So What Are the Odds Galvis Is Getting Hosed?

At least one person wasn't so quick to jump to the conclusion Freddy Galvis was doing anything that might be construed as "juicing." Shortly after the news of the 50-game suspension broke late Tuesday afternoon, John Finger tweeted this link, which suggests the substance the young second baseman was taking -- Clostebol -- might have other, less incriminating ways of entering the blood stream.
A paper submitted by a group of doctors to an international journal of clinical laboratory science known as Clinical Chemistry (bear with us) put forth the suggestion back in 2004 that trace amounts of Clostebol could enter the blood steam another way.
The most likely of those seemed to be simply by taking a prescribed medication containing this substance, but one claim even pegged the contamination on sex. Supposedly, if your partner happens to be taking a drug with Clostebol, trace amounts of the drug could be transferred through intercourse. Wild.
Galvis seemingly maintained his innocence in his apology statement yesterday, and at least for some folks, the parts-per-trillion or whatever (we're science-y) in his urine was so low as to not trigger full-on skepticism as to how the drug ended up in his system. Others wanted to defend the kid's character, or point out that he wasn't hitting the ball a ton -- not that that's definitive one way or the other. Still others merely assumed that what was accused was true, because the only thing surprising about PED suspensions anymore is the "who."
Further clouding matters is that while Galvis has denied intent, he either accepted his suspension without appeal or privately appealed and was denied. Ruben Amaro Jr would not comment on whether there was an appeal. Instead, Galvis simply apologized, seeming all too eager to quickly put this whole situation behind him.
It can't hurt he'll be serving his 50 games on the disabled list, but we shouldn't automatically think appealing only serves to delay his return to the diamond. If Galvis is caught again, the punishment only gets worse next time. Even if a guilty user isn't concerned with clearing his name, he probably doesn't want to earn a strike, especially not at the age of 22.
The suspension is unfortunate, and after years and years of finger pointing over steroids and other PEDs in baseball, the logical conclusion when MLB comes down on a guy is he must be caught red handed. Maybe Freddy Galvis turns out to be one of those guys, but maybe there was more to the story as well.