Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2399: Fixed That (Pitch) for You

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

Ben and Meg break down the federal indictment of Emmanuel Clase and Luis L. Ortiz, including the documentary and statistical evidence of their alleged pitch-fixing, the implications for the sport and sports gambling, the unanswered questions, the dark comedy, and more (plus a real-time reaction to an MLB betting reform and an answer to an […]

Effectively Wild, it's the only show I do, hosted by Ben Lindbergh and Meg Riley. I want to hear about show Hale Tony, or Mike Trout with Freemarne. Hello and welcome to episode 2399 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangrass, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Beldenberg of the ringer. It's faked you out there for a second. I was like, where are we going? What is this journey?

Joined by Meg Rally of Fangrass. Hello, Mick. Oh, hello. You know, there was a point on Sunday where I almost message you to say, you know, we previewed free agency, did a couple pods on that, but we didn't draft free agent contracts, which is an annual tradition. And I was going to suggest that we do that next time. And I guess I am suggesting that we do that next time, but not this time.

Not this time. Because bigger news intervened and suddenly all thoughts of a free agent contracts over underdraft fled from my mind. Yep. replaced by thoughts of Emmanuel Class A and Luis Ortiz's dire thoughts that I had been dreading on some level, but not actively thinking about. We knew it was looming. At some point, everything was going to come out. But I did manage to put it out of my mind, more or less, while we were enjoying October

and reveling in the postseason. I'm almost glad that they saved this for the offseason, just so we could, we can enjoy just all things that were good and fun and light about baseball before the realities of modern sports fandom and playing intruded again. So finally, after a many months long wait, the other shoe dropped like a class A first pitch slider with a lot of money riding on it being a ball potentially. I guess I guess I'll just insert a blanket allegedly here at the top of the podcast just to spare everyone from having to hear it 15 times, although probably I will insert some allegedly over the course of this podcast, just out of journalistic caution.

But Class A and Ortiz have been indicted, federal grand jury, arrested. The feds are after him. The FBI investigated. The DOJ has charged them with all manner of criminal doings. multiple counts of conspiracy and bribery, and, you know, I knew it wasn't going to be good. It couldn't be good because of how long it took to come out. Because this was early July, right, that Ortiz was placed on non-disciplinary leave, paid leave, which he will probably miss pretty soon, because I think there's probably going to be a disciplinary leave and probably an unpaid one in his future. But given the way that they were kicking the can down the road, and no one objected to that,

and everyone seemed fine with the fact that they were remaining on that list in the thick of a pennant race, no less, certainly seemed like there was going to be some fire, not just smoke. And if anything, there's more fire than I expected, at least in Class A's case. Can you imagine, though, if it had turned out, oh, all clear. just like after everything the guardians went through when those guys were unavailable to them and granted they pitched better without them and went on that incredible comeback

so I don't know that they missed them if you could just retroactively clear them of all charges and say you get to have Class A and Ortiz during those months. Maybe you wouldn't want them because how could things go any better down the stretch maybe in the postseason, who knows? But I kind of figured that wasn't going to be the case

if they were just like, are bad. We checked them out and yeah, actually they didn't do anything. Just squeaky clean and we just sidelined them for the past few months of the season. That didn't seem likely and indeed it wasn't. There's a great amount of detail in the charging document. There's also bits of it where I now have new questions. Yeah. And I'm sure we'll get through some of those. but I think that one of the one of the things I started to wonder about as I was reading this is when did this behavior get on the radar of this alleged behavior I should say get on the radar of the prosecutor for the Eastern District which is like as an aside look they will have their day in court we are putting alleged in here not only because like we want to make sure our journalistic bases are covered but because because. because this is behavior and criminality that does need to be proven in a court of law. Sure. Innocent till proven guilty. And their reps have said that they deny all wrongdoing.

They're looking forward to their day in court, et cetera. I guess that's what you say regardless. Yeah. You know, you want to get a better plea deal or whatever it is if you actually did do it and know you're doomed. But still. Yeah. I will say that like generally, you don't want to be on the Eastern District's radar. That's a bad. That's a bad prosecutor's office to have run afoul of. So I would love to know more about when this alleged criminality first came to the attention or potential criminality came to the attention of prosecutors because, you know, the charging document lays out a timeline, which I think one of the more disconcerting things for me was how far back this scheme goes. You know, it, as you mentioned, sort of came to prominence for the baseball world this summer, interestingly, first with Ortiz and then with Class A, even though Class A's involvement seems, is alleged to be much longer standing and indeed the instigating factor for Ortiz getting involved. But, you know, this goes all the way back to 2023. You know, the first alleged three. throne pitch and there I'm being a little clever, you know, came against the Mets in May of 2023, presumably the Mets being the team it was against why this ended up being charged

in New York, despite them, you know, obviously living in Ohio primarily when they're in the U.S. So that was alarming. And I'm curious what the order of operations here is, because the federal prosecutor's office is going to prioritize the safety of their investigation and their ability to charge over anything else. But it is a funny thing because, you know, does there come a point where they want to be like, so, hey, baseball, you might want to take a gander at these guys because it wasn't until behavior from this summer that, if I remember correctly, was brought to the league's attention as a result of their monitors

that they were made aware of this at all. But did the prosecutor's office know all the, you know, at some point prior to this summer, or did the behavior that tipped off MLB inadvertently tip off the prosecutor's office by virtue of them going on administrative leave? And we just don't have an answer to that in the charging document. And so I, I,

I wondered, what is the actual order of operations here? And obviously, they don't necessarily have an obligation to notify Major League Baseball. But you do end up in this funny spot, right? Where, like, one of the purported victims of this alleged criminality is the league. And yet, when did they, you know, like, did they get a little heads up like an hour before this dropped on Sunday? You know, it's just a curious sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

And sometimes they're parallel investigations. in cases like this, where the league's looking into it and also the feds are looking into it and the league is cooperating with the feds and perhaps vice versa. But, yeah, that is by far, I think, the most disconcerting thing about this. And, you know, it's, it's dire, I would say. There's a lot in here that's bad for baseball. There's also some stuff that's kind of funny. Just because it's bad doesn't mean it can't be funny.

Yeah. And, like, look, I made a conscious decision. when the NBA's recent troubles came to light, I felt like I was previewing the judgment I might experience in an afterlife because, like, the NBA's recent gambling-related scandals, which, you know, we, I'm sure we'll touch on sort of tangentially here because some of them are similar and some of them involved the literal mob. And I was just so, Ben, I was so amused, you know.

I was like, this case has everything. It has a literal rigged poker game. It has the five families. It involves several of the five families. It involves this DOJ's ability to prosecute a complicated case. You got Albanian Bruce. It's got Albanian Bruce, you know. It's got Cash Patel looking just as confused as ever, you know, really.

If we're being candid about the sort of resting face of. of the FBI director, but I, and I, and I, I went to, I went to blue sky and I prepared to make my little jokes. And, and then I thought, hey, Meg, this is a real there, but for the grace of God go I kind of moment, right? Like, don't revel in the, um, the gambling related scandals of another sport because you have to know that those chickens will come home to roost for you. Eventually, I mean, not me. I haven't been charged with anything. And I feel like because I exercised that admirable restraint, I now get to just enjoy

payment for a horse as an expression. And don't make, don't mistake me, listeners. I appreciate the seriousness of this moment. You know, for these two guys, for the sport and its health as a whole,

you know, they are facing very serious charges here, whatever we may think of their culpability. And that's, you know, that's not a thing to be made light of, but payment for a horse, that's just funny. That is just, we just get to find that funny because you don't know what it is. It's funny, Ben. Yes.

Because the thing is that these fellows were not criminal masterminds, which makes it all the more perplexing that they seemingly alluded the long arm of the law for as long as they did or class I did at least. And yes, that was absolutely my takeaway. So what's in here about Ortiz has essentially already been reported, broke basically as soon as he was placed on leave. And we got the details about the two suspicious Ortiz pitches and some of the timing of that. And there was an ESPN report in July that suggested that that's how all of this came to light. Now, as you're saying, there may be more to it. But as far as we know now, it seems as if perhaps the two pitches or maybe even the second of the pitches that Ortiz threw. was what triggered maybe all of this in that something about the betting patterns on that

incident on June 27th raised red flags that, for whatever reason, Class A's much more long-standing alleged behavior had not. So that's what really surprised me. Again, I knew it wasn't going to be good, but Ortiz, the details in here about him, are essentially what we knew, at least when it comes to the on-field behavior, and I was sort of expecting more of the same involving Class A, because if anything, I thought maybe Class A's misdeeds would be less serious because they surfaced later. Later. Yeah.

There was a period of weeks there where Ortiz was already sidelined, and Class A was not yet. And then we never really got details about what Class A did. I mean, there was obviously a strong suspicion or implication that he was involved in the same sort of scheme that Ortiz was. But we didn't really get any, oh, here was the pitch that raised everyone's alarms or anything like that. And so I would have assumed, based on the order of events there, that maybe Class A was the one who was led astray. Maybe Ortiz was the ringleader. Maybe Class A just dabbled in this one time or something. No, just the opposite.

And that's the thing that I was not expecting at all. And I think that's the thing that has the most concerning implications. For anyone who has not read the indictment or some summary of the indictment, I would recommend that you do. Indictments, they tend to make pretty good reading, as we learned, in the Ipe case. And I would say that the Ipe indictment was harrowing. That was uncut gems, essentially. eventually in real life and we talked about it. And it was it was gripping. It was a page turner,

but it was also just sad and depressing and anxiety inducing. This one's a little lighter fair, you know? And I don't know. The reality, as you said, it's still murky and the motivations and the origins and all of that. And it could turn out to be darker than this indictment let's on. But based on what we know now, it's a little less just people at the edge of their rope facing just the most dire circumstances. It's just people fixing pitches, rigging pitches. And just to summarize what we're talking about here, the allegations, class A is alleged to have started rigging pitches in or around May of 2023. And that behavior. And that behavior is behavior continued right up until he was taken out of action, essentially.

Kind of curiously, the indictment does not detail any incidents in 20204. In 2024. I have a theory about this. Do you want to hear my unfounded theory? Yeah, please. Now, this is a theory. This is totally my own speculation. So I, you know, like, you'll be shocked to learn that the prosecutor's office is not giving me any information.

here, but I wonder if what happened is they got spooked by the Ipe stuff. I wonder, I wonder if he got a little spooked by the EPA stuff and took, took some time off from that. Now, we don't know. We don't know if there were more incidents that maybe just are not presented in the charging document. But, yeah, I wondered if, like, they, caught, you know, the eBay scandal was the biggest story in sports and certainly the biggest gambling related story into this one in baseball. And so I wondered if maybe there was a little bit of cold feet, like let's stay out of, let's stay out of Dodge for a bit. I don't know. Yeah, it's possible. It does note, I don't know that it purports to be exhaustive in its

cataloging of the incident. Because it does mention that hundreds of bets are more than a hundred bets were placed. So it could well be that there were plenty that, you know, sort of percolated through 2024. And it just so happens they weren't in the document. Yeah, I don't know if that's hundreds of pitches or hundreds of bets on fewer pitches. That's probably it. But, yeah, I was kind of questioning, well, if he was doing this in 2023 and just getting away with it, Scott Free. And then he was doing it in 2025.

Why would he have taken a break? But that's as good an explanation as any, if indeed he did. Though, as I will note later in the episode, there is some data that I think is quite suggestive that I dug into here. But the allegations are that he was doing this. He was coordinating and communicating with two different betters and was tipping them off to when he was going to throw a certain type of pitch. a certain type of location. They were taking advantage of these prop bets, these micro bets that allow you to wager on whether a pitch will be a ball or a strike or whether it will be above or below a certain speed. And they would coordinate. And he would take all of the uncertainty out

of it, essentially. So betting on baseball, betting on sports, it's generally a losing proposition, but not if you know what's going to happen. It goes a lot better that way. Yeah, it certainly helps. So they would not only just communicate, but, and here's why, even though innocent until proven guilty, you know, unless the information in this charging document is fabricated, and look, I'm not going to put anything entirely past this DOJ, but unless this is all just made up in figments of someone's imagination, there's quite an extensive digital trail here of texts and calls and audio messages and house visits, just really not keeping it quiet.

I mean, they were kind of in an amateurish way trying to lead people astray and throw people off the scent, and I guess it worked for an improbably long time. But they were not shy about communicating about what they were doing, and there does appear to have been a personal relationship of some sort here because at least one of the betters is said to have visited Classes' house on several occasions, his residence, and Classes leaving tickets for this person. And that's, I think, maybe the most brazen thing about all of this. One of the betters is just coming to games, picking up tickets that Class A left for them, and they're communicating mid-game, which that was the part.

I mean, I guess it makes sense because Class A is a closer. reliever. You don't know beforehand if he's going to pitch. If he's going to come in. Yeah. But you could have just said kind of contingent on, you know, if I pitch today, right? But they were communicating during games pretty extensively. And even having calls when Class A is minutes from being on the mount. He's minutes from this wager being placed and paying off. And he is essentially saying, yeah, you can bet the under or the over or whatever. whichever it was on this pitch, I'm going to do it. And they're having a two-minute phone conversation in addition to text.

And it's like four minutes before he's actually pitching, which would lead one to believe. I mean, is he just like in the bullpen on the phone? Right. Holding the cell up to his, you know, obviously that's prohibited. That's banned. Yes. There's some provision for it's an emergency and you have to get in touch with your family or something during a game. But aside from that.

that, you are not allowed to use your cell phone during games precisely for a reason like this. And clearly, the enforcement of that was somewhat unsurprisingly lax, but just the immediacy of it kind of amazed me. I mean, you know, the trail that was left behind by all of these folks. And this seemed like another spot where it just, you know, it's a violation of MLB. rules to be on your phone sure once you're breaking like the cardinal rule i don't think that you're particularly concerned about your cell phone use but it also just seems like it introduces another potential point of vulnerability to this alleged conspiracy because you're telling me that like no one could overhear you i'm i'm not saying that to say that there were that there were people

who did overhear and didn't come forward but you're you're confident you're not going to be overheard you're confident that like the the leagues monitor or clubby isn't going to overhear you and like have enough conversational Spanish that they can kind of discern what it is that you're trying to do that you're you being on the phone that regularly isn't going to get noticed at least a couple of times it's just such brazen behavior really bizarre and putting you know putting your like betting conspirator in presumably the family section what a bonkers set of behaviors having that person over to your house it's just i think that when when people when people do crimes like this they very often think well i'm anticipating all the potential ways that i could get caught right and and you know sometimes they do and then they just never get caught yeah but often they fail to appreciate a potential vulnerability but like having the guy who's placing your bets or the the parley bets based on your pitches in the ballpark in the family section where

people will be like who's that guy yeah you know did anyone did it did any of the whole wives or girlfriends who's that guy around who's he here with you know like it's just a it's a real it's real brazen it is yeah it's not really covering your tracks all that well, which is why it surprises me that it worked for so long. And yeah, there are so many questions that are raised by this indictment, the origins of this scheme and relationship. We don't know why it started. We know when, roughly, but not why. And we don't know what Class A's motivations are here. And it could be any number of things. The fact that he was not getting much money out of this, that all told, the betters seem to have made upwards of $450,000,

which is not a bad haul, but Class A and later Ortiz were seemingly getting a pittance. They were just getting 5,000 here, 7,000 there, if that. And so you wonder why, and that's kind of always the eternal question with these things when you have well-paid athletes. Now, Ortiz, of course, is making just a bit more than the Major League minimum, which, you know, is a hefty salary by most of our standards, of course, but it's a lot less and his future's not assured and nothing's guaranteed and he's far from free agency and he fits the profile better of someone in the majors who might be motivated to do this. Class A has a guaranteed $20 million contract and had it when this bidding began, plus incentives and everything. And he's been better than that, you know. He's like a lot of young pre-arbitration pre-free agency stars.

He's underpaid relative to his production. But he's doing okay in the grand scheme of thing. So unless he was bitter about the fact that he wasn't getting what he was quote-unquote worth or something, but it's not as if he was made. whole by this scheme. It's a drop in the bucket even relative to what he was already making. So given that there's no indication thus far, really, that he was doing this under duress, because that's where your mind goes. You know, maybe it's a threat, right? Maybe he's, they have something on him or they're threatening him or his family or something and coercing him into doing this. I guess that's still in the realm of possibility, but there's nothing in here that really

suggest that that's the case. So then you think, well, maybe it's a friend. And maybe that's why this person is going over to Class A's house and going to games and everything. And maybe Class A is just doing this fella a favor, right? And if that's the case, I would repeat, you don't have to break the cardinal rule of your profession to help someone out, to do a solid for someone. If that's what you want to do, you could just give them money. And it'll work out better for you end and them in the long run because you won't endanger your future earnings. Or who knows, there are so many more motivations. It could just be a compulsion. Like, you don't get the same sort of sweaty I pay sense here from the text that we can see. But that could be something.

You never know. And maybe it's just a false sense of security or it's hard to call it false, given how long you got away with this, but just a sense of I can get away with this. and everything has worked out in my career to this point and I've summited every obstacle and I've overcome every impediment and I can get away with this too and they won't catch me and maybe also you rationalize it

and you say, eh, what's one intentional ball between friends, right? Like, especially if you're a Manuel Class A who during this period is arguably the best relief pitcher in baseball Right. From May of 2023 through July of 2025, only Tainer Scott had a higher Fancraft's War than Emmanuel Class A and by one-tenth of a win. So he's about as good as it gets, and maybe he thinks, eh, I can spot him a ball and I can work my way back, you know?

What's one ball to me, maybe the best closer in baseball? Or, you know, if you're Luis Ortiz, maybe you're thinking, I throw balls on 40 percent. of my first pitches anyway. So who's to say that this actually cost my team? Maybe that would have been a ball. And, you know, you could kind of talk yourself into it just not being that big a deal. Or if it's one of the speed prop bets and you're just throwing a slider instead of a cutter, well, maybe you would have done that anyway. So you could sell it to yourself if your conscience is giving you a hard time. You could say, eh, this is not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it actually is. It's just the principle of the thing. But I suppose I understand

how it could be a slippery slope. You just do it one time and now I'll throw a slider instead of a cutter, big deal, and I'll help out a buddy or something. And then you get away with that and then you dabble again and maybe they're putting some pressure on you to do it again and it just keeps going swimming. You know, I could sort of see how that could happen maybe, but then when you pull back a bit, it just kind of boggles your mind to think that someone would take this sort of risk for such a small reward, seemingly. I find it so, I'm not surprised that an official charging document would not speculate as to the motivation for these guys. I was a little surprised to not see them totaling out the

potential kickbacks, right? Because each individual payment is quite small. in the grand scheme of things, right? $5,000, $7,000. But you could imagine, particularly if there were as many bets, as is alleged in the document, that that could snowball and add up quite quickly. Maybe this is an area where everyone involved was trying to be kind of clever, right, by keeping the amounts small so that it would potentially fly under the radar of the betting monitors, even for something like, you know, Luis Ortiz.

by the way, all the other Luis Ortizers are like, put the freaking middle name in there, won't you please? Yes. But, you know, I could imagine there being some kind of strategy to that and then thinking, well, this is going to accumulate, you know, sort of like a, you know, like a heavy snow by a magnitude. And you get to a point where like, wow, it's just like, I got a shovel. But I don't know how useful it is. is to speculate as to the motivation here.

Because it's probably some combination of things. I also want to encourage people, you know, when we read the eBay indictment, we were careful to say that, you know, we don't know for sure and we don't want to arm chair psychologist, but if we were trying to construct the image of someone who seems to have like a debilitating gambling addiction, it would look a lot like IPE did in those charging documents. Right. Sweaty is a good way to describe it. That word that you used earlier is a good one. I don't know what Class A Ortiz's motivation is here. I want to leave open the possibility. I suppose that there is a more nefarious sort of motivation at work here that there was some threat being offered to one or both of those guys that sort of cajoled them into participating in this. But we don't we don't know that to be true. I don't know if, if either of them had like a gambling addiction, if there was like an unhealthy thrill-seeking behavior here.

You know, we got to allow for that possibility that both of them were just being kind of dumb. Sure. They're like young men who feel like they have, you know, the whole world in front of them and will live forever and never get caught. You know, you were right to point out in your piece and others have noted this too. You know, this isn't the first bit of transgression of the official rules. that we've gotten from Class A, you know, he did sort of a PED suspension. So, like, his relationship

to the mandates of Major League Baseball and I suppose potentially federal law enforcement might be kind of squishier than the average bears. The reason I say all of that is that I did see some on social media sort of rush to the corrosive effects of gambling addiction as a potential explanation here. And, you know, as I've said, that that may well be. part of the mix. I don't know. But I think it is important to like to say that like sometimes people just break rules and are our lawbreakers and dumb. And and jumping to addiction as an explanation I think is actually counterproductive to the the broader project of trying to, you know, get people resources when they are sort of pushed sideways by addiction and that, you know,

every bad act is not explained by addiction. And there are plenty of people who suffer from that and have to deal with that and don't violate the law. You know, so I just, I saw some, some, I understand the instinct and I think given the corrosive effect that sports betting, particularly sports betting via an app, seems to be having on like Joe and Jane Sports fan, although Joe's sports fan more often, I understand wanting to loop that into the analysis here. But I think that for people who are grappling with gambling addiction, assuming that that is like an explanation for criminality is maybe not the compassionate move that people assume it to be. So I just think that that's worth saying here because it's like, I don't know, a manual class, they might just be a bad guy who like. Yeah, it's possible. Yeah. Did bad stuff here, you know?

Like people can bear responsibility for their actions. I'm not saying that he and Ortiz deserve to be in jail for six. 65 years. Like, that's a separate conversation. But, like, sometimes, you know, sometimes people just break the law. Yeah. That's one of those, you know, you add up all the charges and the maximum possible sentence to 65 years. And that's leverage partly so that they can totally get a better deal. It's obviously vanishingly unlikely that these guys will go to prison for 65 years apiece. It would probably be a small fraction of that, if anything. But even if they weren't convicted, somehow they could still be banned from baseball.

And that seems extremely likely, regardless of what happens in court if they make it to court. We want to be responsible and drop in the necessary allegedly. I feel quite comfortable speculating that neither of these guys will ever throw a pitch in not just in Major League Baseball, in a baseball league that has a professional standard ever. tried to pitch in Winterball and were banned from that as well, understandably. Yeah, and yeah, I mean, the Black Sox were acquitted in court and they were banned from baseball. So different standards of proof for MLB and in a criminal court. Right, so, yeah. Yeah, so it would seem that Class A cuts in Ortiz here in June and facilitates that relationship.

And those guys had gotten close. They're countrymen. They're both from the DR. They're within a year of each other's age, and they were lockering close together in spring training, and they've been reported to be close friends. And so Class A perhaps tells his buddy what a great thing he has going here and gets a cut for Ortiz's involvement. And maybe it's as simple as they got greedy, and maybe they wagered just enough to trigger whatever betting integrity system is set up. Maybe it had to do with the fact that you have this activity pertaining to two players on the same team. Maybe there's less action on a Luis Ortiz pitch than there typically is on an Emanuel Class A pitch.

Sure. And maybe that triggered something. However, it happened that would seem to, and we don't know for sure, we're kind of inferring and leaping to conclusions here, that seems to have been the thing that really got this going. and then presumably once they started looking into Ortiz, one thing led to another and quickly led to Class A, and then all of this comes out. And that's really the part that rocks me back on my heels a bit because we've been sold this line by the leagues, the commissioners, the sports books,

that the benefit of legalized sports betting is that it's all out in the open. and it's no longer operating in the shadows and offshore and shady bookies. We can track all this activity. It's in the apps. We have systems set up. We'll know the second something goes wrong. And some claxon will sound somewhere and someone will slide down a pole and they'll start investigating the shady, unusual bedding patterns. Down a pole?

Why would these? Yeah, it's not a fire department. Oh, yeah. Why would they, are they the ghost busters bed? Do you understand them to be gambling, Ghostbusters? I don't know. I've never really been to a betting integrity place. Here's the thing.

Why did the ghostbuzzle? They slid down the pole because they were in a firehouse. But presumably, did they really need to slide down the pole? Those are, you know. It's for effect. It's style points. I appreciate it. Bill Murray's like, look, I'm sliding down the freaking pole, man.

You try to stop me. For whatever reason, Class A's pattern over multiple years of being involved in this did not get detected or did not get curtailed. And that really puts the lie to every thing we've been sold. And, you know, this is not unique. Like you could look at the NBA, which, as you said, it was inevitable that we would invoke that. And the league investigated Terry Rozier two years ago and cleared him.

And he was just indicted. Yeah. Here's the thing I want to say about the Rozier stuff. because I think that we should hold two thoughts simultaneously. I think that it is appropriate for us to be skeptical of these official investigations. Although I think that Major League Baseball has conducted itself much better as these things go, just in part because they just keep suspending all these guys. Like, no one's getting off.

But also, I don't know that did the NBA clear Terry or did his agent tell shops that he had been cleared? Because those are two separate things. You know what I mean? But he was. Playing. He was playing. Yeah. That's right.

So whatever they did, it was not enough to detect what at least is alleged now, what he was embroiled in. So, yeah, there are cases where it seems to have worked and things went through the proper channels. And even Jonte Porter, so he does some stuff on March 20th of last year. And it's, you know, public knowledge that there's an NBA investigation into that five days later. Great. Okay. That's sort of the system working. as designed, except that that wasn't the first incident that he had been involved in. He had been

doing these things for months. And Ortiz, like, if it were just Ortiz, and he threw that pitch on June 27th, and then he was sidelined less than a week later, that would be a success. That would be another illustration that, yes, this actually, it is good to have it out in the open, but that wasn't his first time either. That was his second time, allegedly. And then you have Class A who somehow managed to avoid whatever, you know, tripping whatever wire would lead to people paying attention to this. And so if he could get away with it for that long, then that suggests that someone else might have two.

Someone else might still. Maybe not for years and hundreds of bets, but it could be a one time only occurrence and you just never know, really. and that I think raises the concern now because any time you see someone spike a pitch, you know, throw one just a bit outside. I'm not paranoid and I don't believe that this is actually widespread

and it's completely rampant and everything is fixed. But the thought would be in the back of your mind probably the next time you see a pitcher do that, which is a completely normal thing for a pitcher to do. You know, this many times and no one really thought anything of it seemingly and I wouldn't think anything of it seeing it here or there because pitchers do this. They bounce a ball. They

lose their grip and it's nothing remarkable until it's supplemented with all this other evidence and when there's a pattern to it. And I think so, okay, I have I have two thoughts just to circle of actually the NBA of it all and being skeptical sort of league findings. I do, in fairness to the league, like, these leagues don't have subpoena power, right? And the DOJ does. So there is an important difference in their ability to move investigations along when they hit a dead end and acquire evidence and, you know, sort of bring the full weight of their institutional authority to bear. you know, a league can suspend or, I suppose, potentially sue a player and the DOJ can put him in jail. So I want to be, I was been a little snarky, but I want to be fair to the leagues in that

regard. I think that you're right that the amount of time that sort of transpired is alarming, but I don't know that that alarm is new. Like, just think about the more recent gambling investigations that have resulted in players being suspended or in Marcano's case banned. Those bets went back years, right? Like, this is, this seems to be a consistent issue, if we want to call it that, in this process where there is just a certain amount of lag. You know, the Ortiz pitches relative to when he was put on leave, I think is some of the shortest time that we've seen between, you know, a pitch raising an alarm for someone. and the player actually being pulled off the field of play. And some of that might be, you know,

the players involved being injured versus not, them being on an active 40 man versus not, them being in a position to affect future contests versus not, them being alleged to have just bet on baseball versus them being alleged to have been the one to facilitate, you know, a bet by their, feel, you know, their play on the field. So there might be differences that are important here, at least in terms of this feed with which the league acts. And it is, you know, I guess heartening

that the guy who is alleged to have actually thrown a pitch, again, like, we got to come up with some new vocabulary there, but was the one that was pulled off the field the most quickly. But yeah, it seems like even for, even for instances where there was behavior and activity that caused alarm it's not like it's instantaneous they aren't they aren't reviewing maybe they're reviewing the stuff daily i don't want to say that i know what their exact schedule is but it's not like you pitch one night and the next day they're like hey we're a little nervous we're a little nervous or maybe they maybe it needed to happen a second time before they're like okay this is this is officially fishy you know i'm i'm not sure but i tend to agree i think with bowman's perspective on this

which is that I do think that the monitoring is useful. I'm skeptical that we're going to put the legal sports betting genie back in the bottle. And so, you know, maybe the project now is figuring out how to make this as airtight as possible. But the amount of time that Class A was able to just, like if Ortiz hadn't... Mm-hmm. He could still be doing it. Yeah. could he right if he as you noted in your column like if he had just left Ortiz out of it would he have ever tripped anyone's attention like it makes sense if you're thinking about the profile of player that you might put a prop bet on having there be action on someone like claise makes sense to a certain extent right he's one of the best players in the league right he's not some random guy where you're like why is

anyone betting on and that's a little I love how I'm worried about being rude to Luis Ortiz in this moment but that's a little rude to Luis Ortiz who was a good pitcher but at criminal seemingly allegedly but you know it makes sense to me that there would be some amount

of action on on Class A if you're gonna do this stuff but to your point it is weird that like you're betting on him to go against type right this is a guy who doesn't walk anybody this is a guy who's highly effective. Why are you betting that he's not going to throw a strike? The pitch-type bet

stuff like, okay, fine. Maybe that strikes you as more defensible because there's just more variance there. But again, like these sorts of bets, we got to be done with these sorts of bets. We've said it before. We're going to say it again. Like the only, I'm sorry, like, if you are a person who's listening to this and you are a prop bet enthusiast, you're going to come away from what I'm about to say, feeling a little ill-used, okay? I'm just warning everyone. You're going to feel like you've been accused of something. And you know what?

You may be honest with that for a minute because I would argue much as Bauman did that the overwhelming majority of people who are engaged in these kinds of outcome, like discrete minor outcome, that is the behavior of a freaking degenerate. I'm sorry, but that is like, to use your word from earlier, that's sweaty behavior. That is sweaty business. And then there's like the narrow slice that seems like they would maybe be using this to engage in a little like criminality. But I don't see many wholesome applications of this kind of bet. And I think that if the leagues want to restore some confidence, right?

And I want to be clear. My position in all of this shit has not changed. I think it all sucks. I hate how much we have to pay attention to it. I hate how many. We have done so many pods about this now, Ben. We've done so many pods like this. You know, we didn't.

We didn't do an emergency one yesterday in large part because I had to go to the fall stars game. but um if we've done too many of these i'm sick of having to talk about this i don't want to have to do this anymore but here we are doing doing the lord's podcast but if the if the leagues want you and me and everyone else to have a bit more confidence in their whole operation this being you know on balance a net positive in terms of our ability to potentially enforce the rules, you've got to get rid of these kinds of bets. You just have to.

Like, if you want to bet over or under, and it's not like that can't be manipulated either, but these ones are just so ripe for potential abuse that they must be done. Oh, I'm getting, we got a press release. Oh, oh, extra, extra. Okay. Do you want, do you want some extra, extra, extra? Sure, please. major league baseball parentheses MLB i love him as an aside we're going to have a little fun now

you're sending this out to an official PR distribution you think you need the anyway announced today the commissioner's office has worked closely with its sports book partners to proactively create new safeguards to limit pitch level markets effective immediately all MLB authorized gaming operators will cap wagers on pitch level markets at $200 and exclude those bets from parlays. These new measures implemented across sportsbook operators representing more than 98% of the U.S. betting market are intended to mitigate integrity risks and maintain the transparency and data access benefits that the regulated sports betting market provides. Most prop bets present limited integrity risk because they take into account multiple events that are

influenced by more than one actor. However, quote, microbet, pitch level markets, e.g., ball strike, pitch velocity, present heightened integrity risks because they've focus on one-off events that can be determined by a single player and can be inconsequential to the outcome of the game. The risk on these pitch-level markets will be significantly mitigated by this new action targeted at the incentive to engage in misconduct. The creation of a strict bet limit on this type of bet and the ban on parlaying them reduces the payout for these markets and the ability to circumvent the new limit. Commissioner of Baseball Robert Dean Manfred Cotma Jr. And again, I'm going to have a little fun.

the fact that they put his mental initial in here funny the fact that they still subscribe to the comma junior um stylization similarly funny the fact that it is bolded in this breast release the funniest of all said quote since the supreme court decision opened the door to legalize sports betting major league baseball has continuously worked with industry and regulatory regular regular we're going to leave that one in because that's funny regulatory stakeholders across the country to uphold our most important priority protecting the integrity of our games for the fans. I commend Ohio Governor DeWine for his leadership on this issue over the last several months. I also commend the industry for working with us to take action on a national solution to address the risk posed by these pitch-level markets, which are particularly vulnerable to integrity concerns. We look forward to continuing to work with all stakeholders, including licensed sports, betting operators, elected officials, and regulators to ensure we are always protecting the integrity of our game. and quote.

Look at that. You said on an unpublished podcast, we need to do something about these profits. And then they did it. They did it before we even. That was prompt service. They were like, yeah, Robert D. Manfred Kama Jr. heard my pleas echoing for me.

Yeah. He was like, oh boy. I'm pleased. I'm not shocked because there was a lot of buzz about something like this happening, as I mentioned in my piece. And yes, Governor DeWine has been. a big advocate for this when it comes to amateur athletes and trying to push for bands on prop bets. And there was some signal that plenty of people were receptive to that, that Tony Clark

had said. Yes. He was very open to it, you know, not only for the integrity concerns, but also because... But for the safety of players. Yeah, exactly. Just getting harassed and abused by betters. And Manfred even had signaled the same that he was willing to do something about these prop bets. And even Adam Silver, who sort of started all of this, at least among commissioners, he has kind of raised the alarm belatedly about prop bets. So, yes, it does seem like the mood has shifted a bit on this. And it's self-preservation as much as anything. It's face-saving. It's PR. A scandal like this happens, you have to respond. You have to do something. And this is a tangible thing. And, you know, as you were saying, I wrote my piece that micro bets are made for

problem gamblers, both the kind that can't lose and the kind that can't win, by which I mean the kind that can't lose because they have inside info and they know what's going to happen. And, yeah, the kind that can't win because generally the house always wins these things. So yes, I do think that those were really kind of predatory slash exploitable. And I would also support some sort national regulation of those. But it is good that baseball took some sort of step here, however self-serving it is. You know, sometimes I don't care what the reason is, as long as the effect is positive. And I think that's a good one. And I was going to say that that's sort of the silver lining of this whole scandal, that it does seem to really advance and move the needle

on popular opinion when it comes to this sort of bet, this in combination with the NBA scandals with generally the shift in the national mood about the effect of sports betting on sports and also on society. There have been a couple recent surveys that have come out from UGov and Pew that have really shown some significant movement on those issues, especially among young men who are maybe most prone to this behavior and I guess have experienced its ill's firsthand. So that's a tangible, positive thing that could come out of this, just making it harder to place this kind of bet. And, you know, it's something that MLB could sort of cynically say, oh, this is to our benefit that we have 700,000 pitches in a regular season, and you can bet on all of them.

And that's something that Manfred said years ago that Silver had told him, hey, stop stressing about the pace of play and the time between pitches. That will be lucrative for you because people can use that time to bet. And to his credit, Manfred did pursue the pitch clock and now has done this. And it's, you know, maybe the horse is out of the barn a little bit. The horse that Class A and Ortiz are paying for the payment for the horse. If people don't know what we're talking about, that was one of the cover stories or one of the small payments. I just, I just. That it was payment for a horse.

Payment for a horse. And for repair of a house, again, not criminal masterminds here, not brilliant schemes. Payment for worse. To which Ortiz responded, okay, perfect. And I just look, again, this is serious business. And I don't want to suggest it is not serious business. I don't want to suggest that this isn't devastating. but I also want to just look we got to have a little we got to have a little fun with it

you know we got to have a little fun tell him that this is payment for a horse payment for a horse you got that okay perfect perfect no no no no no no no no notes or T's not tight this is air that I mean look and and then of course I I said before that the charging document inspired in me several questions, and most prominent among them was sort of this timing consideration, right? When did the DOJ start its investigation? What was the precipitating incident that tipped them off, that inspired them to dig into all of this? I want to know, but also, is that enough for a horse? You know, like, that's the other thing. Like, how much do a horse this cost? don't email me i don't actually care about the answer to that question this is not it's not really

a thoroughbred kind of price i don't think they're they're taking that one to stud was it 1400 bucks or something yeah something like that i also want to point out and look sometimes you're trying to give people grace sometimes you got to be a pedantic little bitch and so that's what i'm going to be right now there is a the melb in this charging document there there's only one That's not bad, actually. Which is sort of surprising, but there is a point where they are laying out, they are sort of restating the charge, right? So they give the initial sort of introductory summary. They walk you through the alleged conspiracy and different, you know, flavors of criminality.

And then they come back together at the end, they'd be like, so, hey, here's our, here are our allegations here is the summary of, the counts and they they do say the MLB at one point in there and I I didn't care for that you know first of all you're a bunch of lawyers there's at least one person in that office who's a baseball fan who can tell you the MLB is wrong the other part of this that was very funny to me and again we're just trying to have our fun where we can because this is a very serious business I love it when I love it when like sports have to be described in the um, exacting way that is required by a federal, uh, indictment, right? Because, you know, if it's just you and me and a grand jury, we, we know what, uh, and who the Cleveland guardians are, right? We know what major league

baseball is. We don't have to establish, uh, that, that major league baseball is a professional baseball league in North America comprised of 30 teams, including the Cleveland Guardians, New York, the Minnesota Twins, Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati, Reds, the Los Angeles, Dodgers, the Seattle Mariners, and the St. Louis Cardinals. we don't have to do that. We know, we know. But when you're in court, you got to establish who the relevant sort of individuals and entities are that's part of your responsibility as a prosecutor. And then you have to lay out the fraudulent scheme, which is just like the fraudulent scheme. But another thing that ends up happening is you have to define some terms just in case like the judge or, you know, the eventual jurors in this case are dumb dummies who don't know anything about basically. And so you have to say, usually they agreed that Class A would throw balls, parentheses, instead of strikes, and slower, quote, slider pitches rather than faster cut fastball, quote, cutter pitches. And this is an interesting little bit of business to me, because it's like, you know, the velocity piece of this, you sort of feel like you have to establish, but you don't have to describe what a cut fastball is, right? You're just like a, you know, like faster cut fastball cutter pitches. It's like, well, that part doesn't require, you don't need to describe.

It would you have been great if they have described the movement of a cutter. I guess that's not the important part. The speed is what matters. It's not, but it's important. It's important to me. It's important to me, Megan, trying to have some fun, a little bit of fun. I also love how lo-fi the screenshots of the pitches are in this, right? Like, if you go on Film Room, as you did to do your announcement,

of how often or t or excuse me class a is like spiking balls in the dirt which ben very nicely done thank you your whole piece was very well done tickled me to use mlb's official film room to put together a reel of a player intentionally throwing balls because of sports betting but yes and the other little bit of comic relief in here of course was antipahas and his role yes i was just I was supposed to get to that. I was just about to get to that. Swarting a parley where seven out of eight pitches paid off because, again, it was being done intentionally, seemingly. And then Andy Pahas ruined it all.

It's just like, you know, he's at the end of the Scooby-Doo episode. It's so funny. It's so funny. And I would have gotten away with it if not for that darn kid who was such a free swinger. And his inability to light off a pitch in the dirt. That he's spoiled it all, just a hero. frankly, standing athwart, the integrity of the game, Annie Pahas, by being unable to hold up, he, and then the text message exchange, which is the one case where I guess it could have

been construed as threatening, but I didn't get the sense that it was. It's like that the better was ruying that Pahas had spoiled their best laid plans. And then Class A was commiserating with like a sad puppy eyes emoji or so. It's just like these little human touches, you know? And I mean, I guess if Pahas had taken that pitch, potentially they could have had some huge parley payout, and maybe that would have actually brought them to the attention of people before they were brought to the attention because that would have been such a big windfall. So who knows?

Maybe he actually helped them in the long run. But that was amusing because I feel like we had entertained that hypothetical. like how do you know that can you ensure that you could get the ball because what if someone swings in it yeah that that actually happened i guess he didn't spike it enough right i just love again you got to your joy in these things where you can find it i just love that like on the one hand if you're andy pies maybe you feel good right you've spoiled part of a scheme that that is a is a direct threat existential threat to the sport, right? If we can't trust, to your point earlier, that a pitch in the dirt is just

either a misthrow or a bit of strategy to try to get a guy to chase, we can't trust that. We can't trust any of this, right? Like, it is a true, these sorts of schemes pose a true existential threat to the sport as we know it. So, like, you're helping to foil that, right? You're not giving them what they want. And maybe if there's enough chase in the game, They'll stop doing this, right? Because, you know, we just read this whole press. I just read this whole press release. They're not banning those bets.

They're just making them less potentially lucrative, right? And so, you know, but maybe, maybe, okay, maybe. You chase enough and you chase this stuff right out of baseball. On the other hand, Andy Pai's has his proclivity to chase. It's in the federal record, man. And Andy Baez and his inability to lay off that garbo pitch went to a grand jury. That is mildly embarrassing, even if he was unintentionally upholding the side of righteousness. Right.

He had no idea in that moment. He saved the World Series just last week or whatever it was. And here he is becoming national news in a heroic fashion. completely unwittingly. Yeah, what a little cameo he made in this story. What a little cameo. I did want to briefly lay out what you just alluded to. The little stat blasting I did, my contribution to the sleuthing here, and it doesn't seem

as if the feds need a whole lot of help here when it comes to building their case. Except for their ability to render this stuff in 4K, apparently. Yeah, maybe. But this definitely persuaded me even more than I was persuaded. Because I wanted to find some sort of statistical signature here, if not a statistical smoking gun, just because there seemed to be such a commonality to at least all of the pitches that he rigged, fixed through that were singled out in the indictment. They all seemed to be, almost all, just thrown really low and just, you know, bounced basically in the dirt, if not the grass in front of the dirt. And so there seemed to be a pattern in how he was wasting these pitches. And I thought maybe that would show up if he had actually been doing this over the course of years and who knows how many pitches.

And it does appear to. And so I did some baseball savanting. And I looked up low waste pitches. So there's the waste zone as MLB defines it, which is beyond the chase zone. It's like, unless you're Andy Pahas, I guess, you wouldn't. even offer at that. It's such a waste. You couldn't even convince someone to swing. And I isolated three specific subsets of that zone, the low ones, where he seemed to be directing all these pitches. And I tried to isolate for these specific situations as best I could on

Sivan. First pitch of the inning, essentially, you know, O count, no out, nobody on base. And I compared his rate of spiking these pitches, of throwing them in these super low waste zones in these situations on OO counts and after OO counts. And then I compared that to the leagues as a whole. And again, it's entirely possible, I guess, that he took 2024 off. But all we know is that this activity spans May of 23 through just about up until he was caught and suspended. So I just looked from May of 23 through July of 25, and his percentage of spiked pitches on OO counts in those situations, 8.1 percent, I will try not to read too many numbers, but 8.1 percent on OO counts, after OO counts, 3.9 percent, which might sound somewhat curious because he's spiking pitches half as often after the first pitch of the plate appearance. then on the first pitch of the plate appearance and that's kind of counterintuitive

because often that first pitch especially the first pitch of an outing that's kind of a get me over maybe it's not an auto strike exactly but you know maybe you're throwing a fastball and you're just trying to surprise someone and it's later in the count when maybe you're trying to induce a strikeout

you're ahead in the count you're trying to get the hitter not only Andy Pah has to expand the zone and maybe you're throwing more breaking balls and maybe that gets away from you a little more often So I looked at the pattern for the league as a whole, and over that same span, the league spike pitches 2.2% of the time on OO counts, and thereafter, 5.1% of the time. So the league is more than doubling its rate of spiked pitches going from OO to after OO, and Class A is more than having it. So he is inverting the typical pattern there. and I thought, okay, is this such a small sample that maybe that could have just happened by chance

and maybe someone else would have a higher rate of spike pitches? Nope. If I didn't even set the minimum right where Class A's pitch threshold was, I went lower to allow for possible more extreme results. And no, he's number one, that 8.1% spiked pitch rate on OO counts over that same span, number one in the league. And, you know, I'm talking hundreds of qualifying pitchers who threw enough pitches to show up there. And he was number one. And that's not all. It gets worse for him because, of course, he's a control artist.

And so it's one thing to spike a lot of pitches on the first pitch of a plate appearance if you just kind of do that regularly. You know, like Josiah Gray showed up fairly high on one leader board, for instance. Well, he just walked a lot of guys. You know, he doesn't have the best control. but Class A does. He doesn't really walk anyone. And so I then compared the ratio of the spiked pitch percentage on OO pitches and after OO pitches, just comparing the same pitchers to themselves. And Class A had a ratio of more than two, and no one else was even in that stratosphere.

No one was in that neighborhood. In fact, only 10 of the 251 qualifying pitchers had even a positive race. ratio. That is, they spiked more pitches later in those plate appearances. Only 10 of them had so much as an even ratio. And Luis Ortiz showed up on that list, by the way, too. But Class A was number one by a mile, like 2.08, the next highest guy was 1.46. I mean, he was an absolute outlier. And that, to me, sort of cemented this, because I don't think you can say it's a small simple thing, really. And after I published this, I'm kicking myself for not thinking about this, but then again, this is why I like getting feedback from readers and listeners, because

sometimes they make me think of things that I hadn't thought of. And I got this great email from reader Simon Kim, who said, just read the gambling piece on Class A and Ortiz and was wondering if you considered approaching the data from another way, how does Class A's in the dirt on OO rate change from before he supposedly started betting versus after? While it makes sense to compare him to the rest of the league, and he's such an outlier that it's at the very least extremely suspicious. I think comparing him to his past self would show that change in even starker contrast. It's highly unlikely, but maybe there's a chance. He's just a weird anomaly who happens to throw more dirt balls early rather than late. But if he wasn't doing that before

this betting scheme, that would look incredibly suspicious. And I looked it up. Same parameters. I looked 2021 to 2022, so the two full seasons prior to this scheme seemingly starting, and nothing. He had a completely normal split in those seasons. He spiked 1.4% of his pitches on OO counts, 4.4% after, so very much like the rest of the league, spiking more later in the plate appearance. And then, as soon as the betting started, reversed, inverted, and because, became very curious and suspicious and, in my mind, pretty suggestive. So it doesn't prove anything, obviously, but provides further corroboration. And, you know, I included postseason in there, and we don't know for sure that I should have.

It doesn't specify. But I will say that having gone through his postseason pitches as I was doing that, there was one that really looked like all the others that were flagged. here, and it was his first pitch of the ALCS in 2024, and it was kind of the ideal scenario because the Guardians were up seven to nothing, and it was his first pitch of the outing. He throws a 93-mile-per-hour slider so low that Bo Nailer, who was catching, basically fell over trying to glove it, and it fit to a T, the profile and the appearance of all. of these other pitches identified in the indictment, could be a coincidence, but certainly suggestive. And, you know, obviously, he had a horrendous postseason in 2024, but it wasn't so much that he

was wild. It was that he was given up dingers. He infamously gave up, yeah, three homers, which was more than he had allowed that entire regular season, right? And the Guardian's bullpen had a net negative WPA in that postseason after having the best WPA on record for a bullpen during the regular season, and Class A was a lot of that. So I'm not suggesting that was intentional. I'm just highlighting this one particular pitch because I think that one really stood out. But that just kind of reinforced for me that maybe this was happening during 2024, too, because that pitch seemed to fit the description. You mean, you don't think that my suggestion that they got spooked by the Ipe stuff.

I hadn't bought of it. I mean, it definitely, it makes some sense, I think. It makes some sense. I do want to make clear that it is speculation on my part. A theory, a wild, a wild notion. Yep. So, like, there's the competitive integrity piece of this, and there's, like, what you'd be in so dumb for a piece of this.

And, again, like, there might be stuff. going on here. Maybe they have other deaths that we don't know about. Maybe there was some threat. We don't know. But we should entertain the possibility that they're just being doofy. We don't think it's a big deal. I think that they're helping out a buddy who's not making a bunch of money like they are relative to, you know, they're better one and two. And this is, this isn't anything, right? Nothing. This is the first pitch of an AP. What is that even? And this isn't going to affect the outcome of a game. But so there's all of those things.

And then I just wonder, like, how do you feel if you're a member of the Cleveland Guardians, you know? Like, how do you feel if you're on that team? What do their catchers think? Did they have any suspicions? Right. You know, and I want to be careful to not imply that, like, I think they should have. Because I don't think, I don't know that I think that, you know.

guys spike balls that happens to your point maybe to a surprising degree with class A but it does happen right you know so much of our understanding of the of sport and part of its power both as participants in it and then as as sort of by standards who feel a close connection right who make meaning off of the the sporting endeavors of others but in a way that's very real is is like the the the obvious and potentially transformative power of pulling in the same direction, right? We're all pulling in the same direction. Maybe it doesn't work out. Maybe we lose in the playoffs. Maybe we don't get there at all, right? Maybe we have a lost season. But we're engaged in this thing together, right? And we as fans get to experience the satisfaction of coming together around this group of folks pulling in the same direction. And so there's like the competitive integrity. piece of it, but I do think that like stuff like this undermines, you know, in a much more sort of visceral way, one of the real joys and pillars of the activity itself, right? Which is

like the coming together with other people for common purpose. I really feel for those guys today, you know, and I feel for Guardians fans. You, you had a, you had a really fundamental trust violated. And that, that's a hard thing. And so I, you know, I hope that that isn't, I hope that that piece of it doesn't get lost and that like part of why we want to maintain our understanding of this as being like a real contest that everyone is trying their very best to win is so that that piece of it can be maintained for people because I think that's really great and powerful and having it undermined really sucks and for you know and for so little now that there's like an amount of money that would make it okay, but it would at least make it like a more

legible to me, right? Yes, yes. You know, if you're in a position where you can make, you can double your earnings, you can, you can make a million dollars, okay, like, I still think it's dumb over the course of a career if you're, you know, really good pro athlete, even if you're bound to the vayeries and unfairness of an arbitration system and all of this, you know, nonsense, you're going to make so much more. But it would be like, you know, it's a big number. It's a round. It's a big round number. Whereas like five grand, you know, that's tidly wings. That's like the kind of money that, you know, again, I apologize to the degenerate gamblers in our listenership. But like that's, that's like degenerate gamble gambler normal Joe money, you know? Like, you're risking all. for that, that seems ridiculous, even if it accumulates by magnitude, much like snow.

Or, you know, maybe there is some additional, very scary thing going on here. We do have to allow for that possibility, but it just seems like such a, it's, you shouldn't let me use the word tidly winks. I shouldn't be trusted with that word, tidly winks. And that's a funny word. Why this is so pernicious, because if Class A and Ortiz were tempted by these amounts for whatever reason, then imagine how that might appeal to a minor leaguer or to an amateur athlete. Or an umpire.

Or an umpire, of course, yeah. And there have been all sorts of instances of spot fixing, which is one term for it. In other sports, and cricket and tennis, you know, it's not uncommon in soccer. It's happened. And the lower the level, the more tempting it is, obviously, and maybe the easier to detect it is, if there's suddenly a huge spike. in betting activity, but the greater the temptation. And I do think that this really is serious, even if we can't point to a specific instance of this allegedly happening and say, that changed the outcome of that game, and therefore it changed the outcome of the pennant race, and it changed the outcome of the season,

it's hard to connect those dots. And if you look at the individual instances that are flagged in the indictment, you can't really say this is why the guardians lost that game in a lot of cases. Yeah, Class A. Sometimes they won the games, right? Yes. Oh, yes. Sometimes they won the game.

Sometimes Class A, the first batter reached, and then he stranded him. Sometimes he retired that first batter. Sometimes, you know, the Guardians had a lead, and they just won anyway, or they were trailing and they lost anyway. And in the Ortiz cases, runs scored, and you could blame the pitch fixing for that. But then again, additional runs scored later in those games and the Guardians got shut out in both of them. So it's hard to have the counterfactual. But you also never know because any pitch that is thrown and it's an intentional ball and you might have had a strike instead, who knows over the course of that plate appearance, that outing, that season, the wear and tear, the extra strain.

Right. Are you available any less than you would have been otherwise? Does the eventual score change if, you know, the margin is closer? And so your manager makes a different set of decisions around pinch hitting or who they bring in, who else they bring in from the bullpen. Yeah, it's the butterfly effect in action. And that's why I think this is really arguably more serious. And I think I might believe more serious than any betting scandal in baseball over the past century. And there have been a few of them for sure.

Right. But, you know, Pete Rose, Tukapita Marcano, I still enjoy saying that name. That's a great. I had a chance to say it more often. That's great. I mean, unfortunately, I think you're going to continue to get chances to say it in a context related to his being banned. Yeah. But, you know, him and the other players who were implicated with betting on baseball or Pat Hoberg, for that matter.

All of these cases, no one was ever implicated. No one, there was never documented, substantiated activity where a player actually changed something they were doing in a game, just tanked a pitch or a play or a game or tried to throw anything as, I'm not naive, I'm not saying it never happened. I'm just saying we're not aware that it happened. And, you know, maybe if this stuff was pervasive all this time and now it's actually coming to light, who knows, maybe ignorance is bliss. Maybe we were better off not knowing if we can't completely fix it. Well, now we're just more aware that it's a problem. And is that actually better? I'd like to think that it's better if we could actually root it out.

But the point is like this really crosses a bright line. And all of that betting on baseball, that's problematic for sure. But if you can't connect the dots and say this player actually did something against their team's own interests because of a bet, well, that's meaningfully different. I think. And no, it's not throwing a world series exactly what was happening here, but it's a difference of degree, not kind. Like, once you cross that line of I'm actually not going to try on this pitch, that's huge. Like, there's no coming back from that in terms of your career when that comes to light. And that's why I was thinking about Shulis Joe and the Black

Sox, and I started my article that way because Shulis Joe Jackson, like part of the cult and the myth of him is that he couldn't possibly have been throwing that World Series because he played so well because, you know, he's a top 10 position player in baseball in 1919, and then he tears it up in the World Series on the surface. No one had a higher WRC Plus. No one had a better WPA or championship when probably added among hitters. And so it would seem that what he claimed, I tried to win all the time, seems to be backed up by the stats. But then if you look into it a little deeper and you do the splits,

the game is that the White Sox were throwing versus the games they were playing on the level. Oh, curious. He had a negative win probability added in the games that they were not trying to win and the only runs he drove in in those games came late in the last game when the White Sox were down by several runs

and there were suspicious plays in the field. So suddenly it actually starts to look pretty suggestive and now we have better data and more sensitive data where we can actually look at individual pitches and their speeds and their locations and crunch these numbers and look it all up on baseball savant in a way that you couldn't in 1919 to study the effort level of the Black Sox. And so I guess the positive would be that it's easier to identify this, maybe, even though

it didn't get identified in Class A's case. And, you know, the method that I used to sort of illustrate these suspicious data points about Class A, you could use that just to monitor all players, you know, almost in the way that they monitored spin rates when they're trying to crack down on the sticky stuff. Or it really, it kind of reminded me of once we found out about the banging scheme and then you go back and look and, oh, wow, I can hear the trash can. And how did I not notice this before? Or, you know, I did an article where I looked back and saw that even before the Astros scheme

came to light, teams were taking longer between pitchers. when they were playing the Astros than when they were playing everyone else because they kept cycling through their signs because they had their suspicions. Well, all that stuff was out there, but until it was actually reported, people mostly didn't know and the public didn't know. And so now we can look back and, oh, actually, there are seemingly some signatures here. There's some signal, not just noise. And so, you know, we'll see how Class A and Ortiz handle this. Do they do the shoeless Joe where he did initially? cop to having taken $5,000 of a promised 20, even though he said that he did not actually

throw games when he was testifying before the grand jury, but then the judge who presided over that later testified that actually before he was talking to the grand jury, he did confess that he was not trying his hardest, but that no one could tell because he kind of hid it better. And then the rest of his life, he was constantly changing his story and exaggerating and sugarcoating and whitewashing and everything. And who knows how. Class A and Ortiz will handle this ultimately, but I was struck by that, too, because Shouis Joe took $5,000 and so did Luis Ortiz, and so did Class A on June 15th or whenever it was. And the buying power of $5,000, much better in 1919 than in 2025.

So Shouis Joe, I guess it was a bigger ask to throw a World Series than to throw a pitch. But still, maybe he got a better deal. yeah yeah how about that all right well that was a lot of ground to cover and uh i guess i'm glad we did because this uh it really is a pretty momentous story i think in a lot of ways and uh just a lot of implications here and hopefully this sort of thing you know can be a cautionary tale and maybe MLB is already learning some lessons and hopefully that's not just uh you know a fig leaf We're kind of, oh, we'll throw them a bone and we'll get them off our backs, and then we'll just go back to doing what we were doing before. Hopefully, that's a meaningful recognition that there is a real threat here to MLB, to sports in general, to this entire endeavor, because you do have to believe that it's on the level.

I mean, people watch pro wrestling, not you, I know, but a lot of people, me sometimes. So you can, you know, it can all be fake and maybe it could still be entertaining. it would not appeal to me in nearly the same way. So I do not want to be thinking about these things. I don't even want it to be in the back of my head as I am watching baseball. And hopefully it won't be forever. Yeah, but could I interest you in a payment for a horse? Payment for a horse.

It sounds, I mean, it is a euphemism. Yes. But it sounds like it's already a saying, you know? It's like, yeah, no, it sounds like, you know, Like, when you imagine, like, mobsters in a movie trying to conceal the fact that they are talking about cocaine, right? They're talking about cocaine. They know they're being monitored by the FBI. And so they're like, this is payment for a horse.

How many horses? We need 10 kilos of horses. And you're like, I think we've cracked your code, sir. Mm-hmm. You know? Payment for a horse. But again, I just, I need people to remember how good the follow-up line is to that. Okay, perfect.

Perfect. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it reminds me of the euphemism when people poop, but they don't want to say that. I got to go see a man about a horse. See a man about a horse. Yeah, drop the kids off at the pool, you know, whatever. Drop the kids, wait a minute, drop the kids off at the pool. What is that? I'm pretty sure I heard that one.

It's the same thing. Drop the kids off at the pool. Okay, first of all, if that is a euphemism. for pooping that's horrifying drop the kids off at the pool that makes it sound like you're pooping in a pool ben that makes it sound like you're about to go poop in the pool yeah it's not not a saying that i use but i have heard it i mean i think you made it up i think you invented it out of whole class i think it's up there but uh the payment for a horse that may be a new coinage but uh boy what an adventure this indictment was i did not expect that we

would be reading and critiquing and dissecting so many federal grand jury indictments. We, I am just a girl sitting on her couch watching the Seahawks kick the crap out of the Cardinals reading a federal indictment. It's a normal Sunday for Mike. Yep. And, you know, we've made the point so many times that I don't want to make it again and belabor it again about how it's not hypocritical in the way that people often allege for MLB to have different standards for fans and for play. who can directly affect the proceedings and so to ban a player for betting on baseball and to also market betting on baseball to fans not inconsistent in my mind

but also I think not entirely divorced I think there is some culpability there there is some tough to quantify effect and this stuff might be pervasive whether or not MLB had jumped in as wholeheartedly as it has and other league perhaps to an even greater extent, but it has to have some effect, just the constant inundation in this messaging, just to normalize the idea, just to prey on people who are prone

to being susceptible to problem gambling. If you're a player, okay, yes, you may know that different rules apply to you intellectually, but you're still seeing the signs. You're still hearing the ads. That's still washing over you the way that it's washing over. all of us. And maybe that quiets that voice in the back of your head that says, no, this is not something I can do. Do not dare go there. Or it just, it overcomes the better angels of your nature. And you, you throw caution to the winds and you just say, yeah, everyone's doing it and the league's marketing it. That's not necessarily fully on the league if someone leaps to that conclusion. Because again, Rule 21, it's posted everywhere. It's the cardinal rule.

they've been quite clear about that, but still, I could see how just the inescapability of this kind of messaging on baseball broadcasts and all sports broadcasts and everywhere, frankly, that has to have an effect just by triggering that latent potential in someone to possibly act in this way. And I'm not saying in this particular case, I have no idea, but all told, It has to have that effect. It has to increase the odds of this thing becoming more common. I think that we got a much more potentially benign example in this charging document. I mean, it wasn't a benign application, to be clear, but a much more benign example of the differences in the rules for players versus the general public. They don't care if you're on your phone at the game. They care if a manual class A is on his phone, right?

We have a whole rule about the. that we have a rule about that because of of behavior that wasn't benign you know it wasn't benign for a different reason than it was in this case but like you can't be you can't be on your phone even if what you want to do is make an instagram model feel good about herself on a given day you still shouldn't be on you still can't be on your phone right even if you've gone to see a man about a horse and you need something else to do while you're doing that can't be like it can't be like in Thyrshire. Kids off at school. I don't know. You can take your iPad in there and scout opposing pitchers if you want, but it can't be connected to the internet. Right. It can't be on

the phone. So there are different standards and rules for professional athletes and those affiliated with the clubs than there are for the rest of us. I do think that, you know, there is a moral squishiness that you introduced around the concept of gambling just as a whole when you make it this central to the sporting experience. But I don't want to grant the premise that the average big leaker or minor leaker or umpire or club official is altered by this kind of advertising such that it removes culpability from them. And I'm not saying that's exactly what you're doing here.

But I think you kind of got to prove it a little bit. with an individual guy that it blurred the lines for him. Yeah, yeah, because it would be letting them off the hook to say, oh, this creates a permission structure. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. It definitely does not. They are not permitted to do this.

But I can still see how it might make it more likely to happen. I guess. I have sympathy. It's a limited amount of sympathy, mind you, but I have some sympathy for the guy who gets jammed up because he inadvertently. bets on baseball because it's one of like 10 legs of a parlay. And again, you have a responsibility as a big leaguer, as a professional baseball player to ensure that it doesn't happen. But like, the union has brought this up as a concern, right? That these parlayers are so complicated,

it's so easy to click through them that you might end up with a guy who genuinely makes a mistake and ends up, you know, running a foul of the rule. Maybe not to the degree that it merits a lifetime ban, but running a foul of the rule. right? I have some limited sympathy for that, although don't bet parley's. Just don't do it. Just don't, just never, never do it. If you don't do it, even one time, you can never make that mistake. So just don't ever do it, right? It's, they're trying to take your money from you, right? They're always trying to do that. They're especially trying to do that. And doing it more efficiently than usual. Right. But I have some limited amount of sympathy for a guy getting jammed up that way. And I think that there have been some dudes where that has been the case. But this, is just, you got your phone and a ticket to the family section. This is, you know, this is above and beyond anything like that. And in a way, I don't know that this is worse. It's hard even to compare.

But on some level, I almost respect cheating to win more than this. Right. Like Class A taken steroids or someone stealing signs or something. That's also bad. But at least they are trying to. improve their team's fortunes? Like maybe it's selfish too. Maybe they're trying to literally juice their own stats and salary.

But at least you could spin it as I'm so competitive. I want to win so badly that I did this, that I crossed the line. Whereas this is the opposite of that. And that stinks because, gosh, we ended last week, I think, talking about how baseball just seemed to be in a really good place. And I'm not saying this undoes all of that. But MLB was really riding high coming off of that postseason and that World Series and the bananas ratings and just all the positive signs about younger people being interested in the game and just it being a more compelling product and everything. And, you know, other sports having their issues also with betting scandals. And for a moment there, it seemed like, oh, not all as well with baseball, but more as, you know, more is.

is well than usual. And the vibes are good. And this definitely disrupted the good vibes, in short order, I would say. It's a very serious bit of business with some funny moments in it. You know, what they did today is a good first step to them addressing, like, I think the greatest point of vulnerability, the most obvious point of vulnerability. But I hope that they continue to go further, they should just ban these bets entirely. And I hope that we continue to see them take good proactive action on it because the way that people talk about the MBA now is really different than it was two months ago, you know? And that's, that's not good. You don't want people talking about the league, the way that they're talking about the NBA. So, yeah. And if

reliever of the year, 0.61 ERA, third in the Cy Young voting, named on almost half of ALMVP ballots, Manuel Class A, backbone of maybe the best bullpen ever. If he could be doing this, then in theory anyone could. Last thing, I wanted to ask you about this, or maybe we can just throw it out to people for their suggestions, because I don't know that I even have a great answer, and it's kind of subjective. But all of this talk about the influence of this advertising made we remember an email we got from long-time Patreon supporter and former Patreon guest Peter Bonnie who said, I have a rant to get off my chest because this is the only sports-related media outpost that has resisted the pole of gambling. Here's my rant.

I have a soon-to-be five-year-old son, and I refuse to allow him to see baseball on television because of the gambling ads. We rarely have the television on it all while he's awake, but I'd like to sit down with him to watch a daytime baseball game or as much of a game as his attention span will allow, just to introduce him to the sport. But I won't expose him to gambling advertising. I don't want him to hear about it. I don't want him to think it's fun. And I don't want him to grow up associating sports entertainment with wagering money. I'm probably in the minority on this, but it's not good for the long-term health of the sport that any parent at all is considering MLB to be inappropriate content for a child because of the gambling ads, let alone a parent who loves baseball and would

like to pass on a love of baseball to their child. What are we all supposed to do about this? How can we as fans push back against the gambling tide who at MLB needs to hear that there are fans who won't let their kids watch games because the gambling ads? Will it even make any difference? And I don't know that one person complaining about it would because they make a lot of money from this stuff as do all the leagues. And they're probably willing to lose some individuals' business for what they would see

as the greater good, which is the greater revenue. And, you know, I guess this is something that I'll have to wrestle with. I also have a four-year-old, four-year-old girl. Maybe that's why this has not really weighed on me or has not crossed my mind. As you said. The boys are not all right. The boys are. There is a gender split here, obviously.

It is profound. That's part of why this has not really been on my mind. And I guess I'm just generally when it comes to parenting at least. so far, sort of laissez-faire when it comes to this stuff, I guess. And I don't know whether that's right or wrong. No one knows what they're doing when it comes to parenting. We're just hoping we don't screw them up, essentially. But I have been to this point fairly permissive, you know, when it comes to, like, language or, you know, seeing certain kind of media.

Because I, partly I just feel like it's futile, you know? I mean, it's not like, you know, me just, like, swearing like a sailor left and right. So Ceylon's hurt it all, right? But no, I just, I assume that she will be exposed to all these things. And, you know, maybe you can somewhat shelter a kid from that when they're four or five, but the clock is ticking on that, right? And pretty soon it's going to be out of your control. And that's not to say, just throw in the towel, whatever.

But I do kind of feel like when it comes to that stuff, you know, they're going to get exposed to it. And maybe even to not make it seem taboo just to be kind of. be kind of nonchalant about it. Like, if I were watching a game with phone, which I have, and so I guess maybe she's seen gambling stuff, I am so far from the target market that I almost, I don't even notice it anymore, really. I mean, maybe on some subliminal level, though it's clearly not working on me when it comes to getting me to part with my money, but it's in one ear or eye and out the other. Like, it's just part of the fabric, but I don't even dwell on it anymore because I'm so utterly

uninterested in it and it's so not for me that I just immediately tune it out essentially and you know you can't count on that with a kid with a young impressionable mind of course but I guess I would default to just not surrendering grounds basically like if you love baseball and you think baseball is a great and precious thing and I do and you want to pass that love on in a non-heavy handed I'm going to impose my interest on you, but here's something that has enriched my life, and I hope it will enrich yours. I think there are still ways to do that, and I think it's still worth doing. And, you know, maybe the question comes up. What's this betting stuff? And maybe you give your true reaction to it, which is that you couldn't care less. And maybe that rubs off on your kid.

Who knows? Maybe that's the best way to inoculate them against it is to show how utterly bored by it you are. Right. And unless they're in the rebellious, phase where they want to do the opposite of whatever you tell them to do, then maybe they will just kind of go along with that and you will sort of instill that in them potentially. Or, you know, depending on the age, maybe you actually do sort of have a frank conversation about, here's what people like about this, here's why it's bad in many ways, you know, maybe there's a way to do it responsibly, but exercise caution, like whatever you would say when you're introducing your kid to drugs or drinks or cigarettes or whatever it is,

you know, at some point down the road, that's going to come up. So I guess that would be my policy as opposed to just sort of seeding that territory. Because it's like, you know, don't let the bastards win, basically. It's like if you don't like what they're doing to the game, maybe one way you try to take it back. I mean, yeah, you could vote with your eyeballs and your dollars and just not watch and not consume the sport anymore. but then you're really surrendering and sacrificing something that's precious to you and potentially to your kid. And we get all kinds of questions about that. Like, I can't root for this team anymore because of the owner or because of the players' beliefs or behavior.

And you always say, like, if you need to take a break, by all means, take a break, you know? Maybe it's a brief break. Maybe it's a permanent break. Maybe you and baseball are just not the best fit for each other anymore. Or maybe you'll find your way back to it at some point. But I always just feel if there's a way to retain your hold, you know, baseball's for you. It's for us. It's not for whoever is currently staining it in your eyes.

So I would just, I would try to stick it out if I could, I guess. But, you know, to each their own. I know that everyone is really clamoring for my parenting advice. I am mindful that the advertising is relentless. And I think, you know, I do wonder, and I feel bad saying this because there are people we know who I think are good smart folks and are trying to do good stuff who, you know, they read gambling ads on their podcast, right? They're telling you about draft kings and parleyes and what have you. And I do wonder if we'll look back on this era and view it as akin to, you know, being in an ad for cigarettes, you know, if the addictive. power is just going to be viewed the same way.

And I think gambling ads should be regulated the way that the ads for cigarettes have been. And so, you know, I don't want to say that the advertising piece of it doesn't matter because they're paying Jamie Fox for a reason, right? I do think that if it were me, I would rather have a conversation about it and to your point not sort of seed the ground and have it be an area where I just actively parent. and that sounds judgmental to your approach which I don't mean it to but you know it does strike me

as a place where you know some active parenting around the question would go a long way and the good news is that I do think that it is harder it's like harder to sneak you know because the way that your kid would gamble is on a phone that presumably you

are paying for you know if your kid decides that they're going to like get on a bus and go to a casino to place a bet honestly your kids should get to do that sorry um that's ingenuity right that's doing the work that i think prevents yeah kids problem gambling for a lot of people um but you know it isn't like smoking a cigarette behind the portable at school or like going and drinking at a public park on the weekend with their friends like i i do think that your ability to intervene successfully on that

stuff is on on sports betting is is pretty profound and i don't think that mere exposure is enough to like a problem gambler make and again we should just say we hate this shit like we hate those stuff and so i would just assume it not be there at all you know it's nice to watch it was funny i was reflecting on this um when it looked like we were going to get a a dodgers mariners world series ever so briefly, just in this brief little moment, I thought to myself, well, we'll still get ad reads on the national broadcast, but you're not going to see the same kind of advertising

in ballpark that you do for other sports, because California and Washington are both states where you don't have legalized sports betting, like through draft kings. But you still get those ads. You just get them differently, right? Instead of getting an ad for, you know, bet MGM or bet three, you know, whatever, like the, the Rogers Center has all kinds of, like, bet really big in T-Mobile Park. You get, like, the muckle shoot casino ads, right?

Or you get, you know, the EQC tracer, the Emerald Queen Casino Tracer, because it's all tribal casinos in Washington, and I believe it's the same in California. But I was like, but you were not going to see a drag kings ad. I mean, you probably will get it at a Drive King's ad read on the broadcast, but you're not going to get it in ballpark. So it's just like a funny, all of that to say, you should parent your kid how what you think is appropriate. I tend to think that, like, parents, especially for very young children, can really help sort of mold and smooth the way. And, you know, first of all, a little kid's probably not actually cognizant of that stuff. Yeah. But at an age-appropriate juncture, I think, unfortunately, you're going to have to have a conversation with your kid about sports betting anyway, because it's going to come down younger and younger and younger.

Like, we're already seeing these books trying to be present on college campuses. So I think having a conversation about it where you get to really be honest about the pitfalls so that the person they're hearing about it from first isn't Jamie Fox is valid. label. All right. I just had a second to reread and digest that MLB press release. The bit about proactively creating new safeguards to limit pitch level markets is pretty rich. I would say this is the opposite of proactive. It's very reactive, but better react than not. In my piece, I proposed a nickname for Class A and Ortiz. If the 1919 White Sox were the Black Sox, I suggested, then maybe these Guardians could be the Blaggards. See, it just doesn't work. It works in print because instead of Black Sox, it's Black Guards? Get it? Guards? Guardians? But it's pronounced

Blaggard, so it just doesn't scan. Dictionary.com definition, a man who behaves in a dishonorable or contemptible way. Well, that fits. I got a text from Jason Benetti, brag, after my piece was published, just saying, Blaggards, but as I told him, I doubt the nickname we'll catch on. Maybe they don't deserve a nickname anyway. It's only two players, so I wouldn't want to tar the whole team with the same brush. You can support effectively wild on Patreon. Help us stay ad-free and thus sports betting ad-free by signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us remain solely listener-supported and get yourself access to some perks. The following five listeners have already done so.

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