Ryan Braun: Statement from Dino Laurenzi Jr. Raises Questions About Brewers Star

Ryan Braun may be free from the shackles of MLB's 50-game suspension stemming from a suspicious drug test, but the Milwaukee Brewers star still has a long and arduous trial ahead of him in the court of public opinion.

That trial has now called to the witness stand the man responsible for collecting and sending off the infamous urine sample.

That man, Dino Laurenzi, Jr., released a statement of his own on Tuesday in response to Braun's fiery diatribe against baseball and its drug-testing program last week, during which the reigning National League MVP essentially threw Laurenzi under the bus without calling him out by name.

In his statement, Laurenzi carefully recounts his extensive credentials as a trainer and testing sample collector before delving into the exact procedure he followed in procuring, sealing, holding and sending out Braun's sample. Laurenzi confirms previous reports that he waited nearly 48 hours to have Braun's samples shipped and explains why:

"

I completed my collections at Miller Park at approximately 5:00 p.m. Given the lateness of the hour that I completed my collections, there was no FedEx office located within 50 miles of Miller Park that would ship packages that day or Sunday.

Therefore, the earliest that the specimens could be shipped was Monday, October 3. In that circumstance, CDT has instructed collectors since I began in 2005 that they should safeguard the samples in their homes until FedEx is able to immediately ship the sample to the laboratory, rather than having the samples sit for one day or more at a local FedEx office. The protocol has been in place since 2005 when I started with CDT and there have been other occasions when I have had to store samples in my home for at least one day, all without incident.

"

So what happened during that period of time? Did Laurenzi tamper with the samples? Did he do anything to manipulate Braun's cup, knowingly or not, to raise the testosterone levels to the highest ever tested in the short history of MLB's program? Not if you ask Laurenzi:

"

The FedEx Clinic Pack containing Mr. Braun's samples never left my custody. Consistent with CDT's instructions...I placed the FedEx Clinic Pack in a Rubbermaid container in my office which is located in my basement. My basement office is sufficiently cool to store urine samples. No one other than my wife was in my home during the period in which the samples were stored. The sealed Specimen Boxes were not removed from the FedEx Clinic Pack during the entire period in which they were in my home. ... At no point did I tamper in any way with the samples. It is my understanding that the samples were received at the laboratory with all tamper-resistant seals intact.

"

At what point, then, did Shyam Das, the arbitrator who sided with Braun in the appeal, find that the chain of custody, at which Braun's lawyers pointed so vehemently, was broken? At what point did the process go awry to the point that Braun's suspension had to be thrown out entirely?

Be that as it may, it's difficult to pore over what's been said and reported about Braun's case thus far from all sides and not conclude that there's something amiss here. Braun claims that he's innocent, that he was wronged by the system somehow, yet there's still no explanation as to how the levels of synthetic testosterone in Braun's sample came up so high.

All we're left with is a quiver's worth of arrows pointing back in Braun's direction, suggesting that he put something (or some things) in his body that he wasn't supposed to.

Unless, of course, you don't trust Dino Laurenzi, Jr. or you think there's something else going on here.

Whatever the case may be, we'll be left with nothing but questions and opportunities for speculation until everyone comes clean, until Ryan Braun offers some sort of explanation as to how so much synthetic testosterone ended up in his body.

Which is to say, we'll probably never know for sure, barring some unforeseen change of heart on Braun's part, leaving the court of public opinion to either presume guilt until innocence is truly proven or forget about this case entirely as it fades into the past.

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