Addison Barger returned to the Blue Jays lineup on Tuesday night after missing two games with the flu. Before the game, he commented on recent allegations by an opponent on social media.
Addison Barger returned to the Blue Jays lineup on Tuesday night after missing two games with the flu. Before the game, he commented on recent allegations by an opponent on social media.
Addison Barger was minding his own business after a Blue Jays win in Pittsburgh last week when his phone lit up.
”(Alykhan Ravjiani), our social media guy, sent me a screenshot of a tweet,”聽 Barger said before Tuesday night’s game at the Rogers Centre against the Minnesota Twins, in which he returned after a two-day absence fighting the flu. “He (said): ‘You caught some strays.’”
The out-of-nowhere accusation was levelled in response to a tweet by a fan who uses Barger’s picture as his social media avatar, after Pham had answered a tweet from ’s Keegan Matheson that gave Jays catcher Tyler Heineman’s side of a dispute with Pham during the Jays’ 5-2 loss in Pittsburgh on Aug. 18.
The truth is that Barger has never tested positive for steroids and does not have a therapeutic use exemption.
“I’ve never spoken to (Pham) in my life,” Barger told the Star on Tuesday. “I don’t know anything about him.
“He was saying I got popped for a PED, but that wasn’t true. I got popped for a stimulant, which is 50 games (suspended) not 80, in 2019 in rookie ball.”
Barger was punished six years ago for taking heptaminol, a cardiac stimulant. He has not failed a drug test since.
“I don’t have a TUE and I didn’t get popped for a PED,” said Barger. “So nothing he was saying was true. I just want to state the facts: this is what is true, this is not.”
“It was kind of annoying, but it’s not that big of a deal,” Barger said. “He’s not super credible, so that helps. I would say he shouldn’t be, because he’s just lying about stuff on the internet, which isn’t really cool.”
Mike Wilner is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star
and host of the baseball podcast 鈥淒eep Left Field.鈥 Follow him on
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