for a 50-game suspension for a first positive steroids test, a 100-game ban for a second and a lifetime penalty for a third. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig called for tougher penalties last March, and then-union head Michael Weiner said players would consider them for 2014.
Weiner died in November and was succeeded by former All-Star Tony Clark, who has led the negotiations.
Major League Baseball’s investigation of the Biogenesis of America anti-aging clinic led to 14 suspensions last summer, including a 65-game penalty for former NL MVP Ryan Braun of Milwaukee and a 211-game ban for Rodriguez, which was reduced to 162 games in January by an arbitrator.
The section covering violations not related to positive tests, which was used by Selig in the Biogenesis case, will be clarified but still will allow discipline for “just cause.”
Many players have advocated stiffer penalties as a deterrent. Arizona pitcher Brad Ziegler spoke out after Jhonny Peralta, who served a 50-game suspension, agreed in November to a $53 million, four-year contract with St. Louis.
“We thought 50 games would be a deterrent. Obviously it’s not. So we are working on it again,” he tweeted then. “It pays to cheat… Thanks, owners, for encouraging PED use.”
Some players said suspensions should lead to larger monetary losses. San Diego Padres outfielder Will Venable maintained last summer “somehow having to forfeit or void your contract that you’re under is something that needs to be the main focus of the penalties.”
But for the majority of players, that would go too far.
“I’d venture to guess that even though there are concerns on a number of levels, that we will never end up in a world where player contracts are voided as a result,” Clark told the AP during a January interview.