Padres’ Farm Teams Tested

The San Diego Padres began random steroid testing of their minor league players in 1997, but that was inspired by concerns of abuse by young players in the farm system, not by abuse by the team’s 1996 National League MVP, Ken Caminiti, a team official said Tuesday.

“I had gotten wind that some of our minor leaguers were using; I knew they were,” said Priscilla Oppenheimer, the Padres’ director of minor league operations who called for the tests. “Everybody had suspicions that certain [major leaguers] were using, but that was not the reason for our decision. Not Caminiti. Not at all.”

According to Oppenheimer, the team didn’t know Caminiti was using steroids.

Oppenheimer said the Padres had six positive results in 1997 among players who had played the previous season with the Class-A Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, the team she most suspected of steroid abuse.

Major League Baseball mandates random testing of minor leaguers, but teams such as the Padres and Houston Astros use additional testing.

“Our perspective is to test so we can educate,” Tim Purpura, Astro assistant general manager said.

The Padres randomly test 26 of their 180 minor leaguers during spring training, then test seven or eight on each of their minor league affiliates twice during the season.

“We catch about three players a year,” Oppenheimer said.

She said that after a first violation, the player sees a doctor, who warns about the consequences of steroid use. No Padre minor leaguer has tested positive twice, she added.