Cubs Prospect Suspended for PEDs

There was some unfortunate news Friday night, as MLB announced that Chicago Cubs prospect Mathew Peters has been suspended for the entire season after testing positive for PEDs. Peters, 23, was Chicago’s 12th round pick in the 2022 MLB Draft out of Ivy Tech in Fort Wayne.

The Fort Wayne, Ind., native hasn’t had much experience in pro ball in the Cubs organization, pitching a total of 12.2 innings and spent 2023 in the Arizona Complex League. Peters reportedly tested positive for dehydrochlormethyltestosterone.

Apparently dehydrochlormethyltestosterone (DHCMT) has been at the center of controversy among other players that have been suspended by MLB for violating the league’s drug policy.

Via The Washington Post.

Also known as Oral Turinabol and originally developed in East Germany, which used it to dope Olympic medal winners, DHCMT has been used by athletes for more than 50 years but gained renewed scrutiny after a test developed several years ago linked it to metabolites that can linger long after the parent substance breaks down.

Questions of just how long those metabolites can last and whether they sometimes lie dormant in pockets inside the body, plus the implications that could have for when banned substances might have been ingested, have been major elements in some disputes over punishments resulting from positive tests.

The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal also wrote about this issue back in 2022, when at the time a total of 23 players had been suspended for DHCMT by MLB since 2015 and were all baffled by the fact that the substance was detected in their urine samples.

Via The Athletic.

But the major leaguers suspended for DHCMT, who include Giants right-hander Logan Webb and Pirates infielder/outfielder Michael Chavis, question why anyone thinks a player trying to cheat would resort to an old-school steroid used by East German athletes in the 1970s and ’80s when other, more current substances are more difficult to detect.

Those players repeatedly have said they have no idea how the substance showed up in their urine. And they continue to express frustration at the damage to their reputations — and in some cases, the ruinous effect on their careers.

A complicated issue that the players union has been fighting for years, so maybe this isn’t time to rush to judgement.

As for Peters, the right-handed pitcher struggled with control in 2023, walking 24 batters in 11.1 innings, and allowed 21 earned runs in his 14 appearances in the ACL.

While his reputation may be taking a hit now, the bigger problem for Peters is that he’ll be missing an entire year of competitive baseball that will certainly affect his development as a pro.