Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase appears to be quite some distance from playing baseball again.
The Guardians have blocked the flame-throwing right-hander from pitching in the Venezuelan winter league, according to The Athletic’s Evan Drellich, a week after he was banned from playing in a winter league in his home country, the Dominican Republic.
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Per Drellich, Clase planned to play for the Tiburones de La Guaira in Venezuela after his Dominican ban, but MLB’s agreement with the array of Latin American winter leagues generally forbids players from joining a team outside of his native country without permission from MLB and his club. And Cleveland did not grant that.
Clase hasn’t pitched since July 26. He was placed on indefinite paid leave two days later as part of a gambling investigation by MLB. The exact nature of the allegations have not been reported, but they are apparently serious enough that Clase’s locker was cleared out by the start of August.
Guardians starting pitcher Luis Ortiz has also been on leave since July 3, and there has been much more reporting about what he’s accused of doing. A betting integrity firm reportedly flagged an unusual amount of betting activity on two pitches he threw in June, when Ortiz allegedly threw a ball on purpose to open an inning.
Ortiz and Clase are facing harsh penalties if they are found to have either gambled themselves, which is punishable by a lifetime ban, or cooperated with any sort of gambling organization.
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With two key members of their pitching staff sidelined, the Guardians still managed to pull off the biggest comeback in MLB history, erasing a 15.5-game deficit in the AL Central to beat the Detroit Tigers for the division title. Their season ended in the wild-card round against those same Tigers.