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How ex-A’s pitcher went from All-Star to imprisoned drug dealer

It turns out getting caught going 120 mph in his Ferrari on an East Bay freeway at 3:30 in the morning put former A’s pitcher Esteban Loaiza on a fast track to failure.

In a sad but fascinating tale of missteps and misfortune, Loaiza’s descent from an All-Star pitcher with $44 million in career earnings to a broke, 48-year-old man doing time in federal prison for trafficking 44 pounds of cocaine was detailed in a Bleacher Report expose.

These days, Loaiza sits in a cell at the Seattle-Tacoma Federal Detention Center, where he has two years remaining on a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to trafficking cocaine from his native Mexico to Southern California in 2018.