Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association are acting quickly to shut down any chatter about players receiving exemptions to take human growth hormone.
In a statement released Friday afternoon, the league and the union jointly stated that no player at any level has ever received a therapeutic use exemption to use HGH since the Joint Drug Prevention Program was instituted.
Neither Mike Trout nor any other player has a TUE for HGH, according to a joint statement from MLB and the PA pic.twitter.com/aN9QkFJgI4
— Hannah Keyser (@HannahRKeyser) January 17, 2020
The statement doesn’t name Mike Trout, but it’s pretty obvious that it’s being released because of some completely frivolous accusations lobbied at the Angels star. Those allegations started when David Brosius, an ex-Mariners coach and son of former player Scott Brosius, claimed in a comment that Trout received an HGH exemption for a thyroid condition. The rumors gained fuel Friday when Yahoo Finance reporter Daniel Roberts quoted pitcher Trevor Bauer as saying that rumor was true, but players didn’t care about it. That claim — if Bauer even made it — was walked back via Roberts, though all of the reporter’s tweets on the subject have since been deleted. There isn’t any clear record of Bauer saying any of this, but that didn’t stop the chatter from spreading on Twitter Friday.
The trail of deleted tweets should tell you just how seriously these allegations should be taken. Twitter has gotten ridiculous with unfounded rumors and conspiracy theories in the past 48 hours in light of the Astros cheating scandal, and the site is fertile ground for anything to go viral even if there’s no degree of truth to it. This one was definitely fake, and we now have the official word on the subject so we can put it to bed.
