The Hiroshima Carp voided their contract with Xavier Batista on Monday, the day the slugger’s six-month suspension for doping ended, the Central League club announced.
His English language NPB is HERE.
Batista tested positive for clomiphene, a non-steroidal fertility medicine for women that is classified by the World Anti-Doping Agency as an “S4” violation, involving hormone or metabolic modulators. Clomiphene can be used to suppress the side effects of anabolic steroids.
According to the Nikkan Sports, Hiroshima’s director of baseball operations, Kiyoaki Suzuki, said, “I’ve decided to terminate the contract. We’ve been investigating this since the start, but in the end we were unable to determine the cause (for the test result).”
For five seasons, Batista toiled in the low minors for the Chicago Cubs. After he was released a friend suggested he look into the Carp’s Dominican Academy. Batista was the first product of the club’s successful new program of giving guys second chances after they failed in the U.S. minors.
After he and Alejandro Mejia tore up Western League pitching in the spring of 2017 on developmental contracts, they were signed to standard NPB contracts and signed six-year deals with Hiroshima.
Although the Carp reserved him, Batista was conspicuously absent from Hiroshima’s spring training camp and did not appear when on the club’s 2020 roster that appeared on NPB’s website.
It seems like Dominican players test positive for PEDs at a higher rate than any other nationality, almost certainly because the Dominican Republic is a poor country and steroids can be the difference between and a major league salary and a life toiling for peanuts doing anything else. Batista made good money for three years playing for the Carp, money he might not have made without vitamin-S. His time in the Cubs system didn’t suggest he was an NPB major leaguer, and that little something extra was probably what made NPB money possible. In short, there isn’t much down side for Batista and players like him even if they ultimately get caught.