Sports betting is legal across most of North America and inevitably this comes with a high cost to competitive integrity. This cost is now manifesting in profound integrity crises. While leagues have reversed their century-long avoidance of gambling partnerships to tap into massive new revenue streams, the fundamental concerns regarding sporting integrity are being realized. The recent federal indictment of Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis L. Ortiz highlights that the threat to integrity should be expected at this point; it is embedded in the system, and it is shifting from the grand scheme of fixing the granular, almost invisible manipulation of individual plays. The problem isn’t going away; the infrastructure of modern betting guarantees that internal corruption will persist.
This shift to spot-fixing is precisely what makes the Clase and Ortiz case such a critical inflection point. Traditional scams targeting the entire game outcome, are too complex and difficult to pull off in team sports. Instead, what we are seeing now is the exploitation of micro-betting markets, where wagers are placed on single, split-second events — like the speed or outcome of a specific pitch. These markets are vulnerable because one player’s action controls the outcome, and that action has minimal impact on the final game result, reducing the perceived risk for the player involved.
The depth of this scheme is disturbing, rooted in the granular nature of these prop bets. The indictment, unsealed by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, N.Y., charged Clase and Ortiz with rigging pitches in exchange for payments from bettors in their native Dominican Republic. The details chronicle instances where these pitchers allegedly manipulated pitch speed and location for the financial gain of co-conspirators. For example, bettors allegedly won roughly $38,000 on June 3, 2023, based on a Clase pitch that was slower than 94.95 mph and called a ball. Similarly, just four days later, bettors made approximately $68,000 on a pitch that matched that same manipulated criteria.
The financial structure of the scheme further reveals the massive asymmetry of risk and reward. Ortiz, for instance, allegedly agreed to throw his first pitch of the second inning for a ball on June 15, 2025, in exchange for $5,000 from Clase, which made approximately $26,000 for two bettors. Later that month, he also received $7,000 to throw the first pitch of the third inning for a ball, generating about $37,000 for the conspirators. The relatively low cost of the bribe compared to the high yield for the bettors illustrates why this kind of granular manipulation is so attractive to criminal enterprises. The charges against the players include fraud, conspiracy, and bribery, potentially leading to a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison if convicted.
Crucially, federal prosecutors are using Honest Services Fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1346). This statute asserts that the defendants deprived the Cleveland Guardians and Major League Baseball of their honest services” and “betrayed America’s pastime. The legal implication here is profound, by applying Honest Services Fraud, federal prosecutors are treating the integrity of a professional athlete’s effort — the fiduciary duty to exert their best effort on every play — as an intangible asset protected by federal law, establishing that manipulating even a single pitch constitutes fraud against the league and the team.
Beyond the financial fraud, the imperative element unearthed in the indictment is chilling and cannot be overlooked. On May 28, 2025, after a bettor lost a $4,000 wager on Clase, the bettor allegedly sent Clase a text message containing a GIF image of a man hanging himself with toilet paper. While Clase responded with a sad puppy dog face GIF, this exchange suggests the environment surrounding these athletes is not merely one of mutual financial opportunity, but one of intense pressure, emotional manipulation, and potential coercion from organized betting interests. This incident elevates the case into a significant player welfare and risk management issue for the league.
Given the evidence of intentional manipulation to influence betting outcomes, Major League Baseball’s response aligns with its longstanding, zero-tolerance policy. Although Clase and Ortiz were initially placed on non-disciplinary paid leave pending the league’s investigation, the federal indictment effectively guarantees the most severe consequence under Major League Rule 21 which explicitly mandates permanent ineligibility for any player who shall promise or agree to lose, or to attempt to lose, or to fail to give his best efforts towards the winning of any baseball game. Since the pitchers are alleged to have accepted bribes to intentionally throw certain pitches otherwise than on their merits, the lifetime ban is a mandatory regulatory formality. The league cooperating with federal law enforcement, which began at the outset of its investigation, underscores the unified determination to protect public trust.
This scheme has forced immediate and significant changes by MLB with its authorized sportsbook partners, which include DraftKings, FanDuel, and others who cover over 98% of the regulated US betting market. To mitigate the integrity risks exposed by the pitch-rigging scheme, the league announced new safeguards effective immediately. The most impactful change is the capping of wagers on micro-bet, pitch-level markets at $200 and the exclusion of these bets from parlays. This dual approach aims to drastically reduce the high-stakes financial incentive for manipulation while simultaneously preventing sophisticated bettors from leveraging fixed, low-risk outcomes into massive high-return parlays.
Here’s the thing, folks: While operational limits like the $200 cap are possibly short-term fixes, there needs to be a long-term defense against spot-fixing. Human surveillance cannot possibly keep pace with the thousands of split-second wagers placed on micro-events. The future of integrity is very important to keep fans watching the game.
With that… It is clear that the Clase and Ortiz scandal has proven that integrity systems must move beyond reactive investigations to proactive, algorithmic enforcement.
If you cannot play with them, then maybe you should question their integrity to play.