Baseball’s solution to the latest gambling scandal is a half measure. The commissioner’s office and its gaming partners are still trying to eat their cake, just with a little less frosting.
Within 36 hours of Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz facing indictments on federal charges alleging they threw fraudulent pitches, Major League Baseball’s quick response was to limit amounts placed on micro-bets. Bettors can no longer wager more than $200 on whether pitchers will throw a ball or a strike and whether it will be above or below a certain speed. They also cannot combine the two bets into a parlay.
It makes perfect sense and is a necessary step toward restoring the integrity of the game. Of course, there’s a cleaner, easier solution to all of this.
Abolish micro-bets entirely.
Why do we need the ability to bet on every pitch? The correct answer is because of how much revenue prop bets generate, but abolishing the concept of micro-bets in sports is the only true way to eliminate the uncertainty of whether a player is on the take.
Thanks to the Clase and Ortiz indictments, every curve that is spiked in the dirt next year will now be accompanied by a punchline of whether it was intentional. It’s one thing for fans to make the joke, but at what point do players begin questioning their teammates’ ethics? We’ve just witnessed that nothing is out of bounds at this point.
“You have to remove those prop bets to make sure the integrity of the players isn’t questioned,” agent Scott Boras said Wednesday at baseball’s general managers meetings in Las Vegas. “There’s going to be all forms of performance questions given now to pitchers when they throw certain pitches to the back of the screen or situationally, and really, we don’t want any part of it. We don’t want the players’ integrity to ever be questioned.”
Boras is absolutely correct. Now is the time for MLB’s Players Association to follow up with a full-throated condemnation of micro-bets. The players should want these gone more than anyone.
The idea that players make too much these days to be compromised by gamblers may be foolish. Clase, who had earned $8 million by the end of the 2023 season when he was alleged to have thrown his first fraudulent pitch, proved money is still money. Even if it’s just a few extra thousand dollars. Now he could be going to prison.
Clase and Ortiz are facing counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery, and money laundering for sportsbooks. The charges were brought by the Eastern District of New York, the same office that is handling the NBA gambling scandals involving Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier.
Ortiz pleaded not guilty in federal court on Wednesday to all charges and was released on $500,000 bond. Clase is scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday.
Supporters of micro-betting insist it keeps fans engaged with the games and that, if outlawed, it would continue occurring through more nefarious measures. The legalization is supposed to ensure regulation and guardrails.
If that’s true, why did it take two years for Clase to get caught? The first pitch in question, according to the indictment, occurred in May 2023. He wasn’t put on leave by MLB until July 2025.
The same is true of Rozier, who escaped an NBA investigation following allegations in 2023 that he faked an injury so gamblers could win bets by taking the “under” on his stats. When the NBA shrugged and said it couldn’t find any evidence, the federal government stepped in.
Prop bets will never go away entirely. They provide too much delicious frosting on the cake. And to their credit, the leagues have tried to be proactive.
Major sportsbooks stopped offering NBA “under” bets last season on players performing on two-way contracts or 10-day deals. In other words, the players making the least amount of money. The NFL hasn’t had a gambling scandal in two years.
If Clase and Ortiz are convicted, the courts and baseball could make an example of them. Clase was named nine times in the indictment for throwing fraudulent pitches, and Ortiz was named twice. It’s not entirely clear how much the pitchers were allegedly given for throwing rigged pitches, but it only appears to add up to a few thousand dollars for possibly throwing their careers away. One of the best ways to dissuade players from taking these types of risks would be seeing one of their own head to prison for throwing a few errant pitches.
“I hope this is a cautionary tale for a lot of people,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said while sitting in a Vegas casino this week. “But it’s probably not the last time that we’re going to be addressing this because of the ease of gambling, as we sit here in a casino. I just hope everyone takes it really seriously because it’s kind of Rule No. 1 in baseball. You can’t gamble on (your own) sport.”
It feels a bit like legalized sports gambling is flying the plane while they build it, a constant chase of exposing and eventually closing loopholes. For every fire that the sports leagues try to stamp out, another flame is sparked elsewhere.
So what’s next?
Prediction market platforms, such as Kalshi and Polymarket, have drawn the ire of the American Gaming Association, which sent letters last month cautioning the NBA, MLB and NFL to avoid making deals like the one the NHL struck with both companies last month.
Prediction markets have exploded in popularity over the last year to include legal sports betting in all 50 states under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Kalshi hit $4.4 billion volume just in October.
“If you’re asking what’s the next loophole, this is 100 percent it,” said sports gambling analyst Dustin Gouker, who closely follows the prediction markets on his substack. “We have basically legal sports betting under a federal agency that isn’t being stopped.”
There is pending litigation involving Kalshi in at least six states, including Ohio. Kalshi filed a federal lawsuit against the Ohio Casino Control Commission and the state attorney general last month after receiving a cease-and-desist order claiming Kalshi is considered unlicensed online sports gaming.
Round and round it goes. More frosting, more cake.