Two suspensions came down under baseball's minor league drug program: Washington Nationals catcher Francisco Rivero and free agent pitcher Raudi Perez, 56 games apiece, each for a positive test for a performance-enhancing substance. That is the whole of it in the Washington Nationals news this weekend, and it landed quietly in the middle of a division series Saturday night when nobody was looking at the minor league transaction page.
Fifty-six is the figure that keeps showing up on these notices, because the minor league program runs on its own schedule of penalties, separate from the one that governs players on 40-man rosters. Different program, different math, same ending. A player loses a third of a season he cannot get back.
That is the part worth sitting with, especially for a catcher. Rivero is going to miss development time at the one position where the reps are the whole job: pitch calling, blocking, learning a staff, the slow accumulation of trust from pitchers who have to believe in the guy putting down fingers. You can hit in a cage. You cannot catch a pennant race in a cage. I do not have his level or his at-bat total in front of me, and I am not going to guess at them, but the shape of the cost is the same at every rung of a farm system.
Perez is the harder case, because he is a free agent. The 56 games travel with him. Whoever signs him signs the suspension too, and that is a real factor in the winter for a pitcher without a roster spot to protect him. Clubs do take those arms. They take them at a discount, and they take them knowing the first two months are already spoken for.
Checked the almanac: the minors have been testing with actual teeth since before the big leagues did, which is a strange little wrinkle of the sport's history. The kids got policed first.
What I am watching is where the 56 games actually fall. Suspensions handed down in October tend to bleed into the following season's schedule, and if that is the case here, Rivero's next competitive inning is a long way off. After that: whether Washington keeps him in the organization through the winter, and whether anybody gives Perez a deal before spring.