The Josh Innes Show - Guardindians Gambling Scandal

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

I'm intrigued by the Cleveland players still being investigated for allegedly betting on their own games. Is pitcher the easiest position to rig a sports contest? Why would these guys risk it all to do this? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ooh, it looks like we've got more gambling accusations and investigations in Major League Baseball. I feel like baseball would be the easiest sport to attempt to get away with betting on yourself or betting against yourself and prop bets. Because I'm assuming that's what it would be. Like, it'd be almost impossible for you to control the over, under, or the money line, like unless you're the starting pitcher. But if you were taking a prop bet, I think you'd have a really good opportunity to discreetly do something terrible. Now, you could, I mean, I think one of the ones we saw was one of the dudes from the Indians, whatever that, whoever he was, was like throwing wild pitches as like the first pitch of an inning or something. That was part of the accusation. But now we've got more Guard Indian talk.

So the Guard Indians, shock MLB gambling investigation gives team no choice but to push on. So, boy, I'm interested in this. Is this more? Do we have more dudes? Holy cow, this is exciting. And we will play a couple of commercials and we'll get right into it. All right, so they no longer have lockers in the Cleveland Guard Indians Clubhouse. There are no jerseys or equipment to be found.

There's no sign they even played for the Guard Indians. Their names are spoken only when brought up by outsiders and then only in a whisper. It's as if the Guard Indians closer, Emmanuel Classe, and starter Luis Ortiz, never existed vanishing into the night. Quote, this definitely is a huge loss to the team, said Cade Smith, who's the team's new closer. They're gone. We don't know if they're coming back, but we have no choice but to forget about it and move on. We've got no choice. MLB's investigation has been underway since July, so this is more kind of in-depth on the same investigation. Okay. Into suspicious betting activity on games that Class A and Ortiz appeared. They are on paid administrative leave

until August 31st. Yet, considering the evidence, MLB and the players union are expected to extend their leave through the end of the regular season and into the winter. The pain Stakingly slow process is necessary, considering livelihoods are at stake. If Clase and Ortiz are guilty of betting on baseball or if they intentionally influence prop bets, they are done for life. Oh, sure, they could pitch in Mexico, maybe Japan or Korea too, but they would never, ever be able to put on another MLB uniform. Boy, this is intriguing, because Claese is a pretty big deal.

Like, the guy is a solid player, and if he did, in fact, bet on baseball, prop bets would be the angle that they have talked about with this guy. What a way to throw away your career. That's the part that doesn't make any sense to me. And that's why, like, in a way, I'd kind of find it hard to believe that a dude would do this, but maybe dudes are morons. But that's the investigation. They're investigating whether or not he influenced prop bets if these two dudes did.

And the person that would have the easiest opportunity to influence betting would be the pitcher. Like, you're probably not going to take over-unders. You're probably not going to mess with the spread or anything like that. but you can control yourself more so than anyone can. You cannot guarantee you get a hit. You can take every right approach and you can scout the pitcher for days in advance

and you can watch all the tape on the guy you want, but you cannot guarantee a hit. You can hit it 110 miles per hour off the bat and it's lined right to the first basement, and it doesn't matter. You can control where the ball goes if you're the pitcher. That's why I don't think you're ever going to see position players that are going to bet because it wouldn't be worth the risk

because you cannot guarantee victory. You can guarantee yourself a victory if you handle prop bets. Now, again, maybe I'm giving the guy the benefit of the doubt here. But, like, let's say one of these guys did this. Let's say that they were betting on prop bets. The only thing I could see is a scenario where, like, you're trying to help your buddies out, and your buddies are like, listen, I need to make a few bucks, I'm broke.

Could the first pitch of the, you know, whatever inning be a wild pitch or a ball? because I'm going to take the first pitch of the third inning to be a ball, and I'm going to put a million dollars on it. Then there would obviously be, like, weird activity that they would be looking at, and then they'd say, well, why the hell did someone bet a million dollars on something as random as the first pitch of the third inning being a ball? And then it would obviously kind of circle back into why is this happening, and then you would be a person of interest in that.

So I don't know. It's strange. Carlos Santana says, I've talked to them a little bit. I don't really know what to say. I hope they'll be okay. but I don't know. I don't know what happened. None of us do. It was Ortiz who first went on disciplinary leave July 3rd, while MLB opened a gambling investigation, and three weeks later, Claucet's name, Surface 2.

Just like that, they were gone, never having a chance to say goodbye and not knowing if they'll ever see their former teammates again. For what it's worth, they've gone to hell since those guys left the team, too. They've done very poor since then. Let's see. Give me some of the teammates. details. The guardians won't come out and say it publicly, knowing that Clause and Ortiz are innocent until proven guilty, but considering that MLB's investigation into Shohei Otani potential ties with the legal bookie was cleared in a matter of days, it's rather

worrisome that the investigation is still ongoing with no immediate resolution. I'd like some more details in this story, please, but I think that's kind of what you're looking at here. I'm intrigued by this situation, like the idea that. The idea that somebody would risk everything in Major League Baseball to bet on prop bets. But again, if you're a pitcher, I could argue out of every position in sports, other than say golf where you are in total control of what you do, you can control whether or not, for the most part, you're going to hit a fairway. You're going to control whether or not you birdie or par.

You can guarantee yourself a bogey. If you need to get a bogey on a hole, you can get a bogey on a hole. Other than a golfer, who has more control over? the outcome of a prop bet than a pitcher. A quarterback, maybe? Yeah, sure, a quarterback can overthrow a couple of guys, but there are a lot of variables in there. You could get sacked in a situation.

Like in baseball, you can throw three straight balls to the backstop. Now, it'd be kind of suspicious if you're a rock star closer who throws three balls to the backstop, but it's possible. And you can control that. You can't control things if you're a hitter. You can't control things if you're a running back. You can't control, you know, like we see it in basketball. Basketball, I guess you could to a degree because you can control whether you shoot.

What if like your made baskets bed is over seven and a half made baskets in a game or over 20 and a half points or whatever it is? You can control whether or not you shoot the basketball. Now, it'd be suspicious if Kevin Durant takes two shots. But like we've seen all-star dudes, rock stars, legendary dudes, just decide to shoot six shots James Hardin in big games, James Hardin. We've seen that before. We've seen dudes completely disappear in clutch. situations. So it would not be totally unrealistic. It would be suspicious, but I don't know how much attention that would draw off a dude only attempted seven shots or a dude only scored seven points

when his overrunners 25 and a half. But you could do that. But I think the pitcher would be the person that it would be the least suspicious, right? Like, it is possible that you throw a wild pitch randomly at one point. The key in this, and we talk about this all the time when we talk about guys who could be trying to bet on themselves or have someone in their family bet on them. You cannot be greedy. You have to make smaller bets. The problem is you probably see people with lots of cash making these bets. That's what draws attention.

That's what's a red flag. The Vegas people, the sportsbook app people, do not want to lose large sums of money. So what they don't want to do, and that's why it's going to draw attention to you, because once you've put like, you know, 10 grand, 15 grand, 20 grand, a lot of people aren't making bets that size. Most of these people, if I had to guess, that are on Fanduil, Draft Kings, wherever, most of these people are doing 10 bucks, 15 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks. Like, they're not doing like large $5,000 bets, $10,000 bets, you know, $20,000 bets.

It happens, but it's very rare, okay? It's not as common as someone who just throws in 20 bucks. Now, to only bet 20 bucks doesn't make it worth your while to throw a random wild pitch either. So, like, there has to be a sum of money that would, you know, blow somebody skirt up. So, like, it was probably the reason there was attention brought to this is probably that someone bet a large sum of money on something as random as, like, the first pitch of an inning being a ball or something like that. And that is going to instantly generate a red flag because Fandle's going to say, fuck you. you know like go fuck yourself on that we're not going to sit back and and lose 10 grand or 15 grand or 100 grand or whatever it is on something as random as the first pitch of an inning being

a ball I mean that is truly the ultimate chance to bet that the first pitch of the end and I think I read somewhere that that was one of those is like that type of thing like and I've watched videos where people say oh this must be where home boy was you know on the take and he's throwing wild pitches and bouncing pitches in the dirt so Vegas doesn't want to lose in that way like Vegas never wants to lose and it's one thing if you know a guy beat you for a hundred bucks 50 bucks whatever and it's you know on a point spread like oh I took the over you know 48 and a half in the Chiefs Dolphins game

and the overhit and I lost 50 bucks whatever it is what it is will eventually beat you and get your money back 10 times so we're not worried but if somebody bets something as random as a pitching prop bet you know like even like total number of strikeouts you're not in control of how many people you strike out. So that wouldn't be the type of bet. Like, I don't believe that that would be it. I don't think a guy like, you know, Emmanuel Claese is going to make that bed of, well, I'll take the under-strikeouts because you can't control it. You can't throw every pitch as a ball. So you have to throw some strikes. And if people put the ball in play,

you know, I mean, that's still good because you're getting an under-strikeout. But what if dudes are just off that day and you're mowing dudes down and you set the total, you know, even though Classe is a closer. So his strike-out total, usually. isn't going to be a factor anyway. But like those kind of things you'd have to do. I'm guessing that these guys went out and just had people making large, large bets. And that's what drew the attention. As I said, betting 20 bucks on that isn't sexy enough to get the attention. It's not mysterious enough. It's not like, hmm, why are they doing this enough for anybody to get that attention. So it had to be a large enough sum of money to get the attention of the sports

books. Then they get into the investigation. So it's a dumb thing to throw your career away for, too. These are dudes making money. Class A is a baller. And to sit there and lose it all over prop bets. But that's kind of the allure of this shit, too. Like, you think it's bad for people that are going out and losing their shit that are not professional athletes and making big bets and losing money betting, you know, imagine, you know, you got big money, you're in control of it, and you want to make an easy 10 grand or something, you tell your buddy to open up an account on fan duel or draft kings and take, you know, first pitch of this inning to be a ball, and boom, we're making a quick five grand.

Like, I would imagine, like, it's intoxicating, and it's very easy to get caught up in it. Now, as we've seen, though, it's also very easy to get caught doing it. And if you get caught doing it, then you're done. so it's really not worth the risk at all, but apparently, maybe, maybe possibly it is there for those dudes in Cleveland, but we'll see. All right, more to come.