How Allegations of Cleveland Pitch Rigging Impacted Governmental Actions on Sports Betting
This article was written by Mark S. Sternman
This article was published in The National Pastime: Baseball on Lake Erie (2026)
The historian Jacques Barzun famously said, “Who-ever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.” The quotation is usually used positively as a tribute to the central role that the national pastime plays in the United States. But with the sports betting boom and related scandals that have taken place since the 2018 US Supreme Court decision that allowed states to legalize sports betting, Barzun’s dictum has a different meaning, denoting that Major League Baseball, like most profit-making entities in the US capitalist economy, prioritizes corporate greed over the public health of players, fans, and casual observers.
On November 9, 2025, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging three-time All-Star Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz of the Cleveland Guardians with “sharing inside information about their pitches with sports bettors, who then gambled on the pitches and made hundreds of thousands of dollars on online betting platforms …”1 Five days later, a letter from US Senators Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell, dated November 14, 2025, raised the specter of the worst scandal in baseball history:
Game fixing allegations are not new to baseball,” the letter stated. “105 years ago, a Chicago grand jury indicted eight Chicago White Sox players for allegedly rigging the 1919 World Series. Labeled ‘the Chicago Black Sox’ in the press, the players were eventually acquitted by a Chicago jury, even though some had earlier confessed, and all eight were banned from baseball for life.2
While Major League Baseball would rather bury the crisis that could have killed the game, two US Senators demanding information from MLB in light of the Cleveland scandal not only referenced historic crimes that rocked baseball, but also heightened state and federal interest in restricting the tidal wave of gambling money coming into MLB coffers.
This interest stems from the well-known negative consequences of sports betting, which include educational, financial, mental health, physical, professional, and social problems. “One study found that 37 percent of people experiencing a gambling problem have perpetrated intimate partner violence,” wrote Jordan Smith in Harvard Magazine. “A 2021 analysis of banking transactions found that a 10 percent increase in spending on gambling increased the likelihood of missing a mortgage payment by 97.5 percent.”3
On the state side, governors and legislators alike acted in response to the Cleveland scandal, with a particular focus on prop betting, also called microbetting or in-game betting, where wagerers risk money on the outcome of an individual occurrence during a game. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine had sharp words on the matter.
The evidence that prop betting is harming athletics in Ohio is reaching critical mass. First, there were threats on Ohio athletes, and now two high-profile Ohio professional athletes have been suspended by Major League Baseball as part of a “sports betting investigation.” The harm to athletes and the integrity of the game is clear, and the benefits are not worth the harm. The prop betting experiment in this country has failed badly. I call on the Casino Control Commission to correct this problem and remove all prop bets from the Ohio marketplace.4
Like professional sporting leagues, elected officials often act, or call for action, in response to events that threaten their images and livelihoods. Stop Predatory Gambling National Director Les Bernal asserted that DeWine’s denouncement came about because he had signed the bill legalizing sports betting in Ohio, the Cleveland scandal took place in his state, and DeWine had the freedom to confront industry interests since he would not run for reelection. Bernal observed that the scandal “made the American public more aware of how legalizing sports betting across the country was a mistake and a failure.”5
A fellow Republican in DeWine’s own state took the opposite approach. Republican House Finance Chairman Brian Stewart said in August he planned to introduce legislation to protect prop bets. “I think that prop bets are a significant part of sports betting in the state of Ohio,” Stewart said. “It’s something that clearly a lot of Ohioans have taken part in and enjoy, and I don’t think that’s something we should eliminate entirely.”6
Prioritizing betting freedom over protecting public health, Stewart stands out for his see-no-harm approach. While other legislators and legislative staff in the 39 states that have legalized sports betting as well as in the 11 that have not, had varying views on the impacts of the Cleveland scandal on their efforts to address the negative consequences resulting from the proliferation of sports betting, all saw the development as neutral to helpful to their efforts or as harmful to pro-gambling forces.
Massachusetts and New Jersey are among the states that have legalized sports betting, but the Cleveland scandal played differently in the two states, and even between legislative branches in one of those states. “This pitching rigging scandal has not really come up for us,” wrote Charlie Mokriski, a legislative aide to Rep. Adam Scanlon, who has sponsored an act relative to problem gambling, which “expands and coordinates self-exclusion programs across all gambling platforms, mandates responsible marketing and player protections including betting limits and data reporting, strengthens enforcement and community support, and establishes funding and regulatory measures to promote public health and prevent gambling-related harm.”7 Mokriski emailed, “We’ve…kept our eye on the various scandals in this vein, and they can…play into the consumer protection/problem gambling focus of our office—addiction and debt can make players more susceptible to the temptation—but I wouldn’t say it’s come up much.”8
By contrast, Massachusetts State Senator John Keenan opened testimony on his bill, an act addressing economic, health and social harms caused by sports betting, also known as the Bettor Health Act, by alluding to the Cleveland scandal, stating, “Recent headlines about professional athletes and college athletes fixing outcomes. show that sports betting is spinning out of control.”9 Keenan’s legislation, filed in January 2025, well before the Cleveland scandal erupted that July, would, among its ten major provisions, ban the prop bets that resulted in the crimes that Clase and Ortiz are accused of.
New Jersey saw more of an impact. New Jersey State Senator Paul Moriarty recounted, “In the summer of 2025, I was working on legislation to help combat the addictiveness of micro betting. When the news of the Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz pitch rigging broke late that summer, it certainly raised further concerns with individual player prop bets. This was the first of a string of incidents in numerous sports that was the impetus of moving the legislation more quickly.”10
Unlike Massachusetts and New Jersey, Minnesota has rebuffed efforts to legalize sports betting. Minnesota Senator John Marty, the leader of the fight against legalization, observed that events like the Cleveland scandal seemed to stall the legalization effort. Proponents of sports betting understandably did not want to discuss “the drip, drip, drip of scandal accumulation,” Marty said, which left those pushing legislation “losing enthusiasm for it” in favor of “higher priorities” enjoying more widespread support.11
After the Cleveland scandal, MLB sought to restrict pitching prop bets to no more than $200. In a statement, MLB claimed, “Most prop bets present limited integrity risk because they take into account multiple events that are influenced by more than one actor. However, ‘micro-bet’ pitch-level markets (e.g., ball/strike; pitch velocity) present heightened integrity risks because they focus on one-off events that can be determined by a single player and can be inconsequential to the outcome of the game.”12
The statement ignores the reality of baseball games, which represent accumulations of individual actions (baserunning, batting, fielding, and pitching) in a group context. Any player can decide to do—or not do—something that can swing a wager. Sure, one-off events can prove inconsequential, but countless single plays in 2025 could have and did determine the outcomes of the tied American League East division race and the pulsating Game 7 of the World Series. A $200 limit on pitch bets, when each game features hundreds of pitches, will do little to help problem gamblers and deter wrongdoers on or off the playing field.
While Senators Keenan, Marty, and Moriarty, and Representative Scanlon, continue to engage actively in legislative advocacy related to sports betting, Governor DeWine declared victory. “I commend Commissioner (Rob) Manfred, Major League Baseball, and its partners for taking this action to address the problem of micro-prop bets,” DeWine said in a statement. “By limiting the ability to place large wagers on micro-prop bets, Major League Baseball is taking affirmative steps to protect the integrity of the game and reduce the incentives to participate in improper betting schemes.”13
Gambling Policy-Public Health Advocacy Institute director Harry Levant disagrees with DeWine, writing, “MLB has decided to join the gambling industry business establishment. The allegations against Clase and Ortiz are disturbing and likely a sign of things to come. … There is still time for MLB to withdraw from partnerships with the gambling industry and restore order to the game and prioritize public health over greed and avarice.”14
New Jersey Senator Moriarty agrees with Levant: “The Cleveland Guardians news…has me pushing to ban player prop bets because of their propensity for rigging. Anytime an individual can directly influence the outcome of a bet, we see how little it takes to convince some players to manipulate the market and really harm the average bettor….I don’t believe [MLB is] going far enough to protect consumers and the integrity of the sport.”15
MLB’s actions likewise fell short from the perspectives of members of Congress. Shortly after the imposition of the limits on pitch-specific prop-betting, Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chair Ted Cruz and ranking member Maria Cantwell wrote Manfred seeking more information on the Clase-Ortiz scandal and other sports betting investigations in baseball dating to 2020. “Major League Baseball (MLB) and American sports generally, are facing a new integrity crisis,” the senators wrote. “This is markedly more serious than other recent sports betting incidents in MLB.”16
Like Massachusetts State Senator Keenan, the federal leaders in the fight to mitigate the public health harms stemming from sports betting had filed legislation on this issue before the Cleveland scandal broke. In March 2025, US Senator Richard Blumenthal and US Representative Paul Tonko reintroduced their Supporting Affordability and Fairness with Every Bet (SAFE Bet) Act, which would “require states offering sports betting to meet minimum federal standards in the categories of marketing, affordability and Artificial Intelligence to create a safer, less addictive product.”17
Given the gridlock gripping Congress, prospects for action on the state level seem brighter than the likelihood of federal success. Regardless of what happens in the current legislative session, the Cleveland scandal, as it plays out in the legal arena, will likely serve as just the first in a series of events that will continue to focus governmental attention on the business and sport of baseball, something that MLB, like all large corporate profit-maximizing entities, would definitely prefer to avoid so they can run their industry as free from scrutiny as possible. As the expiration date of the collective bargaining agreement on December 1, 2026, draws nearer, players may have additional economic incentives to engage in gambling or with gamblers to put away more money before a work stoppage that seems increasingly likely.
Regardless of whether Yogi Berra said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” the past will likely prove predictive of what happens next with baseball and sports betting. The 1919 Black Sox scandal did not represent the last crisis MLB faced in the years after World War I. In 1926, living legends Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker faced serious allegations about throwing a game, meaning that in less than one decade three of the top nine leaders in career batting average today faced allegations of match fixing in the 1920s.
A century later, MLB has likely entered another era when the link between prominent players and betting imbroglios besmirches the image of the game that the sport has long sought to project. Former All-Star Yasiel Puig could go to prison after being found guilty of obstruction of justice and making false statements to investigators, who were looking for information on an illegal gambling ring headed by Wayne Nix. “Investigators alleged that Puig denied he had placed bets with Nix despite evidence establishing that he made 899 wagers with the former minor league pitcher on football and basketball games and tennis matches from July to September 2019.”18 These bets occurred during Puig’s last MLB season; his last game in the majors took place on September 27, 2019.
As media outlets continue to cut the number of reporters covering sports, including sports betting, the role of governmental officials in holding league officials to account to ensure the integrity of the game and to protect the public health of competitors and spectators alike, the role of state and federal elected officials will likely continue to increase in importance to keep MLB from sabotaging itself in single-minded pursuit of the almighty dollar.19
MARK S. STERNMAN serves as Chief of Staff to Massachusetts State Senator John F. Keenan. Sternman has also worked for two other Massachusetts State Senators as well as a US Senator and a US Representative from Massachusetts. A native New Yorker, Sternman roots for the Yankees even though he has had a partial season-ticket plan for the Boston Red Sox since the dark year of 2004.
Notes
1. Santul Nerkar and Jenny Vrentas, “Two Major League Baseball Pitchers Are Charged in Gambling Investigation,” New York Times, November 9, 2025: D2.
2. “Cantwell, Cruz Request Information from Major League Baseball on Allegations of Gambling Corruption,” United States Senate, November 18, 2025, http://www.cantwell.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cantwell-cruz-request-information-from-major-league-baseball-on-allegations-of-gambling-corruption (accessed February 2, 2026).
3. Jordan Smith, “Is Gambling Becoming a Public Health Crisis?” Harvard Magazine, February 10, 2025, http://www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/03/harvard-research-gambling-public-health-crisis (accessed February 12, 2026).
4. “Governor DeWine Calls on Casino Control Commission to Remove Prop Bets Following MLB Investigation, Previous Player Threats,” Ohio.gov, July 31, 2025, http://governor.ohio.gov/media/news-and-media/governor-dewine-calls-on-casino-control-commission-to-remove-prop-bets-following-mlb-investigation-previous-player-threats (accessed January 23, 2026).
5. Telephone interview with Les Bernal, January 26, 2026.
6. Julie Carr Smyth, “DeWine Regrets Signing Bill that Legalized Sports Betting in Ohio,” Dayton Daily News, November 27, 2025: A8.
7. Massachusetts House of Representatives Bill Summary, http://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H4037/CommitteeSummary (accessed February 12, 2026).
8. Email from Charlie Mokriski, February 4, 2026.
9. Massachusetts Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies hearing, November 13, 2025, https://malegislature.gov/. Events/Hearings/Detail/5461 (accessed February 11, 2026).
10. Email from John Saban, Chief of Staff, Office of Senator Moriarty, January 27, 2026.
11. Zoom interview with Minnesota State Senator John Marty, February 9, 2026.
12. Malik Smith, “MLB, Sportsbooks Place $200 Limit on Prop Bets in Wake of Betting Scandal,” New York Post, November 10, 2025, http://nypost.com/2025/11/10/sports/mlb-sportsbooks-place-200-limit-on-prop-bets-in-wake-of-betting-scandal/ (accessed February 9, 2026).
13. Gordon Wittenmyer, “MLB Credits Ohio Governor Mike Dewine with ‘Leadership’ on New Gambling Restrictions,” Cincinnati Enquirer, November 10, 2025: 2D. https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/mlb/reds/2025/11/10/mlb-credits-ohio-gov-mike-dewine-for-new-gambling-restrictions/87201425007/.
14. Email from Harry Levant, January 25, 2026.
15. Saban email.
16. Evan Drellich, “Rob Manfred Talks Prop Betting Restrictions: ‘I’m Glad We’ve Done Something About It’,” The Athletic, November 19, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6820762/2025/11/19/mlb-commissioner-rob-manfred-owners-meetings/ (accessed February 2, 2026).
17. “Blumenthal & Tonko Reintroduce SAFE Bet Act Addressing Sports Gambling,” United States Senate, March 12, 2025, https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blumenthal-and-tonko-reintroduce-safe-bet-act-addressing-sports-gambling (accessed February 11, 2026).
18. Steve Henson, “Yasiel Puig Found Guilty in Gambling Case, Faces Up to 20 Years in Prison,” Los Angeles Times, February 6, 2026, http://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2026-02-06/yasiel-puig-guilty-verdict-gambling-trial-dodgers (accessed February 9, 2026).
19. “Gambling Scandals, the Surging Popularity of Women’s Leagues, and an Upcoming World Cup that Will Be Co-Hosted by the US Make for Great Stories That There Are Now Fewer Reporters to Cover.” Aidan Ryan, “Sports Journalism Takes Another Hit,” Boston Globe, February 5, 2026: A6.