November 16, 2025 • 31 mins
It’s a known fact that MLB players can’t bet on baseball, but what happens if they do and are caught? Cleveland players Luis Ortiz and Emmanual Clase are currently suspended without pay and being looked into for sports betting. How will this affect them individually, and the team as a whole?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Shady Dealings.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We have two big stories that have come out over
the last couple of weeks, many of which I will
be referencing from the Athletic. The guys and girls over
there do such a great job of reporting some of
the best in the business. And both of these stories
have multiple articles covering them. So we have a little
(00:34):
bit of shady dealings, a double feature, two stories, and
we're gonna get into it. And obviously the first one
we're gonna start with is the big one, the big
ticket item. What a lot of people are wondering what
the heck is going on and what does it all mean.
We had the Cleveland Guardians pitchers Luis l Ortiz and
(00:54):
Emmanuel Claus indicted for well betting and then influencing the
games in which they were playing in, and we were
hoping this wasn't what actually happened, and it turns out
it might be. Now there are still gonna be trials,
(01:15):
and this is going to be an ongoing process, and
there's going to be a lot of discovery and evidence
put forward and rebuttals made and all that kind of stuff.
So we're not going to draw any judgments on what
actually happened what didn't. But some of this stuff at
least reported in The Athletic by Zach mysel I believe
did much of this reporting, with a pickup by Ken
Rosenthal also participated in the latest article covering it. But basically,
(01:40):
we're just going to go through this whole situation, and
I'm gonna treat it like a trend on the internet
where I am going to explain the thing using a
mind map. If you don't know what my map is,
it's gonna involve the whiteboard. We're gonna have a lot
of fun with it. But we're going to try to
figure out all the points that happened, how it all
kind of unraveled, and what compellitive evidence points to one
(02:05):
way or the other, what was going on, and then
what could that could possibly mean for not only these
guys and not only for the Cleveland Guardians, but just
baseball and betting and just everything involved. I have a
lot to say, So we're gonna we're gonna go right
into it. Okay, let's so these three articles are the
ones I'm gonna be referencing. Okay, we have what we
know about MLB's gambling investigation. This was put up in
(02:27):
July of last year. This is the day that classe
A got suspended after Ortiz had three weeks before prior,
So at this point we know both those guys are up.
This was actually then updated on November ninth after the
indictments came out, and then we also are going to
do get into this one with more information, and then
(02:49):
we had the last one where there's where we were
able to get some texts and stuff reported on. So
now we know exactly how some of the communications happened,
and it's looking worse and worse and worse for the
two gentlemen. So as always, I highly recommend checking out
Zach's prior work and everything else he does. He does
a really good job. But also read the full articles
(03:10):
on the Athletic if possible. They you know, they have
a very affordable subscription system and I think they do
a really a job and there's a lot of content there.
So if you are looking to support a publication directly,
I would highly recommend them as one of them. But
obviously do whatever you need to do in that your
(03:31):
life needs you to do. Okay, so let's get into
the facts. Okay, here's the general gist of what's happening
for anyone who's missed it or maybe hasn't read super newent,
they know that's going on, but they don't know exactly
what happened. Basically, both Emmanuel Clause and Luis la Ortiz
were indicted, meaning they were officially charged formally charged with
(03:55):
the following charges. Wire fraud conspiracy, honest services fraud conspiracy,
which is kind of like, hey, you know, I'll change
what I do if you give me money for it, right,
Conspiracy to influence sporting contest by bribery kind of the
offshoot of the prior one, and then money laundering conspiracy
and the potential sentence so if they got maximum for
(04:17):
every charge put out, it could be up to sixty
five years in prison if convicted on all charges. So
that's the type of thing we're talking about here. Now,
this is white collar crime. It's a lot of money
moving and stuff. Very rarely is the maximum sentence given
out for those things, right, because the harm a lot
(04:39):
of times is to institutions. It's hard to prove that
you're truly harming indirect people, and usually harsher premisions go
for that. So just putting that out there, but still
the potential is terrifying if you were them, and kind
of eye opening if you are just following along like
we are. Now that's just you know, that is just
how the law is covering this. But we also have
(05:02):
rules in baseball, so they're going to have something as well.
We've talked about this a lot. We've talked about a
lot with the Pete Rose was when he was posthumously reinstated.
Along with the black socks and stuff, we talked about
Rule twenty one, the rule that is read to every
Major League Baseball team word for word by some executive
(05:25):
from the team in spring training every year. Get it,
and then you get a hand out put on your like,
there's no excuse to not know what this is. It's
a one page thing, and there's two major clauses which
these guys are probably going to be affected by. We
have Rule two twenty one D Section two and twenty
one D Section three. Any player, umpire, or club or
(05:45):
league official or employees shall bet any some whatsoever upon
a baseball game in connection with which that better has
a duty to perform, shall be declared permanently ineligible. This
happened recently to an umpire right that was suspended after
the Believe during the twenty three season and was declared
ineligible last year. I am blake on his name, but
(06:06):
we covered that as well. And then d or Part
three will also probably apply betting with illegal bookmakers because
it's not always the legal bookmakers, right, could just be
like insider trading and you're just like doing with your family.
This wouldn't wouldn't come in. But there is additional outside
of just being eligible. There is additional things that can
happen penalty based on circumstances at the commissioner's distress. I'm
(06:28):
never a fan of Rob having any discretion over a punishment,
but that is in play here. So these are two
things to keep in mind. There's no excuse to not
to know these, and these are the two that are
probably the biggest ones rules broken. So keep that in mind.
There's two things here. There's MLB punishment and then there's
legal punishment. Obviously, legal punishment comes takes precedent, and nothing
(06:50):
will probably be given out by MLB untel. Legal punishment
is covered, so just know that that is kind of
how things are going to play out here. Okay, moving on,
So we're going to get into we're gonna get into
how this thing, the whole thing's played out with our
(07:12):
handy dandy whiteboard, and I have pre I've pre prepared,
I have pre prepared some information which I am waiting
for it to pop up there it is. Okay, So
this is how we're going to do this, and I'm
going to try to visualize because there's a lot of
(07:33):
moving pieces here. There's a lot of different things going on,
and this is just fun because I can point out
what the heck's going on. All right, So now here's
the information we needed. We know right now. Manuel Classe
and Louis Elotz both suspended in July this year, with
pay the twenty eighth for Class A. He was a
second and Ortiz was on the third. He was the
(07:56):
first one, the in satie event, the one that maybe
brought that brought us all the attention to this whole thing. Okay,
so here's how it worked. They focused on prop bets. Okay,
So if you don't know what a prop bet is,
a prop bet is a bet on a very specific outcome,
on a very specific event in a game. Baseball loves
(08:19):
prop bets because there's so many things that are happening right.
One thing they really focused on for these two guys,
or the prop bets that were focused on the most,
they thought that they were the most confident that they
would get the outcome they wanted was pitch result like
a ball or a strike or a hit or whatever,
and velocity. So the interesting thing is the velocity is
(08:39):
always an over under, so like basically, depending on the
pitch you throw, you can kind of game that, and
I think they saw that opportunity. So for example, manual
class A throws one hundred miles an hour of this
fastball and a slider's ninety miles an hour. Okay, he
doesn't have to do anything differently to make those things
way different. So if the line is ninety five, you'd
throw a slider if you want to below that, you
want to throw a fastball if you want to be
(09:00):
above it. That's the gist of things. So we're gonna
go off v lo here and we're gonna go off result. Okay.
So that's how we were doing these bets. So the
pattern usually was, like I just said, they picked the
(09:21):
pitch and then generally either way they would just throw
it in the dirt. Crats pop quiz what has.
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Speaker 2 (10:34):
So we're focusing on throwing it in the dirt so
that we can guarantee it's a ball and we can
make sure that nothing actionable is going to happen on
the pitch. Now, there is one pitch that got out
of the way here, we'll cover that in a second,
but that is kind of felt automatic at that point,
and that's why they honed in on this side of things.
And like I already mentioned, the v LO differences were
(10:56):
the biggest thing. So this is kind of how this
is kind of how they ran through it. Okay, So
there was communication involved and Classe was kind of the
guy that led this. There is evidence we will talk
about this in a minute where we go through the timeline,
but there is evidence in twenty twenty three that he
was already doing it before Luis l Ortis was even
on the Guardians with him. So we're gonna do their
(11:17):
timelines after this, we'll do class, then we will do
our keys. So there were two ways of communication. They texted.
Some of these texts were crazy timed. I'll talk about
that in a minute. And then there were also calls,
many of which were in game. So like we had
(11:39):
the closer that's supposed to be in the bullpen fielding
calls ten minutes before he pitched. I don't even know.
That's crazy allegedly, allegedly that's what was happening. I don't
know if it was actually him or somebody else with
his phone. Either way, it's kind of crazy, but like
I don't even I'm trying to think about how it
seemed possible being a reliever myself, and that's that's insane.
(12:01):
So we were going through text, we're going through calls.
There's a big call and text paper trail and a
lot of other evidence. It's gonna gonna come out as well.
And when things didn't go well, there were gifts, like
gifts exchanged as well, so and then there was a
paper trail. So this is how they're catching these guys. Right,
we have the text, we have calls. There's paper trail
(12:23):
where they can track how much money was won because
that's all tracked on the apps they were using. And
then they can they can they have bank records to
see how much money was changing hands beforehand too, because
that that also happened at times. So overall, Class A,
the paper trail, Class A netted co conspiracors over four
hundred k, which is crazy. Orties netted them over sixty
(12:49):
k ok sixty k plus Okay, so that's total total
about four hundred and fifty k plus total. Okay, so
that's what we're talking about. We're talking about up to
a half a million dollars one over a two year period,
(13:09):
by the by the conspirators that were helping the betters,
the people putting in the bets, because at no point
did either one of these guys put a bet directly
on their own name in their own account, because obviously
that's how you get caught the fastest, like that's a
direct link. They tried to create some of these these
(13:30):
these steps between them so they didn't get caught, Okay.
So that is how the whole thing kind of played
out over two years. The investigation started in July. They've
now found things, and they've been died and all of this,
all of this is going to play in. Okay. So
let's talk about specifically Emmanuel Clause's timeline, because he was
(13:52):
kind of the ring leader and it began the first
pitch in question was May nineteenth, twenty twenty three, of
all times. Now, when we first covered this story in July,
we quoted a tweet from friend of the show and
friend fellow YouTuber Foolish Bailey, who posted a bunch of
(14:13):
videos of Amanul class A spiking first pitch, fastballs and
sliders to start innings over a period of time. It
turns out that I believe every single one of these
pitches was in that montage and he didn't have any
additional information. He just went and found it. So just
a YouTuber, a data YouTuber found this immediately, like he
(14:36):
found it so fast. Isn't that like if that, if
that is what was happening, that was way too easy
to catch. So just throwing it out there. Shout out
to Foolish Bailey for his work on Okay, so let's
talk about each one of these pitches really quick. I'm
gonna go through it. May nineteen. The first one, the
better's one twenty seven K, and that day Class actually
(15:02):
blew that save, so this was worth twenty seven K.
This one was worth thirty eight k for his conspirators.
This was a slider designo that bopped up and hit
him and he had to take a time out. So
we have a blown save, a rattled catcher. Then on
(15:26):
June seventh, we have fifty eight thousand dollars changing hands.
So if you notice these are going up, we're getting
a little bit embolden here, and this is where we
had another slider spiked in the dirt and it was
just spiked again. So no one got hurt on this one,
but it could have been. So these three have been
(15:49):
the same thing, like he's he's like, I think we
have a pattern here and that this is where the
text chain starts to go and they start to like
coordinate a little bit more. I think there, I think
he ran a test run. It seems like for a
few weeks nothing got flagged, so we're gonna keep going.
And with all accounts, they didn't catch until Ortiz joined
in for years later. So then we moved forward to
(16:12):
twenty fifteen, so we did. Those were the three. Those
three were in one year. Nothing happened in twenty twenty four,
which was the year he almost he was in the
finals for the cy Young So if we were wondering, like,
how'd he pitched so well that year, it's because he
didn't do any of this in twenty twenty four, or
at least there's no evidence of that at this moment,
or they didn't find any then this coming season in
May thirteenth, twenty twenty five, that's when the texts started
(16:35):
to happen. Okay, so this one, Classe actually provided twenty
five hundred dollars, so basically Classe funded this one, gave
it to the betters, and then they won thirty five
one hundred, So I mean, okay, that doesn't seem worth it,
but it was a positive. There was a text that says,
(16:57):
however much you can twenty five hundred and under, so
basically they didn't want to get flagged. Twenty five hundred
was the maximum for some reason. And then the Better
came over to Classi's house after, so there is that
connection has been made. And then in the seventeenth we
have Class A texted the Better are you ready the responsors,
But of course ten minutes later ten thousand dollars was made,
(17:20):
so ten k was made on this. And this is
texts during the game. So now I need to pause
here for a second. We had text during the game
when you were a reliever and you know you're going
in the game, like texting somebody, especially in Cleveland, the
(17:42):
bullpen is there's no way to get to the Like
you can't go back to the clubhouse really quick when
you're in the bullpen and then run back right you
like the bullpen's way out there, it's up a thousand stairs,
Like you can't do you have to take your phone
with you. So again there's a chance. And it didn't
say and I don't think we have this information yet,
we will probably come out during the trial. Is someone
(18:02):
else could have been doing the texting? I don't know
how or why or why do you text ready if
there's no community. So let's if we're assuming it's class.
He has his phone with him in the bullpen, so
he takes his phone and because of the timing of this,
like he must have been warming up, went to the bathroom, texted,
went back out and warmed up. That's crazy, that's so risky,
(18:25):
that's insane. Having your phone out and out in the
out in the bullpen is already the biggest no on
the planet. So it's like how you even hide it
from your teammates. So now you're hiding stuff from your teammates,
and you're hiding stuff, it's it's nuts. If that's what
was happening. Now, that's just I'm conjecture here at this point,
because we don't know exactly when he was doing it,
but like, if he was, that's nuts. Okay. So later
that month we have we have another one against the
(18:51):
Dodgers pregame text so now we are texting every single time,
and this one was worth uh, this was worth nothing
because Andy Pai swung. So this is the one that
did not work because it was a spiked first pitch
at the inning and he Pie has swung at it.
And so after this they text each other. I can't
believe that just happened. Shout out to Piez for thwarting
(19:15):
a betting scandal. That is, I mean, for lack of
a better term, hilarious. Okay. And then the last recorded
one we have is April twenty six, and this was
another one eleven K was won by the betters, and
it was on a pitch below ninety seven point twenty
five Miles Prower. Okay, that doesn't say them out. You
(19:39):
got it. You get it. So like he threw a slider,
He threw a slider in the dirt and pie swung
on it first pitch. That was the night before. Sorry,
and so he just threw a slider here, doesn't matter
if it's strike ball, whatever, it just has to be
under ninety seven. That's the best way he can he
can do that, and he did it. So all of
these pitches, all of these pitches have been flagged and
then we have the indictment having up here.
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Speaker 2 (21:08):
So all of this accounts for over four hundred thousand
dollars in money changing hands. And then we're gonna really
quickly cover our ties. So I'm gonna let's get into
Orchises timeline real quick. Come on, thank you, so URTIZI
lands the two pitches. They were the same pitches from
the original suspension. This is this is allegedly when he
(21:31):
was recruited by Classe A and there was an agreement
that both of them would share in the winnings. Okay,
so for example, Class receives a payment, so one of
these would be the payment for the first one. Here
was five thousand dollars to Orties plus five k also
(21:59):
to Class A. So like they're splitting the winnings. Now
at this point, if our teases doing it because he's
a starting pitcher, there's more opportunities. That was probably where
this a lot of this came from. They both get
a little bit of a kickback. So now Class is
trying to double dip in this thing, even though and
he's also doing it as well. I think that he
was emboldened by the first successful run happening and nothing
(22:21):
kind of coming of it. And then June twenty seventh
was the last time it went up and the payment
the payment increased to seven k to each. So now
we are we are we're kicking it up a little bit.
But now we're seeing a lot of patterns here. Right,
These pitches seem a lot more organized to me. And
(22:46):
when things seem systematic, systematic and organized, that's when they
start to get caught. And then you have all of
the texts as well that are very easy to get
once you open the investigation, which is probably when the
investigation was open. This stuff went really really fast. So
so at the end of the day this seven k
right here. Uh, they both made twelve k with the
(23:11):
winnings as well, so it went to twelve k each.
All right, So we've already covered how much went places
and where it went and a lot of this stuff
feels very damning at this point. It's it's kind of
tough for me to watch, frankly, because there is a
(23:33):
boldness to the way this was done that it's not
surprising they were caught, but also the motivation is what's
what's what's interesting to me, And I want to talk
a little bit about what all this means, because you know,
we're going to have we're gonna have lasting implications. Okay,
(23:54):
there's a lot there's a lot of people who are
going to be affected or a lot of things gonna
be affected. First of all, there's gonna be the Guardians. Okay,
so the Guardians. They lose, they lose closer, who was
on a team friendly and one of the best in
the league. They lose their closer, and they lose starting
(24:18):
pitcher sp who was young and controllable. I hate that word,
but it is apt here. So they're gonna lose a
starting pitcher, and they lose a very good closer which
was very controllable and also very cheap and also very tradable.
So he was so valuable as a player. And to
have it kind of go away over something this not
(24:42):
that lucrative, And it's also you have to like lounder this,
like there's no you have to hide this money and
it's not really like you're betting paid way more. It
doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense to me.
But like if they never return, like how to replace
these guys, Like how how is the Guardians going to
(25:06):
replace those two very big roles? But if any team
is good at like finding value for not so much money,
it's it's the Guardians. And it turned out to not
really matter because they had to win the division anyways.
So moving forward, let me just scroll down the chat.
Sorry I'm missing a lot of chat here. Okay, So
(25:29):
the Guardians very adversely affected, and there are some financial
obligations as well, So like what happens to the money? Right?
What happens to the money? Do we class? He is
currently on a five year, twenty million dollar extension signed
through twenty twenty seven, so he two more years on it.
So what he had left to be paid is four
(25:51):
point nine and six point four million, which is crazy low,
so low. He's still a class is owned classe owed
ten million, give or take right plus ten million plus,
so he's not going to get that money. There's there's
a very low chance he comes back in pitches, even
if the even if he's not indicted, or he is
(26:14):
indicted already, even if he's not convicted. Now nothing's owed
to our ties, right, so like that just he doesn't
have guaranteed money, so there's nothing on the books for him.
So if anything, the Guardians are gonna save ten million dollars,
but they're gonna lose one of the best closers and
that trade off is not good. You can't get a
lot more for that. So but there is finances to
(26:37):
do with it. I don't know why we make the
decision when we're making this much money to forego that,
all right, but then there's an impact on the game itself, right,
the game now there's question marks around that, and there's
some really interesting things that are going to come out. Right,
So one like, hoolulnerable is the game that this is
(27:04):
happening now? Like how vulnerable is this system to being?
Like is it happening a lot? Can it happen again?
Like how far could you take this? How far? Like
what's the punishment going to be?
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Like?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Right, are are like education and prevention measures enough? Are
we doing enough to make sure people don't do this?
Because the ban for life thing clearly wasn't a big
enough deterrent for people, which I feel like that's the
biggest deterrent that could possibly have. I don't know what
else you can threaten, frankly, be like, hey, you're going
to be banned forever and not making any money, and
guys like okay, and then to do it anyway like
(27:38):
that's I don't know what else you can say. At
that point, I feel like they've gone as far as
they can. Right, So if you're permanently and eligible, you're
just not involved with the game anymore. There's nothing you
really do. So who else if it's this easy, who
else is doing it? Who else part of this?
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Like I mentioned with someone else? Have the phone? Is
there other? Is there other players involved? Did other players know?
Did other players say, Hey, man, I don't want anything
to do with that, because that's entirely possible. Who knows, right,
it's pop? I don't know, but it might have happened.
But that's another question. It's more people gonna come out,
and is it gonna hurt other people? And how far?
How like how connected do you have to be for
(28:22):
the Major League Baseball to care enough and then the
legal side to care enough for them to be conspirators? Right?
And then can we talk about integrity? How's this gonna
affect fans trust? Because there's always a meme going around
on the internet that the game's rigged. People are buying
(28:44):
World Series whatever. Now we have this, Now that's going
to be thrown around like crazy. We're already we already
see like Otani. Everyone gets mad at Otani because they
think he was doing the betting or whatever, and like
there's just no evidence of it, but whatever, Like you know,
they're just not gonna let it go. This this is proof,
there's like very strong proof. So if convictions happen here,
how like how how irrep parably is the game gonna
(29:06):
be When you can't trust what you're looking at. It's
like it's like AI slop, Like we don't know it's
real or not. Now it's happening in sports. That is
not exciting for me. So, I mean, we're gonna have
to see like what what are what is regulation? What? What? Like?
What regulation is gonna come from this? I doubt anything.
I don't I don't trust anyone to regulate anything at
(29:27):
the moment. How is how is the betting industry gonna
gonna try to crack down this stuff because they already
have third party watchdogs they're trying to catch this stuff.
They don't want it to happen because they don't want
it to feel they don't want their integrity hit either.
So is there gonna be more there? Is it just
more people watching? I don't know. I don't know how
you can nip this in the bud fast enough to
(29:48):
where this stuff doesn't happen, because in the scope of everything,
this is like the amount of money. It's a good
amount of money, but like it's nothing close to what
like happened in the tany thing, and even in terms
of the money there and the market as a whole,
it's it's barely a drop on the bucket. So like
it doesn't seem worth it. But like is that enough?
I don't know. I don't know, and we're not going
(30:10):
to know until this thing plays out, Okay. So, and
the last big one for me, especially in the in
the in the convictions, is like, how how do punishments
change if like the games really didn't like the outcomes
generally didn't change that much. There was one blown save
in there, but like he still pitched really well, both
(30:31):
of them did. So like the game outcome isn't it
is that factor into much? Or is it just every
individual event it can be seen as his own game.
We'll see and that I think there's gonna be a
lot a lot of precedent put together, and we're gonna
get guidelines for all this stuff's handled in the future.
So it's it's crazy, it's crazy. I'm baffled, but like
(30:53):
it's funny. Everything that it pointed to at the beginning
is kind of what happened, and so it's it's gonna
be interesting to watch how this thing plays out and
when you.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Do mm hmmmmmmm mmmmmm mm hmmm
Shady Dealings.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
We have two big stories that have come out over
the last couple of weeks, many of which I will
be referencing from the Athletic. The guys and girls over
there do such a great job of reporting some of
the best in the business. And both of these stories
have multiple articles covering them. So we have a little
(00:34):
bit of shady dealings, a double feature, two stories, and
we're gonna get into it. And obviously the first one
we're gonna start with is the big one, the big
ticket item. What a lot of people are wondering what
the heck is going on and what does it all mean.
We had the Cleveland Guardians pitchers Luis l Ortiz and
(00:54):
Emmanuel Claus indicted for well betting and then influencing the
games in which they were playing in, and we were
hoping this wasn't what actually happened, and it turns out
it might be. Now there are still gonna be trials,
(01:15):
and this is going to be an ongoing process, and
there's going to be a lot of discovery and evidence
put forward and rebuttals made and all that kind of stuff.
So we're not going to draw any judgments on what
actually happened what didn't. But some of this stuff at
least reported in The Athletic by Zach mysel I believe
did much of this reporting, with a pickup by Ken
Rosenthal also participated in the latest article covering it. But basically,
(01:40):
we're just going to go through this whole situation, and
I'm gonna treat it like a trend on the internet
where I am going to explain the thing using a
mind map. If you don't know what my map is,
it's gonna involve the whiteboard. We're gonna have a lot
of fun with it. But we're going to try to
figure out all the points that happened, how it all
kind of unraveled, and what compellitive evidence points to one
(02:05):
way or the other, what was going on, and then
what could that could possibly mean for not only these
guys and not only for the Cleveland Guardians, but just
baseball and betting and just everything involved. I have a
lot to say, So we're gonna we're gonna go right
into it. Okay, let's so these three articles are the
ones I'm gonna be referencing. Okay, we have what we
know about MLB's gambling investigation. This was put up in
(02:27):
July of last year. This is the day that classe
A got suspended after Ortiz had three weeks before prior,
So at this point we know both those guys are up.
This was actually then updated on November ninth after the
indictments came out, and then we also are going to
do get into this one with more information, and then
(02:49):
we had the last one where there's where we were
able to get some texts and stuff reported on. So
now we know exactly how some of the communications happened,
and it's looking worse and worse and worse for the
two gentlemen. So as always, I highly recommend checking out
Zach's prior work and everything else he does. He does
a really good job. But also read the full articles
(03:10):
on the Athletic if possible. They you know, they have
a very affordable subscription system and I think they do
a really a job and there's a lot of content there.
So if you are looking to support a publication directly,
I would highly recommend them as one of them. But
obviously do whatever you need to do in that your
(03:31):
life needs you to do. Okay, so let's get into
the facts. Okay, here's the general gist of what's happening
for anyone who's missed it or maybe hasn't read super newent,
they know that's going on, but they don't know exactly
what happened. Basically, both Emmanuel Clause and Luis la Ortiz
were indicted, meaning they were officially charged formally charged with
(03:55):
the following charges. Wire fraud conspiracy, honest services fraud conspiracy,
which is kind of like, hey, you know, I'll change
what I do if you give me money for it, right,
Conspiracy to influence sporting contest by bribery kind of the
offshoot of the prior one, and then money laundering conspiracy
and the potential sentence so if they got maximum for
(04:17):
every charge put out, it could be up to sixty
five years in prison if convicted on all charges. So
that's the type of thing we're talking about here. Now,
this is white collar crime. It's a lot of money
moving and stuff. Very rarely is the maximum sentence given
out for those things, right, because the harm a lot
(04:39):
of times is to institutions. It's hard to prove that
you're truly harming indirect people, and usually harsher premisions go
for that. So just putting that out there, but still
the potential is terrifying if you were them, and kind
of eye opening if you are just following along like
we are. Now that's just you know, that is just
how the law is covering this. But we also have
(05:02):
rules in baseball, so they're going to have something as well.
We've talked about this a lot. We've talked about a
lot with the Pete Rose was when he was posthumously reinstated.
Along with the black socks and stuff, we talked about
Rule twenty one, the rule that is read to every
Major League Baseball team word for word by some executive
(05:25):
from the team in spring training every year. Get it,
and then you get a hand out put on your like,
there's no excuse to not know what this is. It's
a one page thing, and there's two major clauses which
these guys are probably going to be affected by. We
have Rule two twenty one D Section two and twenty
one D Section three. Any player, umpire, or club or
(05:45):
league official or employees shall bet any some whatsoever upon
a baseball game in connection with which that better has
a duty to perform, shall be declared permanently ineligible. This
happened recently to an umpire right that was suspended after
the Believe during the twenty three season and was declared
ineligible last year. I am blake on his name, but
(06:06):
we covered that as well. And then d or Part
three will also probably apply betting with illegal bookmakers because
it's not always the legal bookmakers, right, could just be
like insider trading and you're just like doing with your family.
This wouldn't wouldn't come in. But there is additional outside
of just being eligible. There is additional things that can
happen penalty based on circumstances at the commissioner's distress. I'm
(06:28):
never a fan of Rob having any discretion over a punishment,
but that is in play here. So these are two
things to keep in mind. There's no excuse to not
to know these, and these are the two that are
probably the biggest ones rules broken. So keep that in mind.
There's two things here. There's MLB punishment and then there's
legal punishment. Obviously, legal punishment comes takes precedent, and nothing
(06:50):
will probably be given out by MLB untel. Legal punishment
is covered, so just know that that is kind of
how things are going to play out here. Okay, moving on,
So we're going to get into we're gonna get into
how this thing, the whole thing's played out with our
(07:12):
handy dandy whiteboard, and I have pre I've pre prepared,
I have pre prepared some information which I am waiting
for it to pop up there it is. Okay, So
this is how we're going to do this, and I'm
going to try to visualize because there's a lot of
(07:33):
moving pieces here. There's a lot of different things going on,
and this is just fun because I can point out
what the heck's going on. All right, So now here's
the information we needed. We know right now. Manuel Classe
and Louis Elotz both suspended in July this year, with
pay the twenty eighth for Class A. He was a
second and Ortiz was on the third. He was the
(07:56):
first one, the in satie event, the one that maybe
brought that brought us all the attention to this whole thing. Okay,
so here's how it worked. They focused on prop bets. Okay,
So if you don't know what a prop bet is,
a prop bet is a bet on a very specific outcome,
on a very specific event in a game. Baseball loves
(08:19):
prop bets because there's so many things that are happening right.
One thing they really focused on for these two guys,
or the prop bets that were focused on the most,
they thought that they were the most confident that they
would get the outcome they wanted was pitch result like
a ball or a strike or a hit or whatever,
and velocity. So the interesting thing is the velocity is
(08:39):
always an over under, so like basically, depending on the
pitch you throw, you can kind of game that, and
I think they saw that opportunity. So for example, manual
class A throws one hundred miles an hour of this
fastball and a slider's ninety miles an hour. Okay, he
doesn't have to do anything differently to make those things
way different. So if the line is ninety five, you'd
throw a slider if you want to below that, you
want to throw a fastball if you want to be
(09:00):
above it. That's the gist of things. So we're gonna
go off v lo here and we're gonna go off result. Okay.
So that's how we were doing these bets. So the
pattern usually was, like I just said, they picked the
(09:21):
pitch and then generally either way they would just throw
it in the dirt. Crats pop quiz what has.
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Speaker 2 (10:34):
So we're focusing on throwing it in the dirt so
that we can guarantee it's a ball and we can
make sure that nothing actionable is going to happen on
the pitch. Now, there is one pitch that got out
of the way here, we'll cover that in a second,
but that is kind of felt automatic at that point,
and that's why they honed in on this side of things.
And like I already mentioned, the v LO differences were
(10:56):
the biggest thing. So this is kind of how this
is kind of how they ran through it. Okay, So
there was communication involved and Classe was kind of the
guy that led this. There is evidence we will talk
about this in a minute where we go through the timeline,
but there is evidence in twenty twenty three that he
was already doing it before Luis l Ortis was even
on the Guardians with him. So we're gonna do their
(11:17):
timelines after this, we'll do class, then we will do
our keys. So there were two ways of communication. They texted.
Some of these texts were crazy timed. I'll talk about
that in a minute. And then there were also calls,
many of which were in game. So like we had
(11:39):
the closer that's supposed to be in the bullpen fielding
calls ten minutes before he pitched. I don't even know.
That's crazy allegedly, allegedly that's what was happening. I don't
know if it was actually him or somebody else with
his phone. Either way, it's kind of crazy, but like
I don't even I'm trying to think about how it
seemed possible being a reliever myself, and that's that's insane.
(12:01):
So we were going through text, we're going through calls.
There's a big call and text paper trail and a
lot of other evidence. It's gonna gonna come out as well.
And when things didn't go well, there were gifts, like
gifts exchanged as well, so and then there was a
paper trail. So this is how they're catching these guys. Right,
we have the text, we have calls. There's paper trail
(12:23):
where they can track how much money was won because
that's all tracked on the apps they were using. And
then they can they can they have bank records to
see how much money was changing hands beforehand too, because
that that also happened at times. So overall, Class A,
the paper trail, Class A netted co conspiracors over four
hundred k, which is crazy. Orties netted them over sixty
(12:49):
k ok sixty k plus Okay, so that's total total
about four hundred and fifty k plus total. Okay, so
that's what we're talking about. We're talking about up to
a half a million dollars one over a two year period,
(13:09):
by the by the conspirators that were helping the betters,
the people putting in the bets, because at no point
did either one of these guys put a bet directly
on their own name in their own account, because obviously
that's how you get caught the fastest, like that's a
direct link. They tried to create some of these these
(13:30):
these steps between them so they didn't get caught, Okay.
So that is how the whole thing kind of played
out over two years. The investigation started in July. They've
now found things, and they've been died and all of this,
all of this is going to play in. Okay. So
let's talk about specifically Emmanuel Clause's timeline, because he was
(13:52):
kind of the ring leader and it began the first
pitch in question was May nineteenth, twenty twenty three, of
all times. Now, when we first covered this story in July,
we quoted a tweet from friend of the show and
friend fellow YouTuber Foolish Bailey, who posted a bunch of
(14:13):
videos of Amanul class A spiking first pitch, fastballs and
sliders to start innings over a period of time. It
turns out that I believe every single one of these
pitches was in that montage and he didn't have any
additional information. He just went and found it. So just
a YouTuber, a data YouTuber found this immediately, like he
(14:36):
found it so fast. Isn't that like if that, if
that is what was happening, that was way too easy
to catch. So just throwing it out there. Shout out
to Foolish Bailey for his work on Okay, so let's
talk about each one of these pitches really quick. I'm
gonna go through it. May nineteen. The first one, the
better's one twenty seven K, and that day Class actually
(15:02):
blew that save, so this was worth twenty seven K.
This one was worth thirty eight k for his conspirators.
This was a slider designo that bopped up and hit
him and he had to take a time out. So
we have a blown save, a rattled catcher. Then on
(15:26):
June seventh, we have fifty eight thousand dollars changing hands.
So if you notice these are going up, we're getting
a little bit embolden here, and this is where we
had another slider spiked in the dirt and it was
just spiked again. So no one got hurt on this one,
but it could have been. So these three have been
(15:49):
the same thing, like he's he's like, I think we
have a pattern here and that this is where the
text chain starts to go and they start to like
coordinate a little bit more. I think there, I think
he ran a test run. It seems like for a
few weeks nothing got flagged, so we're gonna keep going.
And with all accounts, they didn't catch until Ortiz joined
in for years later. So then we moved forward to
(16:12):
twenty fifteen, so we did. Those were the three. Those
three were in one year. Nothing happened in twenty twenty four,
which was the year he almost he was in the
finals for the cy Young So if we were wondering, like,
how'd he pitched so well that year, it's because he
didn't do any of this in twenty twenty four, or
at least there's no evidence of that at this moment,
or they didn't find any then this coming season in
May thirteenth, twenty twenty five, that's when the texts started
(16:35):
to happen. Okay, so this one, Classe actually provided twenty
five hundred dollars, so basically Classe funded this one, gave
it to the betters, and then they won thirty five
one hundred, So I mean, okay, that doesn't seem worth it,
but it was a positive. There was a text that says,
(16:57):
however much you can twenty five hundred and under, so
basically they didn't want to get flagged. Twenty five hundred
was the maximum for some reason. And then the Better
came over to Classi's house after, so there is that
connection has been made. And then in the seventeenth we
have Class A texted the Better are you ready the responsors,
But of course ten minutes later ten thousand dollars was made,
(17:20):
so ten k was made on this. And this is
texts during the game. So now I need to pause
here for a second. We had text during the game
when you were a reliever and you know you're going
in the game, like texting somebody, especially in Cleveland, the
(17:42):
bullpen is there's no way to get to the Like
you can't go back to the clubhouse really quick when
you're in the bullpen and then run back right you
like the bullpen's way out there, it's up a thousand stairs,
Like you can't do you have to take your phone
with you. So again there's a chance. And it didn't
say and I don't think we have this information yet,
we will probably come out during the trial. Is someone
(18:02):
else could have been doing the texting? I don't know
how or why or why do you text ready if
there's no community. So let's if we're assuming it's class.
He has his phone with him in the bullpen, so
he takes his phone and because of the timing of this,
like he must have been warming up, went to the bathroom, texted,
went back out and warmed up. That's crazy, that's so risky,
(18:25):
that's insane. Having your phone out and out in the
out in the bullpen is already the biggest no on
the planet. So it's like how you even hide it
from your teammates. So now you're hiding stuff from your teammates,
and you're hiding stuff, it's it's nuts. If that's what
was happening. Now, that's just I'm conjecture here at this point,
because we don't know exactly when he was doing it,
but like, if he was, that's nuts. Okay. So later
that month we have we have another one against the
(18:51):
Dodgers pregame text so now we are texting every single time,
and this one was worth uh, this was worth nothing
because Andy Pai swung. So this is the one that
did not work because it was a spiked first pitch
at the inning and he Pie has swung at it.
And so after this they text each other. I can't
believe that just happened. Shout out to Piez for thwarting
(19:15):
a betting scandal. That is, I mean, for lack of
a better term, hilarious. Okay. And then the last recorded
one we have is April twenty six, and this was
another one eleven K was won by the betters, and
it was on a pitch below ninety seven point twenty
five Miles Prower. Okay, that doesn't say them out. You
(19:39):
got it. You get it. So like he threw a slider,
He threw a slider in the dirt and pie swung
on it first pitch. That was the night before. Sorry,
and so he just threw a slider here, doesn't matter
if it's strike ball, whatever, it just has to be
under ninety seven. That's the best way he can he
can do that, and he did it. So all of
these pitches, all of these pitches have been flagged and
then we have the indictment having up here.
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Speaker 2 (21:08):
So all of this accounts for over four hundred thousand
dollars in money changing hands. And then we're gonna really
quickly cover our ties. So I'm gonna let's get into
Orchises timeline real quick. Come on, thank you, so URTIZI
lands the two pitches. They were the same pitches from
the original suspension. This is this is allegedly when he
(21:31):
was recruited by Classe A and there was an agreement
that both of them would share in the winnings. Okay,
so for example, Class receives a payment, so one of
these would be the payment for the first one. Here
was five thousand dollars to Orties plus five k also
(21:59):
to Class A. So like they're splitting the winnings. Now
at this point, if our teases doing it because he's
a starting pitcher, there's more opportunities. That was probably where
this a lot of this came from. They both get
a little bit of a kickback. So now Class is
trying to double dip in this thing, even though and
he's also doing it as well. I think that he
was emboldened by the first successful run happening and nothing
(22:21):
kind of coming of it. And then June twenty seventh
was the last time it went up and the payment
the payment increased to seven k to each. So now
we are we are we're kicking it up a little bit.
But now we're seeing a lot of patterns here. Right,
These pitches seem a lot more organized to me. And
(22:46):
when things seem systematic, systematic and organized, that's when they
start to get caught. And then you have all of
the texts as well that are very easy to get
once you open the investigation, which is probably when the
investigation was open. This stuff went really really fast. So
so at the end of the day this seven k
right here. Uh, they both made twelve k with the
(23:11):
winnings as well, so it went to twelve k each.
All right, So we've already covered how much went places
and where it went and a lot of this stuff
feels very damning at this point. It's it's kind of
tough for me to watch, frankly, because there is a
(23:33):
boldness to the way this was done that it's not
surprising they were caught, but also the motivation is what's
what's what's interesting to me, And I want to talk
a little bit about what all this means, because you know,
we're going to have we're gonna have lasting implications. Okay,
(23:54):
there's a lot there's a lot of people who are
going to be affected or a lot of things gonna
be affected. First of all, there's gonna be the Guardians. Okay,
so the Guardians. They lose, they lose closer, who was
on a team friendly and one of the best in
the league. They lose their closer, and they lose starting
(24:18):
pitcher sp who was young and controllable. I hate that word,
but it is apt here. So they're gonna lose a
starting pitcher, and they lose a very good closer which
was very controllable and also very cheap and also very tradable.
So he was so valuable as a player. And to
have it kind of go away over something this not
(24:42):
that lucrative, And it's also you have to like lounder this,
like there's no you have to hide this money and
it's not really like you're betting paid way more. It
doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense to me.
But like if they never return, like how to replace
these guys, Like how how is the Guardians going to
(25:06):
replace those two very big roles? But if any team
is good at like finding value for not so much money,
it's it's the Guardians. And it turned out to not
really matter because they had to win the division anyways.
So moving forward, let me just scroll down the chat.
Sorry I'm missing a lot of chat here. Okay, So
(25:29):
the Guardians very adversely affected, and there are some financial
obligations as well, So like what happens to the money? Right?
What happens to the money? Do we class? He is
currently on a five year, twenty million dollar extension signed
through twenty twenty seven, so he two more years on it.
So what he had left to be paid is four
(25:51):
point nine and six point four million, which is crazy low,
so low. He's still a class is owned classe owed
ten million, give or take right plus ten million plus,
so he's not going to get that money. There's there's
a very low chance he comes back in pitches, even
if the even if he's not indicted, or he is
(26:14):
indicted already, even if he's not convicted. Now nothing's owed
to our ties, right, so like that just he doesn't
have guaranteed money, so there's nothing on the books for him.
So if anything, the Guardians are gonna save ten million dollars,
but they're gonna lose one of the best closers and
that trade off is not good. You can't get a
lot more for that. So but there is finances to
(26:37):
do with it. I don't know why we make the
decision when we're making this much money to forego that,
all right, but then there's an impact on the game itself, right,
the game now there's question marks around that, and there's
some really interesting things that are going to come out. Right,
So one like, hoolulnerable is the game that this is
(27:04):
happening now? Like how vulnerable is this system to being?
Like is it happening a lot? Can it happen again?
Like how far could you take this? How far? Like
what's the punishment going to be?
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Like?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Right, are are like education and prevention measures enough? Are
we doing enough to make sure people don't do this?
Because the ban for life thing clearly wasn't a big
enough deterrent for people, which I feel like that's the
biggest deterrent that could possibly have. I don't know what
else you can threaten, frankly, be like, hey, you're going
to be banned forever and not making any money, and
guys like okay, and then to do it anyway like
(27:38):
that's I don't know what else you can say. At
that point, I feel like they've gone as far as
they can. Right, So if you're permanently and eligible, you're
just not involved with the game anymore. There's nothing you
really do. So who else if it's this easy, who
else is doing it? Who else part of this?
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Like I mentioned with someone else? Have the phone? Is
there other? Is there other players involved? Did other players know?
Did other players say, Hey, man, I don't want anything
to do with that, because that's entirely possible. Who knows, right,
it's pop? I don't know, but it might have happened.
But that's another question. It's more people gonna come out,
and is it gonna hurt other people? And how far?
How like how connected do you have to be for
(28:22):
the Major League Baseball to care enough and then the
legal side to care enough for them to be conspirators? Right?
And then can we talk about integrity? How's this gonna
affect fans trust? Because there's always a meme going around
on the internet that the game's rigged. People are buying
(28:44):
World Series whatever. Now we have this, Now that's going
to be thrown around like crazy. We're already we already
see like Otani. Everyone gets mad at Otani because they
think he was doing the betting or whatever, and like
there's just no evidence of it, but whatever, Like you know,
they're just not gonna let it go. This this is proof,
there's like very strong proof. So if convictions happen here,
how like how how irrep parably is the game gonna
(29:06):
be When you can't trust what you're looking at. It's
like it's like AI slop, Like we don't know it's
real or not. Now it's happening in sports. That is
not exciting for me. So, I mean, we're gonna have
to see like what what are what is regulation? What? What? Like?
What regulation is gonna come from this? I doubt anything.
I don't I don't trust anyone to regulate anything at
(29:27):
the moment. How is how is the betting industry gonna
gonna try to crack down this stuff because they already
have third party watchdogs they're trying to catch this stuff.
They don't want it to happen because they don't want
it to feel they don't want their integrity hit either.
So is there gonna be more there? Is it just
more people watching? I don't know. I don't know how
you can nip this in the bud fast enough to
(29:48):
where this stuff doesn't happen, because in the scope of everything,
this is like the amount of money. It's a good
amount of money, but like it's nothing close to what
like happened in the tany thing, and even in terms
of the money there and the market as a whole,
it's it's barely a drop on the bucket. So like
it doesn't seem worth it. But like is that enough?
I don't know. I don't know, and we're not going
(30:10):
to know until this thing plays out, Okay. So, and
the last big one for me, especially in the in
the in the convictions, is like, how how do punishments
change if like the games really didn't like the outcomes
generally didn't change that much. There was one blown save
in there, but like he still pitched really well, both
(30:31):
of them did. So like the game outcome isn't it
is that factor into much? Or is it just every
individual event it can be seen as his own game.
We'll see and that I think there's gonna be a
lot a lot of precedent put together, and we're gonna
get guidelines for all this stuff's handled in the future.
So it's it's crazy, it's crazy. I'm baffled, but like
(30:53):
it's funny. Everything that it pointed to at the beginning
is kind of what happened, and so it's it's gonna
be interesting to watch how this thing plays out and
when you.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Do mm hmmmmmmm mmmmmm mm hmmm
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