Meet Your First Two-Time Steroid Offender

A disturbing trend has coming out of the Mets organization. First there was Guillermo Mota's steroid suspension last November, and last week former clubhouse worker Kirk Radomski admitted to dealing steroids to numerous MLB players. Now, Mets minor leaguer Jorge Reyes has provided the team with a dubious first. While 11 players have been suspended for violating the minor league drug policy thus far this season, Reyes is now the first to fail a second test, resulting in a 100-game suspension.

The real question is - what were you thinking? As the old saying goes: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And really, the shame belongs to Jorge. Trying to get out of Class A, Jorge thought it prudent to keep taking performance enhancing drugs even after being caught once. Good luck now. The suspension probably ended Reyes' season, but it effectively ended his career as well. Having been now suspended twice, Reyes will have red flags all over him should he try to make a comeback next year.

In his lone start this year, on April 8th, Reyes pitched 5 scoreless innings, striking out 5, and allowing 4 hits. Much better than his 1-4 record and 4.81 ERA of a year ago. It's hard to say if his sparkling gem was aided by his doping, or why Reyes hasn't pitched since then.

While it's obvious that steroids is a baseball-wide problem, it does seem that a few too many of these are coming from Flushing Meadows and the Mets.