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The trial for arguably the biggest baseball betting scandal since the Black Sox has begun.
Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were in federal court in Brooklyn on Monday, when jury selection commenced for a case in which prosecutors allege the former Guardians pitchers accepted bribes in a pitch-rigging scheme that won money for themselves and the gamblers with whom they colluded.
Clase, a three-time All-Star and standout closer, and Ortiz, a four-year starting pitcher, are accused of tipping off bettors about their intentions with specific pitches to help their conspirators rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The pitchers have been charged with wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery. If convicted on all charges, they would face a maximum of 65 years in prison.
Among the potential witnesses listed in a court filing are Guardians executives, such as general manager Mike Chernoff; coaches, such as pitching coach Carl Willis; and players, such as catchers Austin Hedges, Mike Zunino and Bo Naylor.
Prosecutors have zeroed in on 18 pitches thrown from 2023-25 in which they charge Clase provided advance information to bettors about his intentions with the pitch, which would typically be delivered far outside the strike zone or they believe with a predetermined speed. In one example from the indictment, during a May 19, 2023, game against the Mets at Citi Field, bettors allegedly won approximately $27,000 by wagering that a pitch thrown by Clase would be faster than 94.95 mph.
The government alleged that Clase recruited Ortiz into the scheme in 2025 and said that bettors won at least $450,000 from pitches thrown by the two teammates. According to the indictment, bettors placed “over a hundred” straight bets and parlays on Clase’s pitches. One — a pitch in the dirt that the Dodgers’ Andy Pages swung at — resulted in a betting loss.
Clase was among the best relief pitchers in baseball and held a 1.88 ERA with 182 saves through six seasons, five of which were with Cleveland. Before being placed on unpaid nondisciplinary leave, Clase had been pitching on a five-year, $20 million contract on which he was set to make $6.4 million in 2025.
Ortiz was less accomplished and making $782,600 in 2025. Ortiz unsuccessfully tried to sever his case from Clase’s, and the former’s lawyers wrote that Ortiz was “a victim of Clase’s scheme,” according to The Athletic.
In text messages with bettors, prosecutors say Clase would use code words such as “rooster” and “chicken.” But one bettor, in a court document reported by the New York Times, said those conversations were about cockfighting, which is legal in Clase and Ortiz’s native Dominican Republic.
Lawyers for Clase also are expected to argue that there were strategic purposes for the pitches in contention to be delivered so far out of the strike zone and that the bets placed were within normal ranges.
“In isolation, any single pitch in the dirt can be painted as nefarious,” Clase’s attorneys wrote in a September filing, according to ESPN.
The Athletic cited a brief filed by Clase’s defense attorneys in which Scott Powers — a former assistant GM with the Astros — argued that “there are baseball reasons for Clase to aim his pitches outside the strike zone.”
Friday, Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto, who is presiding over the trial, ruled that prosecutors cannot show the jury proof that Clase owed $500,000 in U.S. taxes because they had only provided the evidence to defense lawyers several days earlier and long after a deadline had passed to turn over evidence to their adversaries.
A prosecutor had argued that the government wanted to put the evidence in the trial to offset any claim by Clase’s lawyers that he had no incentive to collude with gamblers because he had several million dollars in financial accounts in the Dominican Republic.
Major League Baseball and the Guardians have both said they’ve fully cooperated with authorities. MLB has said it contacted federal law enforcement when it began investigating unusual betting activity.
In the aftermath of the indictment, MLB announced that in conjunction with authorized gaming operations, there would now be a $200 cap on micro-betting on the pitch-level markets. Those prop bets also would be excluded from parlays.
— With AP
