Jose Bautista insisted to MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez on Tuesday that he has been tested 16 times over the past two years for performance-enhancing substances.
Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports was told by a source that Bautista was “not even in the ballpark” with his claim that he was tested 16 times, but the slugger stands by recent comments that were printed in Hoy, a newspaper in the Dominican Republic. “Whoever is saying that I wasn’t tested might have their reasons,” said Bautista. “I don’t know why somebody would feel they have to defend themselves. I’m part of the program, and the program says you have to be tested once during the season and once mandatory during Spring Training. Since it’s random, you can be tested multiple times, and if that’s what happened to me, I’m fine with it. I don’t see why somebody needs to be so defensive about it and make it sound like I wasn’t. I know what happened. I know how many times I was tested, and I don’t really care if anybody says I wasn’t.” Bautista, 31, has led the majors in home runs in each of the past two seasons.
Source: mlb.com