Pedro Gomez expains why former Diamondback pitcher took policing PED’s into his own hands

Sometimes in life you don’t get a do-over.

Case in point former Diamondbacks pitcher Russ Springer who admitted purposely hitting Barry Bonds at the height of the performance enhancing scandal several years ago. Springer has since publicly regretted the incident.

Nobody followed the Bonds’ watch closer than ESPN baseball insider Pedro Gomez who shadowed him during the highly-publicized era.

“If you’re a baseball player or a pitcher who’s not on performance-enhancing drugs,” Gomez explained in a recent phone interview to Pros2Preps.com. “And you’ve given up home runs to these people who you strongly suspect or now know it’s not too far-fetched to say…I’ve lost money because my ERA has gone up. Because when I go to arbitration it’s not as good as it can be. They’re comparing me to other pitcher’s numbers.”

This comes just a couple days after Red Sox pitcher Ryan Dempster hit Alex Rodriguez who’s in the middle of the his own PED mess. Dempster was suspended for five games and fined an undisclosed amount Tuesday afternoon by Major League Baseball.

“I would guess that Ryan Dempster’s phone received quite a few congratulatory texts messages after he [hit] Alex from fellow MLB players. That would be my guess.”

Gomez believes the PED-stained era has a trickle down effect not seen by the everyday fan.

You’re taking money out of these player’s pockets, in some instances jobs,” he told Pros2Preps.com. “Because let’s say they didn’t perform well against some of these players who took PED’s and all of a sudden they got sent down [to the minors] and never called back up to the Majors.”

This is the type of collateral damage nobody discussed several years ago when performance-enhancing drugs became more prevalent in Major League Baseball clubhouses.