“I’m not saying Adrian Beltre unequivocally did it, I’m saying, ‘hey, we’ve all been fooled before’, and we have some markers that could paint the tale of a guy who could possibly be ahead of the curve and hasn’t tested positive for it.”
Fresh off becoming the 31st player in baseball history to record 3,000 hits, Doug Gottlieb crashed the short-lived party with a possible bitter truth for Rangers and Beltre fans alike, who might not want to hear a harsh reality for a sport that has sadly given its fans so many in the past.
Gottlieb says Beltre has some pretty peculiar stats for a guy who hit 48 home runs as a 25-year-old in Los Angeles in 2004, then followed up his MVP runner-up season with five depressing seasons in Seattle when he hit .266 and combined for just 103 home runs.
Not only do Beltre’s career numbers carry some crooked digits, but so do many of his countrymen, as Beltre’s home in the Dominican Republic has a dark history of steroid usage.
“It’s legal, it’s over-the-counter, and there’s a different culture there than there is here,” Gottlieb said. “There is a high percentage of baseball players that have tested positive that are from the Dominican Republic. If it’s a stereotype, it’s created upon the actual statistical data that a high percentage of the players who have been suspended from Major League Baseball for testing positive for PED’s came from the Dominican Republic.”
As for the public backlash Gottlieb has received for calling out a guy who just reached one of the most celebrated milestones in all of sports, Gottlieb says it’s time for former players and fans to drop the same tired act of defending guys who had never previously failed tests or been linked to steroids… until they were.
“Just because he’s ‘your boy’ doesn’t mean you shouldn’t suspect as well,” Gottlieb said. “I’m a human being, and a thoughtful one, and one that follows and loves baseball, and I’m not going to be fooled twice.”
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