Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association are right to carefully supervise the use of prescription drugs as part of baseball's Joint Drug Policy, but the process that led to the late-season suspension of Orioles first baseman Chris Davis needs to be re-examined.
Davis clearly violated the policy by taking the ADHD drug Adderall without the appropriate clearance from the league, so it's hard to argue that he was the victim of some great injustice because he had to miss the last 17 games of the regular season and was not available for either of the club's playoff series.
It is fair to wonder if there's a better way to handle Adderall, since many major league players are allowed to use the stimulant and Davis claims he did have a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) when he played for the Texas Rangers.
OK, his bad. The rules are the rules and they are posted in every major league clubhouse. Whatever the substance involved, all a player has to do is go to the athletic trainers or team doctors and ask whether a drug or supplement violates baseball's drug policy. Davis knew that and still used Adderall, so it's on him.
But it's troubling that such flexible enforcement could lead to the other 24 guys on the major league roster being handicapped by the loss of a key teammate at crunch time.
Who knows how much the loss of Davis impacted the Orioles in the postseason. He was not having a terrific season, so the value of his potential contribution is not knowable. But the fact that he could make an application during the suspension and get permission to use Adderall in the future calls into question the process that is used to determine who gets to use it and who doesn't.
It now appears that Davis committed only an administrative mistake rather than a drug offense, which makes a September suspension and the loss of two playoff series seem rather severe.