At this point, just about everyone has expressed or published their own viewpoint on the (somewhat) surprising outcome of Ryan Braun's positive drug test result. A 16 year old blogger found the sample collector's name. Lots of people have summarily dismissed Braun's win in the appeal has having been on a "technicality". Some of the best work on this by Will Carroll (@injuryexpert) doesn't seem to be really getting a lot of traction, even though it provided a lot of information about the case Braun's team presented that we previously didn't really know.
My own take on this entire topic is one that I expressed right away when the result was leaked. Basically, I was suspect of this result for a number of reasons (based entirely on my own feelings, of course). In my estimation, players that who either had truly positive tests, leaked positive results or a public conclusion of guilt had real or obvious reasons to use PED's (even if there's no evidence it really helps). These players are either trying to keep themselves in MLB a little longer, were trying just to get a toe into the league or were pushing for a record. None of those factors are true for Braun. He had signed a contract extension through 2019, he was having a career year in many metrics and his team was playoff bound. He'd had nagging or minor injuries, but had never been catastrophically injured. He was in the physical prime of his career. Most importantly, in my own mind, Braun has an absolutely massive ego with respect to his physical skills. He had (or has) no compelling reason to use ANY PED. It makes no logical sense. But, I also understand that people often do inexplicable things for unknown reasons.
Moving beyond whether it really makes sense to do it, let's look at the process. Braun's result is said to have been a testosterone to epitestosterone ratio of 20:1 and had an amount of testosterone 3 times higher than even the highest level ever recorded in the history of the program (which was 40,000 tests). Even if one argues Braun could have some bizarre reason to use, does that make sense? He knows he's tested and often. Clearly, he's a smart person anyway and has resources to have sophisticated assistance if he wanted to use. Wouldn't he take only as much needed to see improvement not so much as to blow up the test? Sure, the test IS very sensitive and ultimately, any excess amount is bound to found, but why risk taking 5 times the amount that would still be normal? That just does not stand to reason.
Last big point: The collection/storage/delivery process. This is the part that people have dismissed as the "technicality". But is NOT a technicality. It cannot be. The process has rules that control the manner in which the sample is collected, sealed, sent for testing and tested. If violating any of those rules or protocols is merely a technicality, then there's no reason for that particular protocol to even exist. It'd be as if the police could collect a DNA sample from a suspect and then a CSI technician could just toss it in their fridge. Hey, it matched the DNA collected from the crime scene, it must be cool, right? That's ends justifying the means.
Beyond that though, to argue that it simply wasn't FedEx'd right away was a silly technicality is to ASSUME the sample really was in the collector's fridge all weekend and it was handled very carefully. Why do we believe this? Only 1 person (well, maybe 2, since the collector's son was the chaperone during the collection process), really knows what happened to that sample. Did no one at all enter the collector's home that entire time? Was it really in the fridge? Braun's team did not argue tampering and based on what I know about the way it is sealed, etc it doesn't seem likely, but again, it is impossible to know it was not tampered.
In a base level, the entire argument both for and against Braun's innocence is moot. It's an argument over something that should never be argued. None of us should have ever known of the positive result and thus, never known of the appeal, the result of the appeal or the fact that some dude can't even figure out whether there's a FedEx open on a Saturday at 6pm. If only that ONE THING hadn't occurred, there is no technicality, there is no forever lingering doubt over Braun being clean. For that reason alone, I will always consider him clean. Baseball, not just Brewers, fans should do the same.
