Jeff Passan on Cleveland Guardians pitchers’ betting scandal | Dan Patrick Show | NBC Sports

Jeff Passan on Cleveland Guardians pitchers’ betting scandal | Dan Patrick Show | NBC Sports

[Music] I asked Fritzy, reach out to Jeff Passen. Does a wonderful job covering baseball, their MLB insider. I know he’s busy because uh they have the uh I think the GM meetings in Las Vegas, but you also have a controversy here with a pair of pitchers with the Guardians and they could be headed to prison. Uh Jeff Passen kind enough to join us. Jeff, thanks for joining us. uh bring us up to speed. Can you explain the situation with the Guardians pitchers? Yeah, it’s not great, Dan. Um and this is really the intersection of gambling and sports and where it allegedly can go wrong. Uh an indictment was unsealed yesterday uh by the Eastern District of New York which is the same US attorney’s office uh that indicted Damon Jones uh and Terry Rosier and others involved in a separate alleged gambling scheme. In this case, Luis Ortiz, a Cleveland Guardians pitcher and Emanuel Class, who is widely regarded as one of the best closers in Major League Baseball. three-time all-star, two-time Mariano Rivera reliever of the year in the American League, uh allegedly conspired with betterers to place proposition bets on individual pitches. So, for example, you can bet whether a single pitch is going to be a ball or a strike. and they would get together, according to prosecutors beforehand, and say, “This pitch in this inning is going to be a ball.” And what would happen is, you know, $10,000 or so dollars would be wagered. Sometimes it was more, sometimes it was less. This allegedly happened uh a significant number of times um up to the point where the government alleges that more than $400,000 was made on Emanuel Class’s pitches alone. Uh and then uh this is something that’s going back allegedly to May of 2023. Ortiz came in, according to prosecutors, joined the scheme this year, and uh on June 15th, threw a ball uh then was paid $5,000 to do so. And Class A got $5,000 for facilitating it. On June 27th, did that one more time, and the payment was $7,000. Um now, Ortiz’s attorney came out and said he is completely innocent of all charges. Bas’s attorney uh was not quite as viferous, but uh said essentially we will have our day in court. And uh the whole thing I it’s just really interesting to me, Dan, that I’m in Las Vegas right now for a Major League Baseball event when this is happening. And and it shows the way that gambling has infiltrated professional sports. And uh you really do wonder, can the toothpaste be put back in the tube or is this the new norm? They don’t cap prop bets. I think it just depends on where you’re doing the gambling. And the reason that this was caught in the first place is because they’re betting integrity firms out there that track this sort of thing. and they saw that Luis Ortiz had a pretty significant amount of money placed on one of his pitches and they’re like that’s interesting. You know, with Class A, I suppose it’s a little bit different because he’s as good as he is. He’s as well known as he is with uh with Ortiz. It’s a little bit different who you know, nobody knows who Luis Ortiz is. And so, it happens a second time. And once it happened the second time, uh, the betting integrity firms, uh, flagged the books, uh, and Major League Baseball was informed and almost immediately both Ortiz and Class were placed on non-disciplinary paid leave and have been gone from the Guardians since July. And uh you know, regardless of how this turns out in court, the notion that they are going to be back pitching at any point in Major League Baseball seems uh unlikely. And I’ve mentioned this before that you’ll have guys who are on the periphery. They live in a vacuum because they’re probably thinking, “Nobody’s going to be tracking this. You know, I’m I’m nobody. I can throw this pitch. My my buddies can make some money. I get a little kickback here. It’s just like Jonte Porter with the Raptors. He’s a no-name player and hey, I got an overunder and I’m gonna, you know, be under. I’m going to take myself out of the game. Terry Roier. That’s the problem. It’s not star players. It’s the guys who don’t think anybody’s watching, but Vegas has to watch. Yeah, of course Vegas has to watch. And frankly, all of us as sports fans should be apoplelectic about this. Games are only as good as they are believable. Yeah. And the second that you start chipping away at the idea that what we’re watching is real, what we’re watching is on the up and up, what what’s the point of watching sports if you don’t feel like there’s real competition? And it’s so interesting to me that it’s almost taken gambling to to remind us of this point. Why people were so angry about the Houston Astros cheating is because the expectation of fair play of both sides doing this the right way. And I don’t think I even need to use air quotes for that. There is a right way and there is a wrong way. And what the Astros did was wrong. And even though Emanuel Class and Luis Ortiz, if they did this, could say, “Hey, it’s just one ball. I can get back into the count.” Class A in 2024 had one of the best relief seasons in Major League history. Even though all of those things are true, it’s just the fact that if this exists at one point is not a slippery slope. Hey, I you know, I threw one, I I can come back from a 20 count or if it’s the third pitch of an at bat and the guy is down 02, I can waste a pitch. I can waste two pitches. And then you get to the point, Dan, where it’s like if you open the door to that, then you’re just inviting more and more and more. Talking to Jeff Pass, ESPN senior baseball insider. What’s the uh spicy topic there in Vegas? Oh boy. Well, it’s the Major League Baseball off season, so spiciness uh it’s it’s muted. Like, we don’t have a ton of spice going on. We need some more we need some more flavor to the offseason. I don’t anticipate there’s going to be any big free agent signings this week. I don’t think that, frankly, we’re going to have a big trade go down. This week is more about just feeling out what the market is going to look like. And because MLB does not have a salary cap that’s offseason is accordingly slow teams, you know, they are able to maneuver around and respond to the market and don’t feel like they have to go out and spend all this money early on to take up their cap space. And it’s it’s one of the things I appreciate about baseball, like it’s it’s an actual market and it operates that way without those sorts of restrictions. You got a couple of Japanese players who I think are being posted. Uh is it just a pipeline to the Dodgers if they want them? I don’t anticipate that this off season because if you look at No, if you I I think it’s twofold. Number one, if you look at what the Dodgers need, of course, they could always use another starting pitcher, but among the four that they had starting for them this postseason with Yoshino Yamamoto, Blake Snell, uh Tyler Glass Now, and Show Otani. You add to that two more guys on their roster, Justin Releski, and Roki Sasaki who are starting pitchers. Uh and and you throw Gavin Stone and River Ryan coming back from major arm surgeries in the the Dodgers have pitching depth like real pitching depth frankly from which they can trade. Um and Morakami, they just signed M or they just picked up Maxy’s option. Now that that does not keep them from pursuing Munitaka Morakami, who is uh a massive power left-handed hitter, hit 56 home runs in a season, 22 years old, and has a chance just an enormous ceiling. But between him and Tatsuya Mai, who’s a right-hander who’s about Yamamoto’s size and has that kind of high octane fast ball, really good command and good off speed stuff as well. I think the bigger thing, Dan, other teams want Japanese players, too. other teams understand there’s enormous talent to be mined in Japan and you’re not going to get those topend guys in the future if you haven’t illustrated in the past that you’re a landing spot for Japanese players that you are friendly to the Japanese culture that you understand the mindset of Japanese players coming over the the Dodgers one of the best things that they did was corner the market in Japan and say we want everyone in Japan to be wearing Dodger Blue. It was brilliant, not just in a baseball sense, but in a financial sense as well. And I think all the other teams around the league are like, well, you know, if you can’t beat him, join him. Behave there in Vegas, Jeff. Okay. I make no promises, Dan. You already look guilty. Thank you, bud. That’s uh Jeff Passen joining us from Vegas. The GM meetings there.

Baseball reporter Jeff Passan joins Dan Patrick to discuss the MLB betting scandal involving two Cleveland Guardians pitchers and the ramifications of sports betting overall, while touching on the MLB offseason ahead. #NBCSports #MLB #DanPatrickShow #JeffPassan #ClevelandGuardians
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Jeff Passan on Cleveland Guardians pitchers’ betting scandal | Dan Patrick Show | NBC Sports
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