Narratives are weird. If news of Melky Cabrera's PED transgression had broken after Felix Hernandez completed his perfect game, we would be talking about how Melky's drug use tarnished a great day for baseball. Instead, the narrative seems to be that Cabrera is somehow "lucky" because the perfecto deflects a lot of the media attention. Never mind, apparently, that he's still suspended fifty games, has likely cost his family millions of dollars and has ruined his reputation forever, he dodged the biggest bullet: media scrutiny.
As a result of his failed drug test, Cabrera will miss the remainder of the Giants season and the first five games of the playoffs, if they make it that far. What he will not miss, however, is the opportunity to be in the running for the National League batting title.
Hitting .346 on the season, Cabrera currently stands in second place for the NL batting crown, just behind Andrew McCutchen's .358 and slightly ahead of Joey Votto's .342. If McCutchen's BABIP regresses to anywhere near league norms (he's currently sitting at .403) and Votto cannot bounce back from injury, the batting title will go to Cabrera and the MLB will have an extremely uncomfortable situation on their hands.
We really have no way of knowing how much the added testosterone boosted Cabrera's performance, nor do we know when he began using the banned substance, so any attempts to handicap his numbers would be an exercise in futility. I suppose Bud Selig could rule to have an asterisk next to Cabrera's name in the record books, but we all know how well that has gone over in the past.
What should be done if the Melk Man does indeed win the batting crown? Should anything be done?