Some backstory for you. One of my father’s favourite players was none other than Pete Rose. When Rose was ‘banned forever’ in 1989 for gambling, my father was livid. Rose was the player-manager at the time, and admitted he did in fact bet on his team!
At the time, the MLB viewed gambling as an existential threat to the “integrity of the game.” It wasn’t just a concern than a player might throw a game to lose, but that a manager’s betting habits (like over-using a pitcher to win a bet today) could compromise the team’s long-term success.
The rules were clear:
You do not bet on baseball.
All Bets are On
In 2018 the US Supreme Court changed the landscape overnight.
Back in 1992, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) made a national ban on sports gambling. It’s important to note that it didn’t make gambling a crime for the individual. Instead it made it illegal for states to “authorize, license, or promote” sports betting. When the law passed, it gave states a one-year window to legalize sports betting if they wanted to.
Nevada was grandfathered in, as they already had full-scale sports betting, and Delaware, Oregon, and Montana had limited lotteries that were (partially) exempted.
In 2018, the Supreme Court said nuh-uh, states rights! If a state wanted to legalize gambling, the federal government didn’t have the right to stop them. Which, okay, yeah, they’re right, but the next part didn’t have to happen!
You Could Bet On What Happened Next
Of course sports realized how much money there was in gambling. In 2023, MLB made FanDuel its “Official Betting Partner.” Suddenly, the same league that banned one of its greatest hitters for life was running ads during games encouraging fans to “get in on the action.”
And it quickly got worse. Bally Sports, which was now Regional Sports Networks (RSNs), became “FanDuel Sports Network”. In other words, the gambling was now a sponsor and dictated how fans consumed the game.
On top of that, the MLB claimed legal, regulated gambling is safer because it allows for “integrity monitoring.” By sharing the betting data between books and the league, they could catch suspicious patterns.
The flip side of that is legalized gambling opened a door to more kinds of bets. Instead of just betting on outcomes, people would make what they called ‘micro bets’ like ‘the first pitch in the 9th will be a ball.’
This matters because of what happened to Cleveland.
Micro Betting Disaster
Now in their defence, they sure did catch gamblers. One of them was probably the greatest closer Cleveland has ever know, Emanuel Clase. The top closer in all of baseball for his active years, Clase was nearly unstoppable in 2023 and 2024. He had more saves than any other pitcher, and was dominant outside of the post season (when he tended to get shelled by the Yankees).
In 2025, Clase and reliever Luis Ortiz were suspended. Unlike Rose, who bet on outcomes, Clase was accused of “pitch-rigging”. This meant he was intentionally throwing balls or specific speeds (like a pitch under 98 mph) to satisfy those damn micro-bets.
Suddenly everyone stared at the off-season with new eyes. Was Clase throwing bad pitches, spiking a ball in the dirt for those micro bets, which the Yankees (being a perennial powerhouse) jumped on, knowing the next pitch had to be better? Was this why Clase’ numbers became mere mortal in the post season?
But most galling of all is this: if Clase was so good to be able to control his pitches well enough to win all those micro bets, how much better could he have played for the Guards and won us the World Series?
My father is probably rolling over in his grave.
Betting on a Sure Thing
When the news broke, I swore loudly enough that I freaked out my household. According to the federal indictments unsealed in late 2025 and expanded in February 2026, Clase and Ortiz were accused of pitch-rigging.
They allegedly conspired with bettors in the Dominican Republic to manipulate “proposition bets” (prop bets) that focused on two specific metrics:
- Velocity: Whether a pitch would be over or under a certain speed (e.g., “Slower than 94.95 mph”).
- Outcome: Whether a specific pitch (often the very first pitch of an at-bat) would be a ball or a strike. Hence pitches in the dirt.
On top of that, the feds alleged that Clase didn’t just throw pitches, he was the coordinator of the fraud. He made somewhere between $450k to $700k for his co-conspirators by helping place hundreds of fraudulent bets on those rigged pitches. In return, the pitchers got ‘kickbacks.’
For example, in June 2025, Ortiz allegedly agreed to throw a ball in exchange for $7000, with Clase allegedly receiving the same amount as a ‘finders fee’ for arranging it.
These morons blew what could have been multimillion dollar careers for chump change. And after they did it the first time, there was leverage on them to keep going. In other words, blackmail. And it got darker.
After a bettor lost a wager on May 28, 2025 (because the batter accidentally swung at a pitch Clase tried to throw as a ball), the bettor sent Clase a GIF of a man hanging himself. Clase was in too deep to get out.
Can There Be Integrity and Gambling?
If you’re a Cleveland fan, your answer is probably no.
Actually I can’t think of anyone who would say ‘yes’ to this, outside of the people who made $700k off the 48 games Clase was involved in.
Forty-Eight. Goddamn. Games.
That’s out of 197 games in the suspected gambling era, which means he bet on 25% of the games he played in (give or take depending on if he played in the Ortiz games).
As my wife put it, he better have been extorted, otherwise he’s dead to us.
In the end, the MLB gets their data, FanDuel gets their money, and Guards fans are left holding the worthless jersey of a man who was (allegedly) hurting the team we love.