Mejia: MLB conspired to 'bring me down'

Jenrry Mejia, the former New York Mets pitcher who recently became the first player ever to receive a lifetime ban from Major League Baseball for performance-enhancing drug use, said the league conspired to bring him down, and that the players' union didn't do enough to defend him.

Mejia, whose third positive test for anabolic steroids resulted in the lifetime ban last month, said he was only guilty of the first offense - for that, he received a 50-game suspension at the outset of 2015 - and that the second positive test was inaccurate. According to the 26-year-old right-hander, league officials then pressured him to disclose information about his doping connections, and warned him that if he were to appeal his second positive test, "they will find a way to find a third positive."

"I felt there was a conspiracy against me," Mejia told Ben Berkon of the New York Times through an interpreter. "I feel that they were trying to find something to bring me down in my career."

According to league spokesman Pat Courtney, however, nobody from MLB ever spoke to Mejia, who had yet to finish serving his 100-game suspension (the result of his second positive test) when he was slapped with the lifetime ban.

"No one at MLB or representing MLB has met with Mejia regarding any of these drug violations," Courtney said.

Mejia, who said last month that he will appeal his suspension, also accused the Major League Baseball Players' Association of failing to champion his interests to the fullest extent when his third positive test was announced. When Mejia went to the union for help, he said, he was told there were no ground for appeal.

"The association should have done more," Mejia said. "(They) should have been there to defend me - because that's what they’re there for. They should have found something to appeal for."

Still, despite forfeiting $2.4 million in 2016 alone, Mejia said he has no regrets about the decisions he made throughout his MLB career, which, for now, appears to have ended before his 27th birthday.

"I wouldn't change a thing," he said. "If the situation was meant to happen, then it was meant to happen. If God wanted it that way, it's going to happen."