Posted on 11/10/2025 5:30:13 AM PST by Red Badger
Two Major League Baseball pitchers allegedly conspired with sports bettors to rig pitches they threw so the bettors would profit from illegal wagers, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and the FBI announced in an indictment on Sunday.
Cleveland Guardians player Luis Leandro Ortiz was arrested Sunday at Logan Airport in Boston. Emmanuel Clase, also of the Guardians, was not yet in custody as of Sunday afternoon.
According to the indictment, the pitchers started conspiring with sports bettors in 2023 on specific pitches they would throw during MLB games. The bettors then used that information to place prop bets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the indictment says.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
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Apparently a $4.5 million, 2025 salary, isn't enough to make ends meet.
Dumbasses!
If you would want to manipulate the outcome of a game, the officials would be the way to go IMO.
Just the opposite in the Jag game yesterday......thecrefs weren’t NOT seeing things, they were seeing things that DIDN’T happen.
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Even commentator JJ Watt was criticizing the officiating.....and he played for HOUSTON!
“What does the rich bitch Nancy Pelosi have to say?”
HIC!.................
The question becomes if you know fixing is taking place do you still watch and commit yourself to it all in terms of time and money etc? The NFL since about the 1960s when it became the number 1 spectator sport in America has been bulletproof and a large part of that was fuelled by the gambling interest. Perhaps the gambling addiction is so powerful that it won’t matter but as always in will be interesting times.
All of this is a racist witch hunt. /s
That’s what I’m talking about. Somebody earning more in one season than most people earn in a working lifetime, is putting that at risk for some half baked gambling scheme.
I’ve said for a long time that many major sporting events are rigged.
On June 2, 2010, Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was on the verge of throwing a perfect game against the Cleveland Indians. However, umpire Jim Joyce incorrectly ruled that Indians batter Jason Donald reached first base safely, which cost Galarraga his perfect game. This incident is often referred to as the “28-out perfect game” and has been widely discussed in baseball history due to the impact of the call and the subsequent apology from Joyce. The game ended with a 3-0 victory for the Tigers, and Galarraga’s sportsmanship in the face of the mistake earned him praise from fans and fellow players alike.
Jason was a mile from first base. It was deliberate. No other explanation.
Grrrrrr don’t get me started on that one.
Calling Kenesaw Mountain Landis. I wonder if he is turning over in his grave?
Oh yeah the Umpires Association was in full damage control.
They said Jim Joyce was so upset, he “called his mother”.
Every time I saw that MFr after that still officiating it made me sick to my stomach.
Commissioner should have overturned.
With all the betting options available, they don’t even have to affect the game’s outcome. The coin toss is an example.
I’m not.
I don’t think it’s about the money (well, not entirely) at a certain point, it’s about the “thrill” and at a certain point, it can then also be easy to get into a spot of trouble.
I hate that Fanduel and other online betting is so omnipresent - every damn game features every other commercial. Now, they even have their own bars and attachments to stadiums.
This was inevitable.
You can’t expect to constantly be splashing every element of every game with online better and then be surprised when a bunch of 20somethings, many of whom aren’t particularly educated, decide to partake.
Still, I’m an absolutist: Banned for life. I never expect nor want to see either Clase or Ortiz pitch in MLB again.
That’s about the only thing baseball can do since it sold its soul to the gambling devil. Better if they detached but since they won’t? The eternal banhammer is the only way to keep it at least limited.
Nobody would ever remember a perfect game. But everyone remembers the bad call.......LOL!
The thing people wringing their hands about legalized gambling are missing is that these people getting caught are getting caught in part because the legal betting apps share suspicious info with the FBI (largely because it’s bad for their bottom line, no altruism here). This stuff has been going on forever, but when gambling was all illegal nobody involved was talking. Most of the big betting scandals of the last 30 years start with a legal sports book calling the cops.
The syndicate pays off law enforcement to shut down freelancers.
Cardinal sin in baseball. Every clubhouse has (or had) a sign saying NO Gambling on Baseball. This kind of stuff badly taints the sport, and it takes a looong time to regain the public’s trust....
...unless your team is winning. Then people don’t care.
I think the problem is more millions of dollars now being bet on whether the first pitch is a strike or all other kinds of silly prop bets.
Big Sal generally didn’t take many prop bets unless the money was big enough to set the line where Big Sal got his taste.
Yet that wasn't enough. Pathetic.
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