Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, Two MLB Pitchers, Charged in Gambling Investigation

On June 7, 2023, one of Major League Baseball’s best relief pitchers started his outing with a three-run lead and an array of pitches in his arsenal that kept hitters guessing.

But sports bettors knew exactly what pitch was coming from the reliever, Emmanuel Clase of the Cleveland Guardians, according to federal prosecutors. They bet that it would be a ball and slower than 95 miles per hour.

Mr. Clase’s pitch landed in the dirt, well outside the strike zone. The bettors made $58,000. And it wasn’t the only time, according to prosecutors.

Mr. Clase and his Guardians teammate Luis Ortiz have been charged 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, according to a federal indictment that was unsealed on Sunday in the Eastern District of New York.

Each man agreed with sports bettors on the types of pitches he would throw in upcoming games, according to the indictment. The bettors, who were not identified by prosecutors, then placed bets on the pitches being of a certain speed or type and whether they would result in balls or strikes. Mr. Clase and Mr. Ortiz received thousands of dollars in bribes from the bettors, prosecutors said.

Each man was charged with wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery.

“They defrauded the online betting platforms where the bets were placed,” said Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “And they betrayed America’s pastime.”

It is the latest indictment involving gambling to rock the world of professional sports, and the third in the past month brought by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District. The charges add to concerns about how the widespread legalization of sports betting — which sports leagues have embraced and profited from — has encouraged illicit activity that is affecting public trust in the games loved by millions of Americans.

Last month, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn brought charges against nearly three dozen defendants in two criminal cases involving gambling that featured current and former N.B.A. players. One involved an insider-trading scheme in which sports bettors used nonpublic information about the availability of players to make wagers on player and team underperformance.

Mr. Ortiz, 26, was arrested on Sunday in Boston and will appear in federal court there on Monday. Mr. Clase, 27, was not in custody as of Sunday afternoon. Kelvin Nova, Mr. Clase’s agent, declined to comment. A lawyer for Mr. Clase did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement on Sunday, Chris Georgalis, a lawyer for Mr. Ortiz, said his client was “innocent of the charges.”

“He has never, and would never, improperly influence a game — not for anyone and not for anything,” Mr. Georgalis said.

Mr. Clase has made three All-Star Games since his debut in 2019. Mr. Ortiz, a hard-throwing relief pitcher, made his major-league debut in 2022 for the Pittsburgh Pirates and joined the Guardians in 2025.

The scheme described by prosecutors involved microbets, in which gamblers wager on smaller events, like a pitch’s speed, that are often resolved quickly in the middle of a game, instead of on the outcome of the game itself.

The commissioners of several sports leagues have spoken out about curtailing such bets. Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A., said last month that he had asked the league’s partners to “pull back some of the prop bets” — betting on individual players’ performances. The N.F.L. has also worked to ban certain live bets, like betting on whether a kicker will miss a field goal.

Rob Manfred, the M.L.B. commissioner, told reporters in July that certain bets were “unnecessary and particularly vulnerable.”

According to prosecutors, the scheme stretched back to May 2023, when Mr. Clase started agreeing with bettors to throw certain pitches in forthcoming games and at-bats. Sometimes, Mr. Clase used his phone in the middle of games to coordinate bets, prosecutors said.

Often, according to the indictment, Mr. Clase would throw a fraudulent pitch on the first pitch of his relief appearance. It would usually be a ball, off-speed and in the dirt, prosecutors said. For the next two years, according to the indictment, Mr. Clase provided information to gamblers that led to more than 100 fraudulent bets being placed on his pitches.

In April 2025, Mr. Clase started asking for and receiving payments for making the agreed-on pitches, according to the indictment. After one pitch that netted $15,000 from an online platform, Mr. Clase told the bettor to send some of the winnings to a contact in the Dominican Republic, for “repairs at the country home.”

During the 2025 season, Mr. Ortiz joined the scheme, prosecutors said. Before a June 15 game against the Seattle Mariners, Mr. Ortiz agreed to throw a ball as his first pitch of the second inning in exchange for $5,000, with another $5,000 going to Mr. Clase.

Overall, the bettors netted at least $450,000 from betting on Mr. Clase’s and Mr. Ortiz’s pitches, according to the indictment, with at least $400,000 coming from Mr. Clase’s throws.

The two players were placed on paid leave in July after Major League Baseball began an investigation into suspicious wagering activity on individual pitches in their games.

In a statement Sunday, Major League Baseball said it had cooperated with federal authorities and was aware of the indictment. It said its own investigation was continuing. A statement from the Guardians said the team was also aware of the indictment and would cooperate with law enforcement and with the M.L.B.’s investigation.

Speaking to reporters at this year’s M.L.B. All-Star Game, Mr. Manfred said the legalization of sports betting had helped protect the integrity of the game, rather than compromising it. Before legalization, he argued, there were fewer safeguards.

“We had no idea — no idea — what threats there were to the integrity of the play because it was all nontransparent,” Mr. Manfred said.

According to the federal indictment, sometimes the bettors would place parlay bets — wagers that include two or more bets that both must be successful for the bettor to win — on a selection of Mr. Clase’s pitches being balls. In one such wager, on a May 28, 2025, game between the Guardians and the Los Angeles Dodgers, Mr. Clase threw seven of the eight selected pitches out of the strike zone.

But on the eighth pitch, the batter swung and missed, making it a strike and meaning the bettors, who had waged $4,000, lost.

Afterward, one bettor sent a Mr. Clase a GIF of a man hanging himself with toilet paper, according to prosecutors. Mr. Clase responded by sending a GIF of a sad puppy-dog face.

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