Let’s talk about what happened before today’s Cleveland Guardians vs Chicago Cubs game, because it’s a story that should make every sports fan a little uneasy. The Guardians were all set to play the Cubs at Wrigley Field and Luis Ortiz was scheduled to start the game. Then, just hours before the first pitch, boom—he was scratched. The team was tight-lipped, just saying he was on paid leave because of a league investigation. Of course, everyone’s imagination ran wild until the real story trickled out from reporters: the investigation was about gambling.
The allegation was incredibly specific. This wasn’t about Ortiz trying to lose a game. Instead, the league announced they were looking at two pitches he threw in his last start on June 27th against the St. Louis Cardinals. One was a slider described as “well outside the strike zone.” Another was a pitch so wild it was called “one of the most egregious balls you’ll ever see.”
So, how did two random pitches set off alarm bells? The warning didn’t come from a whistleblower; it came from a tech company called IC360, a firm hired to watch for shady betting activity. They noticed that in several states, a suspicious number of people were placing very specific “microbets”—wagering that Ortiz’s first pitch in those exact innings would be a ball. And in both cases, the bettors won.
This is the scary, logical conclusion of the sports betting boom we’ve seen since the Supreme Court opened the floodgates in 2018. It points to a new, sneakier threat that doesn’t target the final score, but the tiniest moments within a game. This case shows how much has changed. To fix the 1919 World Series, the “Black Sox” needed a group of players in on a complex scheme. Today, with microbetting, a single pitcher has almost total control over a single pitch. He can allegedly manipulate one tiny outcome all by himself.
This setup makes individual athletes, especially guys on smaller contracts, perfect targets. Superstars like Shohei Ohtani with massive salaries are mostly protected as we saw last year when his interpreter was fired. But for players like Luis Ortiz, who makes the major league minimum — $782,600 — a bribe that a star would laugh at could be life-changing. This isn’t a fluke; it’s a warning sign of a dangerous new vulnerability in modern sports.
And this isn’t just a baseball problem. The NBA recently banned Jontay Porter for life for an almost identical situation. Porter was found to have faked being sick to leave games early, ensuring that “under” bets on his stats—like points and rebounds—would pay off for bettors he was associated with. He was on a two-way contract making around $410,000. The parallels to the Ortiz case are alarming and show this is a systemic issue. As NBA Commissioner Adam Silver admitted, some of these prop bets just “lend themselves to more shenanigans.”
It’s hard to ignore the giant elephant in the room: the leagues themselves have jumped headfirst into the gambling world. The line between the game and the betting app on your phone has been intentionally erased, thanks to massive partnership deals with giants like FanDuel and DraftKings.
This has led to criticism and accusations of hypocrisy. How can a league condemn a player for the “cardinal sin” of betting while it rakes in millions from gambling partnerships? It’s a fair question with real-world consequences. Cleveland Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff has told The Guardian about the threats he has received from angry gamblers. He’s even heard fans screaming at him from the stands to keep players in a game just so they can cover a spread. This reveals a scary shift where a fan’s loyalty might be to their bet, not their team.
This creates a massive integrity problem. The leagues can’t be both the biggest beneficiaries of the gambling boom and the unbiased judges of its integrity. The game isn’t just a game anymore; it’s “content” for an industry that needs more and more things to bet on. This directly leads to the microbets that are easiest for a single person to manipulate. In a way, the leagues are profiting from selling the very thing that poses the biggest threat to their own integrity.
This whole situation with Ortiz feels eerily familiar, like a ghost from baseball’s past. It takes you back to the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, when a pitcher deliberately hit the first batter as a signal to gamblers that the fix was in. Over a hundred years later, we’re talking about a single pitch being used for the same reason, just supercharged by technology. That scandal, along with the Pete Rose affair in 1989, led to MLB’s rigid, zero-tolerance policy. Rose was banned for life for betting on his team to win, setting a precedent that any betting on baseball is the ultimate crime.
But that rigidness may not work today. Tucupita Marcano, who bet on his own team while he was injured and couldn’t possibly affect the game, received a lifetime ban — the same punishment Ortiz would likely face if found guilty of actively corrupting the game. You can argue that what Ortiz is accused of is a far greater sin against the sport. This lack of nuance shows the leagues might be stuck in the past, applying old rules to a complex new world.
The rules themselves are simply patchwork. MLB’s policy is black and white: bet on your sport, get a ban. The NFL is famously strict, forbidding players from gambling on any sport while at a team facility. The NBA’s rules are broad and focus on sharing insider info. All the leagues have education programs, but how effective can they be when the leagues themselves are sending such mixed messages?
Here’s the thing, folks: The Luis Ortiz story should be a huge red flag. The explosion of sports betting, especially microbets, has opened a can of worms. The public’s trust is on the line. How can you watch a game without wondering if the players are not rigging the outcome? Simply banning a few players a year won’t fix this. We need real, structural change. Should certain types of prop bets be banned? Do we need federal oversight? And shouldn’t the players’ unions demand more support for financially vulnerable players?
With that… The sports world threw open Pandora’s box for the gambling money but has been dangerously slow to deal with what flew out. The investigation into Luis Ortiz and his two pitches is a loud, urgent warning. This isn’t the end of a story. It’s the beginning of a dangerous new chapter where the biggest bet of all is on the future of the games themselves.
If you cannot play with them, maybe you shouldn’t root for them either. At least for now!