The Cincinnati Reds have announced that they’ve sent infielder Noelvi Marte on a rehab assignment to Triple-A Louisillve. Marte, who is still serving an 80-game suspension after testing positive for Boldenone during spring training, is allowed to have a “rehab” assignment during his suspension.
Louisville is at home this week, playing the St. Paul Saints. So if you’re in the area you can go see him play. Marte is allowed to spend up to 20 days on a rehab assignment as a position player, but that won’t apply here. Marte is eligible to return on June 27th as long as there are no postponements between now and then that also aren’t made up between now and then. On the day his suspension is up the team will have to activate him and make some decisions.
When the time comes to make a decision on what to do with Marte, the Reds are going to have to decide between plenty of options. First and foremost the club has to make a 40-man roster move when he’s eligible. Right now he does not count towards the club’s 40-man roster but he will once his 80-game suspension is up.
That was the easy decision for Marte – the team isn’t going to release him. But the flip side of that transaction is one that they probably have had some thoughts about but don’t need to know the answer just yet. It’s possible that multiple things could come into play before they have to make that move that could ultimately make the decision for them (injury, trade, etc).
But perhaps the bigger decision will be whether or not the team chooses to bring him up to the big league club or to option him to Triple-A once he is eligible. Some of that may depend on just how well/poorly he looks while on his rehab assignment.
It’s likely that he will be brought to the big leagues. Right now the Reds don’t really have a backup shortstop and Elly De La Cruz has played in every single game this year. Marte, while not exactly the best defensive shortstop around, can fill in often enough to give De La Cruz a day off. But beyond that, Marte’s probably an improvement to the lineup and can fit in at a few spots.
Last season after he was called up to the big leagues he played in 35 games. In his 123 plate appearances he hit .316/.366/.456 with seven doubles, three home runs, six steals, eight walks, and had 25 strikeouts. When the season ended he had a 16-game hitting streak going (25-for-62 in that stretch).
On Monday afternoon Marte met with the media in Cincinnati and Louisville. He said that he is not sure how Boldenone got into his system. While a quick google search will tell you that boldenone is an injectable steroid used for veterinarian purposes – and that is true – it’s not only injectable. USADA has a page all about the drug and notes that it has been found within dietary and nutritional supplements.
“When I go back to the Dominican it’s just really make sure I’m aware of how all of my diet is, and having all of the right people behind me and that I trust those people as well as much as possible. Just make sure that I know everything that’s going on with my health and all of those processes,” Marte said through translator Jorge Merlos.
“Just looking at my diet, looking at how my health works. I live in a country that doesn’t have the same health system that you see normally here in the States. I just need to make sure, look over everything that’s going on to make sure that my process is well enough that these results won’t come back again.”
It’s rare that tainted supplements in the US lead to failed PED tests. But it’s not unheard of, either. Former NFL Player David Vobora won a $5.4M lawsuit against a company over contaminated supplements that led to his suspension just over a decade ago. Five years ago four UFC fighters all tested positive for ostarine. After investigation it was determined that they were all taking the same supplement and that it was contaminated with the drug, which was not listed as an ingredient. And perhaps the most famous one in recent memory is when future boxing Hall of Famer Canelo Alvarez tested positive for clenbuterol after eating contaminated meat.
It’s rare that someone will test positive for something and actually say “yeah, I did it”. Most of the time the athletes will claim that they have no idea how the drug got into their system. And sometimes that could be true. In the US the stuff sold in stores is supposed to be labeled with all ingredients and be “clean”. Sometimes that isn’t the case. But once you get outside of the US, there aren’t always agencies in charge of keeping companies on the up-and-up when it comes to what’s in their supplements.
At the end of the day, that still falls on the athletes. You have to know what you are putting into your body. Noelvi Marte paid the price for failing his test. The suspension cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. And it cost him 80 games of service time, which could eventually delay his pay day down the road, too.
Starting tonight, he can try to put all of that behind him and get on the field with Louisville after spending his time after his suspension was announced participating with rookie-level players in practices/unofficial games in Goodyear at the Reds complex and in the Dominican Republic at the Reds complex.