Effectively Wild Episode 2399: Fixed That (Pitch) for You

Summary

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Effectively Wild Episode 2399: Fixed That (Pitch) for You

Hosts: Ben Lindbergh (B), Meg Rowley (A)
Date: November 11, 2025

Episode Overview

In this urgent and insightful episode, Ben and Meg set aside traditional offseason free agent chatter to dive deep into the blockbuster criminal indictments of Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz. Recently revealed federal charges allege a lengthy and brazen scheme of pitch-fixing for betting purposes—an existential threat to baseball’s competitive integrity. The hosts unpack the indictment, its baseball and systemic implications, and the league’s immediate policy response, all while balancing gravity with their trademark wit.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Breaking Down the Clase & Ortiz Betting-Fixing Scandal

• Sudden Priority Over Free Agency Discourse:
  Ben admits: “...bigger news intervened and suddenly all thoughts of a free agent contracts over underdraft fled from my mind.” (00:50)

• What Happened?

  • Clase and Ortiz indicted, arrested, and charged by the Department of Justice with conspiracy and bribery related to rigging baseball pitches for maximum betting profit.
  • Federal investigation described as lengthy, with both players on paid (soon to be unpaid) administrative leave since midsummer.
  • Alleged criminal activity stretches back to at least May 2023 for Clase, making the scale and duration “more fire than I expected.” (02:28)

• How Was MLB & Law Enforcement Alerted?

  • Venue for indictment (New York) likely connected to a fixed pitch against the Mets.
  • Debate over the timeline—when did federal prosecutors know? Was the league tipped first, or the Feds?
  • Meg ponders: “...does there come a point where they want to be like, so, hey, baseball, you might want to take a gander at these guys?” (06:05)

The Charging Document: Details & Laughs

• Timeline and Modus Operandi:

  • Clase coordinated with bettors via calls, texts, and even gave tickets to accomplices who watched games from the family section.
  • Micro-betting exploited: prop bets on single pitches like “ball/strike or above/below a certain speed.”
  • Payments were remarkably small—often $5,000, $7,000 at a time.
  • Digital trail is robust and hilariously clumsy: “Not criminal masterminds...these fellows were not criminal masterminds, which makes it all the more perplexing that they seemingly eluded the long arm of the law.” (11:13)

• "Payment for a Horse" – The Surreal Comedy of Malfeasance:

  • Hosts delight in the cover-up attempt described in the indictment (see Memorable Moments below).

Motivations, Morals, and the Stakes

• Discussion of motive: confusion as to why a well-compensated star like Clase (with a $20M contract) risks career for so little.
  Meg: “...sometimes people just break rules and are lawbreakers and dumb.” (32:36)

  • Ortiz’s profile aligns more closely with a “tempted minor leaguer,” but both players received only a “pittance.”
  • No direct evidence of coercion, gambling addiction, or threats, though the hosts leave the door open to more nefarious motives.

• The broader risk: if MLB stars are vulnerable, what about lower-paid players, minor leaguers, or even umpires?

Data Sleuthing: Does the Evidence Hold Up?

• Ben presents a mini-stat blast:
  • Clase became an extreme outlier in spiking first-pitch balls—a huge deviation both from league behavior and his own prior career baseline.
  • “He is inverting the typical pattern there...number one in the league.” (65:07)
  • Pattern emerges only after the period where fixing allegedly began, reinforcing the charge’s credibility.

Real-World Impact for Baseball

• The consequence is existential; trust in the sport was “fundamentally violated.”
  Meg reflects: “One of the real joys and pillars of the activity itself...is the coming together with other people for common purpose. You had a really fundamental trust violated, and that’s a hard thing.” (72:30)

• MLB responds during the show:

  • Press release implementing immediate $200 bet limits on pitch-level markets and removing such bets from parlays. (47:06)
  • Hosts react in real-time, calling it “very reactive, but better react than not.” (106:23)

• Micro-betting and low-skill wagers are deemed uniquely dangerous:

  • Meg: “...the overwhelming majority of people who are engaged in these kinds of outcome, like discrete, minor outcome bets, that is the behavior of a freaking degenerate. I’m sorry, but that is...sweaty behavior.” (43:19)
  • Ben: “Micro bets are made for problem gamblers, both the kind that can’t lose and the kind that can’t win.” (50:55)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Analyzing the Indictment’s Absurd Details

• On the payment cover-up:
  • “Tell him that this is payment for a horse. Payment for a horse. You got that? Okay, perfect.” – Meg (54:10)
  • “It sounds like it’s already a saying, you know, it’s like...this is payment for a horse. How many horses? We need 10 kilos of horses.” – Meg (85:23)
• On communicating the fix, mid-game:
  • “They were communicating during games pretty extensively. And even having calls when Clase is minutes from being on the mound.” – Ben (19:13)

The Tragicomic Cameo of Andy Pages

• “Seven out of eight pitches paid off...and then Andy Pahes ruined it all. It’s just like, you know, he’s at the end of the Scooby Doo episode. Like, I would have gotten away with it if not for that darn kid...” – Ben (58:49)
• “Andy Baez and his inability to lay off that Garbo pitch went to a grand jury.” – Meg (61:55)

On Policy Response

• “Major League Baseball has continuously worked with industry and regulatory...stakeholders across the country to uphold our most important priority, protecting the integrity of our games for the fans...” – Manfred, quoted by Meg (48:08)
• “This is the opposite of proactive. It’s very reactive.” – Ben (106:23)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:28: Ben breaks down charges and their shock value.
• 06:05: Meg explores timeline & process questions—who knew what, when.
• 11:13: Details about the amateurish digital paper trail; ballpark tickets for conspirators.
• 32:36: Discussion around motives and the limits of addiction as an explanation.
• 47:06: Real-time live reading of MLB’s new pitch-level betting restrictions.
• 65:07: Ben’s statistical evidence (spiked first pitches) deeply supports the fixing claim.
• 72:30: Meg on the emotional and collective harm of cheating.
• 78:47: Comparison with historical gambling scandals and what makes this one uniquely grave.
• 85:10: Euphemisms, bathroom jokes, and “payment for a horse.”
• 97:26: Listener question—How do you parent a child amid relentless gambling ads?
• 106:23: Hosts critique MLB’s “proactive” PR after the scandal.

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Takeaways & Tone

• Tone: Ben and Meg balance serious analysis with gallows humor, responding to the tension, absurdity, and importance of the allegations.
• Perspective: The indictment is historic in scope, possibly the most direct and grave fix in modern MLB history, deeply undermining collective faith in the game.
• Critique of MLB: The league’s oversight and integrity measures are exposed as reactive and flawed; the policy shift on micro-betting is deemed minimal but necessary.
• Systemic Concerns: Worries extend from stars to all rungs of pro baseball, and even to umpires, with only “tiddlywinks” in payments putting competitive sanctity at risk.
• Legacy: The scandal is deemed a cautionary and formative juncture—a story with lasting implications for MLB, wagering, and sports at large.

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For Listeners Who Haven't Heard the Episode

This is an essential episode for understanding the scope, risk, and real-life weirdness of criminal corruption in baseball, as well as the systemic issues with legal sports betting. The episode fuses serious journalism, statistical investigation, and darkly comic banter, and stands as a key narrative entry for the sports/gambling discussion of 2025 and beyond.

Transcript

[A]

Effectively Wild. It's the only show I need. Hosted by Ben Lindbergh and Megan Riley. I wanna hear about Shohei Otani or Mike Trout with three arms.

[B]

Hello and welcome to episode 20399 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangrass, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer. Almost faked you out there for a.

[A]

Second I was like, where are we going? What is this journey?

[B]

Joined by Meg Riley of Fangrass. Hello, Mick.

[A]

Oh, hello.

[B]

You know, there was a point on Sunday where I almost messaged you to say, you know, we previewed free agency, did a couple pods on that, but we didn't draft free agency free agent contracts, which is an annual tradition. And I was going to suggest that we do that next time and I guess I am suggesting that we do that next time, but not this time because bigger news intervened and suddenly all thoughts of a free agent contracts over underdraft fled from my mind. Yep, replaced by thoughts of Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, dire thoughts that I had been dreading on some level but not actively thinking about. We knew it was looming. At some point everything was going to come out, but I did manage to put it out of my mind more or less while we were enjoying October and reveling in the postseason. And I'm almost glad that they saved this for the off season just so we could, we could enjoy just all things that were were good and fun and light about baseball before the realities of modern sports fandom and playing intruded again. So final. After a many months long wait, the other shoe dropped like a class A first pitch slider with a lot of money riding on it being a ball potentially, I guess, I guess I'll just insert a blanket allegedly here at the top of the podcast just to spare everyone from having to hear it 15 times. Although probably I will insert some allegedly over the course of this podcast just out of journalistic caution. But Class A and Ortiz have been indicted. Federal grand jury arrested, the feds are after him, the FBI investigated, the DOJ has charged them with all manner of criminal doings, multiple counts of conspiracy and bribery. And you know, I knew it wasn't going to be good. It couldn't be good because of how long it took to come out because this was early July, right, that Ortiz was placed on non disciplinary leave, paid leave, which he will probably miss pretty soon because I think there's probably going to be a disciplinary leave and probably an unpaid one in his future. But given the way that they were kicking the can down the road and no one objected to that. And everyone seemed fine with the fact that they were remaining on that list, in the thick of a pennant race, no less. Certainly seemed like there was going to be some fire, not just smoke. And yeah, if anything, there's more fire than I expected, at least in Class's case. Can you imagine, though, if. If it had turned out, oh, all clear, just like after everything the Guardians went through when those guys were unavailable to them. And granted, they pitched better without them and went on that incredible comeback. So I don't, I don't know that they missed them. If you could just ret actively clear them of all charges and say you get to have Class A and Ortiz during those months, maybe you wouldn't want them because how could things go any better down the stretch? Maybe in the postseason, who knows? But I kind of figured that wasn't going to be the case if they were just like our bad. We checked them out and yeah, actually they didn't do anything. Just squeaky clean. And we just sidelined them for the past few months of the season. That, that didn't seem likely. And indeed it wasn't.

[A]

There's a great amount of detail in the charging document. There's also bits of it where I now have new questions.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I'm sure we'll get through some of those. But I think that one of the, one of the things I started to wonder about as I was reading this is when did this behavior get on the radar of this alleged behavior? I should say get on the radar of the prosecutor for the Eastern District District, which is like, as an aside, look, they will have their day in court. We are putting a legit in here, not only because, like, we want to make sure our journalistic bases are covered, but because this, this, this is behavior and criminality that does need to be proven in a court of law.

[B]

Sure. Innocent until proven guilty. And their reps have said that they deny all wrongdoing, they're looking forward to their day in court, et cetera.

[A]

I guess that's.

[B]

But that's what you say regardless, because, you know, you want to get a better plea deal or whatever it is if you actually did do it and know you're doomed. But still.

[A]

Yeah, I will, I will say, though, that, like, generally, you don't want to be on the Eastern District's radar. That's a bad, That's a bad prosecutor's office to have run afoul of. So I would love to know more about when this Alleged criminality first came to the attention, or potential criminality came to the attention of prosecutors because, you know, the, the charging document lays out a timeline which I think one of the more disconcerting things for me was how far back.

[B]

Absolutely, yeah.

[A]

This scheme goes. You know, it, as you mentioned, sort of came to prominence for the baseball world this summer, interestingly, first with Ortiz and then with Class A, even though Class A's involvement seems. Is alleged to be much longer standing and indeed the. The instigating factor for Ortiz getting involved. But this goes all the way back to 2023, the first alleged throne pitch. And there, I'm being a little clever, came against the Mets in May of 2023. Presumably the Mets being the team it was against is why this ended up being charged in New York, despite them, you know, obviously living in. In Ohio, primarily when they're in the U.S. so that was alarming. And I'm curious what the order of operations here is, because the federal prosecutor's office is going to prioritize the sanctity of their investigation and their ability to charge over anything else. But it is a funny thing because, you know, does the, does there come a point where they want to be like, so, hey, baseball, you might want to take a gander at these guys, because it wasn't until behavior from this summer that, if I remember correctly, was brought to the league's attention as a result of their monitors that they were made aware of this at all. But did the prosecutor's office know at some point prior to this summer, or did the behavior that tipped off MLB inadvertently tip off the prosecutor's office by virtue of them going on administrative leave? And we just don't have an answer to that in the charging document. And so I wondered what is the actual order of operations here? And obviously they don't necessarily have an obligation to notify Major League Baseball, but you do end up in this funny spot, right, where one of the purported victims of. Of this alleged criminality is the league. And yet when did they, you know, like, did. Did they get a little heads up, like an hour before this dropped on Sunday? You know, it's just a curious sort of thing.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And sometimes there are parallel investigations in cases like this where the league's looking into it and also the feds are looking into it and the league is cooperating with the feds, and perhaps vice versa. But, yeah, that's is by far, I think, the most disconcerting thing about this. And, you know, it's, it's. It's Dire, I would say there's a lot in here that's bad for baseball. There's also some stuff that's kind of funny. Just, just because it's bad doesn't mean it can't be funny.

[A]

Yeah. And like, look, I, I made a conscious decision when, when the NBA's recent troubles came to light. I felt like I was, I was previewing the judgment I might experience in an afterlife because, like, the NBA's recent gambling related scandals, which, you know, we, I'm sure we'll touch on sort of tangentially here because some of them are similar and some of them involve literal mob. And I was just so, Ben, I was so amused. You know, I was like, this case has everything. It has a literal rigged poker game. It has the five families. It involves several of the five families. It involves this DOJ's ability to prosecute a complicated case.

[B]

Got Albanian, Bruce.

[A]

It's got Albanian, Bruce. You know, it's got cash. Patel looking just as confused as ever. You know, really, if we're, if we're being candid about the, the sort of resting face of the FBI director. But I, I, and I, and I, I went to, I went to Blue sky and I prepared to make my little jokes. And then I thought, hey, Meg, this is a real. There but for the grace of God go I kind of moment, right? Like, don't revel in the gambling related scandals of another sport, because you have to know that those chickens will come home to roost for you eventually. I mean, not me. I haven't been charged with anything. And I feel like because I exercised that admirable restraint, I now get to just enjoy payment for a horse as an expression. And don't mistake me, listeners, I, I appreciate the seriousness of this moment. You know, for these, for these two guys, for the sport and its health as a whole. You know, they are, they are facing very serious charges here, whatever we may think of their culpability. And that's, you know, that's not a thing to be made light of, but payment for a horse. That's just funny. That is just. We just get to find that funny. Because you know what? It is, it's funny, Ben, that's funny.

[B]

Because the thing is that these fellows were not criminal masterminds, which makes it all the more perplexing that they seemingly eluded the long arm of the law for as long as they did. Or class I did, at least. And yes, that was absolutely my takeaway. So what's in here about Ortiz has essentially already been reported Broke basically as soon as he was placed on leave. And we got the details about the two suspicious Ortiz pitches and some of the timing of that. And there was an ESPN report in July that suggested that that's how all of this came to light. Now, as you're saying, there may be more to it, but as far as we know now, it seems as if perhaps the two pitches, or maybe even the second of the pitches that Ortiz threw was what triggered maybe all of this, in that something about the betting patterns on that incident on June 27 raised red flags that for whatever reason, Class A is much more long standing. Alleged behavior had not. So that's what really surprised me. Again, I knew it wasn't going to be good. But Ortiz, the details in here about him are essentially what we knew, at least when it comes to the on field behavior. And I was sort of expecting more of the same involving Class A, because if anything, I thought maybe Class A's misdeeds would be less serious because they surfaced later.

[A]

Later.

[B]

Yeah. There was a period of weeks there where Ortiz was already sidelined and Class A was not yet. And then we never really got details about what Class A did. I mean, there was obviously a strong suspicion or implication that he was involved in the same sort of scheme that Ortiz was, but we didn't really get any, oh, here was the pitch that raised everyone's alarms or anything like that. And so I would have assumed, based on the order of events there, that maybe Class A was the one who was led astray. Maybe Ortiz was the ringleader. Maybe Class A just dabbled in this one time or something. No, just the opposite. And. And that's the thing that I was not expecting at all. And I think that's the thing that has the most concerning implications.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

For anyone who has not read the indictment or some summary of the indictment, I would recommend that you do indictments. They tend to make pretty good reading, as we learned in the Ippei case. And I would say that the Ippei indictment was harrowing. That was uncut gems, essentially, in real life. And we talked about it and it was. It was gripping, it was a page turner, but it was also just sad and depressing, anxiety inducing. Yeah, this one's a little lighter, fair, you know, and I don't know the reality, as you said, it's still murky and the motivations and the origins and all of that. And it could turn out to be darker than this indictment lets on, but based on what we know now, it's a little less just People at the edge of their rope facing just the most dire circumstances. It's just people fixing pitches, rigging pitches. And just to summarize what we're talking about here, the allegations, Class A is alleged to have started rigging pitches in or around May of 2023, and that behavior continued right up until he was taken out of action, essentially. Kind of. Curiously, the indictment does not detail any incidents in 2024.

[A]

24. I have a theory about this. Do you want to hear my unfounded theory?

[B]

Yeah, please.

[A]

Now, I, this is a theory. This is totally my own speculation. So I, you know, like you'll be shocked to learn that the, the prosecutor's office is not giving me any information here. But I wonder if what happened is they got spooked by the IPPE stuff. I wonder, I wonder if he got a little spooked by the IPPEI stuff and took, took some time off from that. Now, we don't know, we don't know if there were more incidents that maybe just are not presented in the charging document. But yeah, I wondered if like the. They caught, he caught, you know, the, the ebay scandal was the biggest story in sports and certainly the, the biggest gambling related story until this one in baseball. And so I, I wondered if maybe there was a little bit of cold feet, like let's stay out of, let's stay out of dodge for a bit. I don't know.

[B]

Yeah, it's, it's possible. It does note, I, I don't know that it purports to be exhaustive in its cataloging of the, the incidents because it does mention that hundreds of bets or more than a hundred.

[A]

So it could well be that there were plenty that, you know, sort of percolated through 2024. And it just so happens they weren't in the document.

[B]

Yeah, I don't know if that's hundreds of pitches or hundreds of bets on fewer pitches. That's probably it. But yeah, I was kind of questioning, well, if he was doing this in 2023 and just getting away with it scot free and then he was doing it in 2025, why would he have taken a break? But that's as good an explanation as any. If indeed he did. Though, as I will note later in the episode, there is some data that I think is quite suggestive that I dug into here. But the allegations are that he was doing this, he was coordinating and communicating with two different bettors and was tipping them off to when he was going to throw a certain type of pitch in a Certain type of location. They were taking advantage of these prop bets, these micro bets that allow you to wager on whether a pitch will be a ball or a strike or whether it will be above or below a certain speed. And they would coordinate and he would take all of the uncertainty out of it, essentially. So betting on baseball, betting on sports, it's generally a losing proposition, but not if you know what's going to happen.

[A]

Feels a lot better that way.

[B]

Yeah, it certainly helps. So they would not only just communicate, but. And here's why, even though innocent until proven guilty, you know, unless the information in this charging document is fabricated, and look, I'm not going to put anything entirely past this doj, but unless this is all just made up and figments of someone's imagination. Right. There's quite an extensive digital trail here.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

Texts and calls and audio messages and house visits. It's just really not keeping it quiet. I mean, yeah, they were kind of in an amateurish way, trying to lead people astray and, and throw people off the scent. And I guess it worked for an improbably long time. But they were not shy about communicating about what they were doing. And there does appear to have been a personal relationship of some sort here because at least one of the betters is said to have visited Classe's house on several occasions. His residence. And Classe's leaving tickets for this person.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that's, I think, maybe the most brazen thing about all of this. One of the betters is just coming to games, picking up tickets that Class A left for them and they're communicating mid game, which, that was the part. I mean, I guess it makes sense because class A is a closer, he's a reliever. You don't know beforehand if he's going.

[A]

To, if he's going to come in.

[B]

Yeah, but you could have just said kind of contingent on, you know, if I pitch today. Right. But they were communicating during games pretty extensively. And even having calls when class A is minutes from being on the mound. He's minutes from this wager being placed and paying off. And he is essentially saying, yeah, you can bet the under or the over or whichever it was on this pitch, I'm going to do it. And they're having a two minute phone conversation in addition to texts. And it's like four minutes before he's actually pitching. Which would lead one to believe that. I mean, is he just like in the bullpen on the phone, like holding this cell up to his. You know, obviously that's Prohibited. That's banned. There's some provision for it's an emergency and you have to get in touch with your family or something during a game. But aside from that, you are not allowed to use your cell phone during games precisely for a reason like this. And clearly the enforcement of that was somewhat unsurprisingly lax. But just the immediacy of it kind of amazed me.

[A]

I mean, you know, the trail that was left behind by all of these folks, and this seemed like another spot where it just, you know, it's. It's a violation of MLB's rules to be on your phone. Sure. Once you're breaking, like, the cardinal rule, I don't think that you're particularly concerned about your cell phone use, but it also just seems like it introduces another potential point of vulnerability to this alleged conspiracy. Because you're telling me that, like, no one could overhear you. I'm. I'm not saying that. To say that there were. That there were people who did overhear and didn't come forward, but you're. You're confident you're not going to be overheard. You're confident that, like, the. The league's monitor or clubby isn't going to overhear you and, like, have enough conversational Spanish that they can kind of, you know, discern what it is that you're trying to do, that you're. You being on the phone that regularly isn't going to get noticed at least a couple of times. It's just such brazen behavior. Really bizarre. And putting, you know, putting your, like, bedding conspirator in presumably the family section. What a bonkers set of behaviors, having that person over to your house. It's just, I think that when. When people, when people do crimes like this, they very often think, well, I'm anticipating all the potential ways that I could get caught. Right. And. And, you know, sometimes they do, and then they just never get caught.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But often they fail to appreciate a potential vulnerability. But, like, having the guy who's placing your bets or the, the parlay bets based on your pitches in the ballpark, in the family section, where people be like, who's that guy?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, did anyone. Did it. Did any of the wives or girlfriends, who is that guy around? Who's he here with? You know, like, it's just a. It's a real. It's real brazen.

[B]

It is. Yeah. It's not really covering your tracks all that well, which is why it surprises me that it. It worked for so long, and, and yet there are so many questions that are raised by this indictment, the origins of this scheme and relationship. We don't know why it started, we know when roughly, but not why. And we don't know what class A motivations are here. And it could be any number of things. The fact that he was not getting much money out of this, that all told, the betters seem to have made upwards of $450,000, which is not a bad haul. But Class A and later Ortiz were seemingly getting a pittance. They were just getting 5,000 here, 7,000 there, if that. And so you wonder why. And that's kind of always the eternal question with these things when you have well paid athletes. Now, Ortiz, of course, is making just a bit more than the major league minimum, which you know, is a hefty salary by most of our standards, of course, but it's a lot less. And his future is not assured and nothing's guaranteed. And he's far from free agency. And he fits the profile better of someone in the majors who might be motivated to do this. Class A, has a guaranteed $20 million contract and had it when this betting began, plus incentives and everything. And he's been better than that. You know, he's like a lot of young, pre arbitration, pre free agency stars. He's underpaid relative to his production, but he's doing okay in the grand scheme of things. So unless he was bitter about the fact that he wasn't getting what he was quote, unquote worth or something. But it's not as if he was made whole by this scheme. It's a drop in the bucket, even relative to what he was already making. So given that there's no indication thus far really, that he was doing this under duress, because that's where your mind goes. You know, maybe it's a threat, right? Maybe he's. They have something on him or they're threatening him or his family or something and coercing him into doing this. I guess that's still in the realm of possibility. But sure, there's nothing in here that really suggests that that's the case. So then you think, well, maybe it's a friend and maybe that's why this person is going over to class A's house and going to games and everything. And maybe class A is just doing this fella a favor, right? And if that's the case, I would repeat, you don't have to break the cardinal rule of your profession to help someone out, to do a solid for someone, if that's what you want. To do. You could just give them money and it'll work out better for you and them in the long run because you won't endanger your future earnings. Or who knows, there are so many more motivations. It could just be a compulsion. Like you don't get the same sort of sweaty IPE sense here from the text that we can see, right? You don't. But that could be something. You never know. And maybe it's just a false sense of security or it's hard to call it false given how long you got away with this, but just a sense of I can get away with this and everything has worked out in my career to this point and I've summited every obstacle and I've overcome every impediment and I can get away with this too, and they won't catch me. And you know, maybe also you rationalize it and you say what's, what's one intentional ball between friends, right? Like, especially if you're Emmanuel Class A, who during this period is arguably the best relief pitcher in baseball, right? From, From May of 2023 through July of 2025, only Tanner Scott had a higher fan crafts were than an unclass a and by 1/10 of a win. So he's about as good as it gets. And maybe he thinks I can spot him a ball and I can, I can work my way back, you know, what's, what's one ball to me, maybe the best closer in baseball. Or you know, if you're Luis Ortiz, maybe you're thinking, I throw balls on 40% of my first pitches anyway, so who's to say that this actually cost my team? Maybe that would have been a ball and you know, you could kind of talk yourself into it just not being that big a deal. Or if it's one of the speed prop bets and you're just throwing a slider instead of a cutter. Well, maybe you would have done that anyway so you could sell it to yourself. If, if your conscience is giving you a hard time, you could say, eh, this is not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. But it, it actually is. It's just the principle of the thing. But I, I suppose I understand how it could be a slippery slope. You just do it one time and now I'll throw a slider instead of a cutter. Big deal. And I'll help out a buddy or something and then you get away with that and then you dabble again and maybe they're putting some pressure on you to do it again and it just Keeps going swimming. You know, I could sort of see how that could happen, maybe. But then when you pull back a bit, it just kind of boggles your mind to think that someone would take this sort of risk for such a small reward.

[A]

Seemingly, I find it. So I'm not surprised that an official charging document would not speculate as to the motivation for these guys. I was a little surprised to not see them totaling out the potential kickbacks, right. Because each individual payment is quite small in the grand scheme of things. Right. $5,000, $7,000. But you could imagine, particularly if there were as many bets as is alleged in the document, that that could snowball and add up quite quickly. Maybe this is an area where everyone involved was trying to be kind of clever, right. By keeping the amount small so that it would potentially fly under the radar of the, the betting monitors. Even for something like, you know, Luis Ortiz. By the way, all the other Luis Ortiz's are like, put the freaking middle name in there, won't you, please? Yes, but you know, to. I could imagine there being some kind of strategy to that and then thinking, well, this is going to accumulate, you know, sort of like a, you know, like a heavy snow by a magnitude and you get to a point where like, wow, I just like, I got a, I got a shovel. But I don't know how useful it is to speculate as to the motivation here because it's probably some combination of things. I also want to encourage people. You know, when we read the ebay indictment, we were careful to say that, you know, we don't know for sure and we don't want to arm, chair, psychologize. But if we were, if we were trying to construct the image of someone who seems to have like a debilitating gambling addiction, it would look a lot like IPPE did in those charging documents. Right? Sweaty is a good, good way to describe it. That word that you used earlier is a good one. I don't know what Klase Ortiz's motivation is here. I wanna leave open the possibility, I suppose, that there is a more nefarious sort of motivation at work here, that there was some threat being offered to one or both of those guys that sort of cajoled them into participating in this, but we don't know that to be true. I don't know if either of them had gambling addiction, if there was like a unhealthy thrill seeking behavior here. You know, we gotta allow for the possibility that both of them are just being kind of dumb, you know, that they're like young Men who feel like they have, you know, the whole world in front of them and will live forever and never get caught. You know, you. You were right to point out in your piece and others have noted this too. You know, this isn't the first bit of transgression of the official rules that we gotten from Class A. He did serve a pad suspension, so his relationship to the mandates of Major League Baseball and I suppose potentially federal law enforcement might be kind of squishier than the average bears. The reason I say all of that is that I did see some on social media sort of rush to the corrosive effects of gambling addiction as a potential explanation here. And as I've said that that may well be part of the mix. I don't know. But I think it is important to like, to say that, like, sometimes people just break rules and are lawbreakers and dumb. And jumping to addiction as an explanation, I think is actually counterproductive to the broader project of trying to get people resources when they are sort of pushed sideways by addiction. And that, you know, every bad act is not explained by addiction. There are plenty of people who suffer from that and have to deal with that and don't violate the law. You know, so I just saw some. I understand the instinct and I think given the corrosive effect that sports betting, particularly sports betting via an app, seems to be having on like Joe and Jane sports fan, although Joe sports fan more often. I understand wanting to loop that into the analysis here, but I. I think that for people who are grappling with gambling addiction, assuming that that is like an explanation for criminality is maybe not the compassionate move that. That people assume it to be. So I just think that that's. We're saying here because it's like, I don't know, Emmanuel class. They might just be a bad guy who, like.

[B]

Yeah, it's possible.

[A]

Yeah, it's did bad stuff here. You know, like, people can bear responsibility for their actions. I'm not saying that he and Ortiz deserve to be in jail for 65 years. Like, that's.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

A separate conversation. But like, sometimes, you know, sometimes people just break the law.

[B]

Yeah, that's one of those. You know, you add up all the charges and the maximum possible sentence is 65 years. And. And that's leverage partly so that they can totally get a better deal. It's obviously vanishingly unlikely that these guys will go to prison for 65 years apiece would probably be as a small fraction of that, if anything. But even if they weren't convicted somehow they could still be banned from baseball, and. Oh, yeah, that seems extremely likely, regardless of what happens in court, if they make it to court. So we.

[A]

We want to be responsible and. And drop in the necessary. Allegedly. I feel quite comfortable speculating that neither of these guys will ever throw a pitch in.

[B]

In.

[A]

Not just in Major League Baseball, in a. A baseball league that has a professional standard everywhere.

[B]

They tried to. To pitch in winter ball and were.

[A]

Banned from there as well.

[B]

Understandably. Yeah. And. And, yeah, I mean, the Black Sox were acquitted in court and they were banned from baseball. So different standards of proof for MLB and in a criminal court. So.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. So it would seem that Class A cuts in Ortiz here in June and facilitates that relationship. And those guys had gotten close. They're countrymen. They're both from the doctor. They're within a year of each other's age, and they were lockering close together in spring training, and they've been reported to be close friends. And so Class A perhaps tells his buddy what a great thing he has going here and gets a cut for Ortiz's involvement. And maybe it's as simple as they got greedy. And maybe they wagered just enough to trigger whatever betting integrity system is set up. Maybe it had to do with the fact that you have this activity pertaining to two players on the same team. Maybe there's less action on a Luis Ortiz pitch than there typically is on an Emmanuel Class A pitch.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And. And maybe that triggered something, however it happened, that would seem to. And we don't know for sure. We're kind of inferring and leaping to conclusions here that that seems to have been the thing that really got this going. And then presumably, once they started looking into Ortiz, one thing led to another and quickly led to Class A. And then all of this comes out. And that's really the part that rocks me back on my heels a bit, because, yeah, we've been sold this line by the leagues, the commissioners, the sports books, that the benefit of legalized sports betting is that it's all out in the open and it's no longer operating in the shadows. And offshore and shady bookies, we can track all this activity. It's in the apps. We have systems set up. We'll know the second something goes wrong and some klaxon will sound somewhere and someone will slide down a pole and they'll start investigating the shady, unusual betting patterns. Down a pole?

[A]

Why would this.

[B]

Not a fire department?

[A]

Yeah. Why would they? Are they the Ghostbusters, Ben, do you understand them to be gambling Ghostbusters I don't know.

[B]

I've never really been to a, a better integrity place.

[A]

Here's the thing. Why did the ghost. They, they slid down the pole because they were in a firehouse. But like presumably did they really need to slide down the pole? Those are.

[B]

It's for effect. It's, it's style points.

[A]

I appreciate it, but Bill Murray's like, look, I'm sliding down the frickin pole, man. Try to stop me.

[B]

For whatever reason, Class A's pattern over multiple years of being involved in this did not get detected or did not get curtailed. And that really puts the lie to, to everything we've been sold. And you know, this is not unique. Like you could look at the NBA, which as you said, it was inevitable that we would invoke that and, and the league investigated Terry Rozier two years ago and cleared him and well, he was just indicted.

[A]

Yeah. Here's the thing I want to say about the, the Rogier stuff because I think that we, we should hold two thoughts simultaneously. I think that it is appropriate for us to be skeptical of these official investigations. Although I think that Major League Baseball has conducted itself much better as these things go. Just bec. In part because they just keep suspending all these guys like no one's getting off.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But also, I don't know that did the NBA clear Terry or did his agent tell shops that he had been cleared? Because those are two separate things.

[B]

That's possible, I guess. But. But he was playing.

[A]

He was playing.

[B]

Yeah, that's right. So whatever they did, it was not enough to detect what at least is alleged now what he was embroiled in. So yeah, there are cases where it seems to have worked and things went through the proper channels and even Johnte Porter. So he does some stuff on March 20th of last year and it's, you know, public knowledge that there's an NBA investigation into that five days later. Great. Okay. That's sort of the system working as designed. Except that that wasn't the first incident that he had been involved in. He had been doing these things for months. And Ortiz, like if it were just Ortiz and he threw that pitch on June 27th and then he was sidelined less than a week later, that would be a success. That would be another illustration that yes, this actually, it is good to have it out in the open. But that wasn't his first time either. That was his second time, allegedly. And then you have Class A who somehow managed to avoid whatever, you know, tripping whatever wire would lead to people paying attention to this. And so if he could get away with it for that long, then that suggests that someone else might have to. Someone else might still. Maybe not for years and hundreds of bets, but it could be a one time only occurrence. And you just never know really. And that I think raises the concern now because anytime you see someone spike a pitch, you know, throw one just a bit outside. I'm not paranoid and I, I don't believe that this is actually widespread and it's completely rampant and, and everything is fixed. But the thought would be in the back of your mind probably the next time you see a pitcher do that, which, which is a completely normal thing for a pitcher. You know, Class A did this many times and no one really thought anything of it seemingly. And I wouldn't think anything of it seeing it here or there, because pitchers do this. They bounce the ball, they lose their grip and it's nothing remarkable until it's supplemented with all of this other evidence and when there's a pattern to it.

[A]

And I think so. Okay, I have, I have, I have two thoughts just to circle back to the, the NBA of it all. And I, and being skeptical sort of league findings, I do, in fairness to the league, like these leagues don't have subpoena power, right, and the DOJ does. So there is a, an important difference in their ability to move investigations along when they hit a dead end and acquire evidence and you know, sort of bring the full weight of their institutional authority to bear. You know, a league can, can suspend or I, I suppose potentially sue a player and the DOJ can put him in jail. So I, I want to be, I was, I was being a little snarky, but I want to be fair to the leagues in that regard. I, I think that you're right that the amount of time that sort of transpired is alarming, but I, I don't know that that alarm is new. Like, just think about the, the more recent gambling investigations that have resulted in players being suspended or in Marcano's case, banned. Those bets went back years, right. Like there, this is, this seems to be a consistent issue, if we want to call it that in this process where there is just a certain amount of lag, you know, the Ortiz pitches relative to when he was put on leave, I think is some of the shortest time that we've seen between a pitch raising an alarm for someone and the player actually being pulled off the field of play. And some of that might be the players involved being injured versus not them being on an active 40 man versus not them being in a position to affect future contests, versus, not them being alleged to have just bet on baseball versus them being alleged to have been the one to facilitate, you know, a bet by their feel, you know, their play on the field. So there, there might be differences that are important here, at least in terms of the speed with which the league acts. And it is, you know, I guess, heartening that the guy who is alleged to have actually thrown a pitch, again, like, we gotta come up with some new vocabulary there. But was the one that was pulled off the field the most quickly. But yeah, it seems like even for, Even for instances where there was behavior and activity that caused alarm, it's not like it's instantaneous. They aren't, they aren't reviewing. Maybe they're reviewing the stuff daily. I don't want to say that I know what their exact schedule is, but it's not like you pitch one night and the next day they're like, hey, we're a little nervous. Were a little nervous. Or maybe they. Maybe it needed to happen a second time before they're like, okay, this is, this is officially fishy. You know, I'm. I'm not sure, but I tend to agree, I think, with Bauman's perspective on this, which is that I do think that the monitoring is useful. I'm skeptical that we're going to put the legal sports betting genie back in the bottle. And so, you know, maybe the project now is figuring out how to make this as. As airtight as possible. But the amount of time that Class A was able to. Just like, if Ortiz hadn't, he could.

[B]

Still be doing it. Yeah.

[A]

Could he? Right? If he, as you noted in your column, like, if he had just left Ortiz out of it, would he have ever tripped anyone's attention? Like, it makes sense if you're thinking about the pro, the, the profile of player that you might put a prop bet on. Having there be action on someone like Clase makes sense to a certain extent. Right? He's one of the best players in the league. Right. He's not some random guy where you're like, why is anyone betting on. And that's a little. I love how I'm worried about being rude to Luis Ortiz in this moment, but that's a little rude to Luis Ortiz, who was a good pitcher, but bad criminal, seemingly. Allegedly. But, you know, it makes sense to me that there would be some amount of action on, on Class A if you're gonna do this stuff. But to your point, it is weird that, like, you're betting on him to go against type, right. This is a guy who doesn't block anybody. This is a guy who's highly effective. Why are you betting? Yeah, that he's not gonna throw a strike pitch type bet stuff like, okay, fine, maybe that, maybe that strikes you as more defensible because there's just more variance there. But again, like, these sorts of bets, we gotta be done with these sorts of bets. We've said it before, we're gonna say it again. Like the only. I'm sorry, the. Like, I. If you were, if you were a person who's listening to this and you are a prop bet enthusiast, you're gonna come away from what I'm about to say feeling a little ill used, okay? And just warning everyone, you're gonna feel like you've been accused of something. And you know what? You maybe want to sit with that for a minute because I would argue, much as Bauman did, that the overwhelming majority of people who are engaged in these kinds of outcome, like discrete, minor outcome bets, that is the behavior of a freaking degenerate. I'm sorry, but that is like, to use your word from earlier, that's sweaty behavior. That is sweaty business. And then there's like the, the, the, the narrow slice that seems like they would maybe be using this to engage in a, a little, like, criminality. But I don't, I don't see many wholesome applications of this kind of bet. And I think that if the, if the leagues want to restore some confidence, right? And, and I want to be clear, my position and all of this has not changed. I think it all sucks. I hate how much we have to pay attention to it. I hate how many. We have done so many pods about this now, Ben. Yeah, we've done so many pods like this.

[B]

You know, we did scandals.

[A]

We didn't do an emergency one yesterday in large part because I had to go to the Fosters game. But that if we've done too many of these. I'm sick of having to talk about this. I don't want to have to do this anymore. But here we are doing, doing the Lord's podcast. But if the, if the leagues want you and me and everyone else to have a bit more confidence in their whole operation, this being, you know, on balance, a net positive in terms of our ability to potentially enforce the rules. Rules, you got to get rid of these kinds of bets. You just have to, like, if you want to bet over, under. And it's not like that can't be manipulated either. But these ones are just so ripe for potential abuse that they must be done. Oh, I'm getting. We got a press release. Oh, oh. Extra, extra.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Do you want. Do you want some extra? Extra?

[B]

Sure. Please.

[A]

Major League Baseball parentheses mlb. I love how as an aside, we're going to have a little fun now. You're sending this out to an official PR distribution. You think you need the Anyway announced today, the Commissioner's office has worked closely with its sportsbook partners to proactively create new safeguards to limit pitch level markets. Effective immediately, all MLB authorized gaming operators will cap wagers on pitch level markets at $200 and exclude those bets from parlays. These new measures, implemented across sportsbook operators representing more than 98% of the U.S. betting market, are intended to mitigate integrity risks and maintain the transparency and data access benefits that the regulated sports betting market provides. Most prop bets present limited integrity risk because they take into account multiple events that are influenced by more than one actor. However, quote micro bet pitch level markets, eg ball strike pitch velocity, present heightened integrity risk 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. The risk on these pitch level markets will be significantly mitigated by this new action targeted at the incentive to engage in misconduct. The creation of a strict bet limit on this type of bet and the ban on parlaying them reduces the payout for these markets and the ability to circumvent the new limit. Commissioner of Baseball Robert d. Manfred Kotma Jr. And again, I'm gonna have a little fun the fact that they put his middle initial in here. Funny the fact that they still subscribe to the comma junior stylization. Similarly funny the fact that it is bolded in this press release. The funniest of all said quote, since the Supreme Court decision opened the door to legalized sports betting, Major League Baseball has continuously worked with industry and regulatory regula. We're going to leave that one in because that's funny. Regulatory stakeholders across the country to uphold our most important priority, protecting the integrity of our games for the fans. I commend Ohio Governor DeWine for his leadership on this issue over the last several months. I also commend the industry for working with us to take action on a national solution to address the risk posed by these pitch level markets which are particularly vulnerable to integrity concerns. We look forward to continuing to work with all stakeholders, including licensed sports betting operators, elected officials and regulators to ensure we are Always protecting the integrity of our game. End quote.

[B]

Look at that. You said on an unpublished podcast, we need to do something about these practices. And then they did it, and they did it before in that moment. That was, that was service. Thanks.

[A]

They were like, yeah. Robert D. Manfred, comma Jr. Heard my pleas.

[B]

His ears were burning. Yeah.

[A]

He was like, oh boy.

[B]

I'm pleased. I'm not shocked because there was a lot of buzz about something like this happening, as I mentioned in my piece. And yes, Governor DeWine has been a big advocate for this when it comes to amateur athletes and trying to push for bans on prop bets. And there was some signal that plenty of people were receptive to that, that Tony Clark had said he was very open to it, you know, not only for the integrity concerns but also because.

[A]

For the safety of players.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Just getting harassed and abused by bettors. And Manfred even had signaled the same, that he was willing to do something about these prop bets. And even Adam Silver, who sort of started all of this, at least among commissioners, he has kind of raised the alarm belatedly about prop bets. So yes, it does seem like the mood has shifted a bit on this. And it's self preservation as much as anything.

[A]

They have to do it.

[B]

It's face saving, it's pr. You know, a scandal like this happens, you have to, you have to respond, you have to do something. And this is a, a tangible thing. And you know, as you were saying, I wrote my piece that micro bets are made for problem gamblers, both the kind that can't lose and the kind that can't win. By which I mean the kind that can't lose because they have inside info and they know what's going to happen. And yeah, the kind that can't win because generally the house always wins these things. So yes, I do think that those were really kind of predatory, slash exploitable. And I would also support some sort of national regulation of those. But it is good that baseball took some sort of step here, however self serving it is. You know, sometimes I don't care what the reason is as long as the effect is positive. And I think that's a good one. And I was going to say that that that's sort of the silver lining of this whole scandal, that it does seem to really advance and move the needle on popular opinion when it comes to this sort of bet. This in combination with the NBA scandals, with generally the shift in the national mood about the effect of sports betting on sports and also on society. There have been a couple recent surveys that have come out from YouGov and Pew that have really shown some significant movement on those issues, especially even among young men who are maybe most prone to this behavior and I guess have experienced its ills firsthand. So that's a tangible, positive thing that could come out of this, just making it harder to place this kind of bet. And, you know, it's something that MLB could sort of cynically say, oh, this is to our benefit that we have 700,000 pitches in a regular season, and you can bet on all of them. And that's something that Manfred said years ago that Silver had told him, hey, stop stressing about the pace of play and the time between pitches, that that will be lucrative for you because people can use that time to bet. And to his credit, Manfred did pursue the pitch clock and now has done this. And it's, you know, maybe the horses out of the barn a little bit. The. The horse that Class A and Ortiz are. Are paying for the payment for the horse. If. If people don't know what we're talking about. That was one of the COVID stories for one of the small payments.

[A]

I just.

[B]

It was payment for a horse. Payment for a horse for repair of a house. Again, I. Not criminal masterminds here. Payment brilliant schemes.

[A]

Payment for a horse to. To win. Ortiz responded, okay, perfect.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I just. Look, again, this is. This is serious business. And I don't. I don't want to suggest it is not serious business. I don't want to suggest that this isn't devastating, but I also want to just, look, we got to have a little. We got to have a little fun with it. You know, we got to have a little fun. Tell him that this is payment for a horse. Payment for a horse. You got that? Okay, perfect.

[B]

Perfect.

[A]

No, no, no, no, no, no. This is air. That's like that. I mean, look. And then, of course, I said before that the charging document inspired in me several questions, and most prominent among them was sort of this timing consideration. When did the DOJ start its investigation? What was the precipitating incident that tipped them off, that inspired them to dig into all of this? I want to know. But also, is that enough for a horse? You know, like, that's the other thing. Like, how much do horses cost? Don't email me. I don't actually care about the answer to that question. This is not.

[B]

It's not really a thoroughbred kind of price. I don't think they're taking that one to stud. Was it 1400 bucks or something?

[A]

Yeah, something like that. I also want to point out, and look, sometimes you're trying to give people grace. Sometimes you got to be a pedantic little bitch. And so that's what I'm going to be right now. There is a, the MLB in this charging document. There, there's only one. One that's not bad, actually, which is sort of surprising. But there is a point where they are laying out, they are sort of restating the charge, right? So they give the initial sort of introductory summary. They walk you through the alleged conspiracy. Conspiracy and, and different, you know, flavors of criminality. And then they come back together at the end to be like, so, hey, here's our, here's, here are our allegations. Here is the summary of the counts. And they, they do say the MLB at one point in there. And I, I didn't care for that. You know, first of all, you're a bunch of lawyers. There's at least one person in that office who's a baseball fan who can tell you the ML, they'll be as wrong. The other part of this, that was very funny to me. And again, we're just trying to have our fun where we can, because this is a very serious business. I love it when, I love it when, like, sports have to be described in the exacting way that is required by a federal indictment. Right? Because, you know, if it's just you and me and a grand jury, we, we know what and who the Cleveland Guardians are. Right? We know what Major League Baseball is. We don't have to establish that, that Major League Baseball is a professional baseball league in North America comprised of 30 teams, including the Cleveland Guardians, New York Mets, the Minnesota Twins, Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Seattle Mariners and the St. Louis Cardinals. We don't have to do that. We, we know, we know. But when you're, when you're in court, you got, you got to establish who the relevant sort of individuals and entities are. That's part of your responsibility as a prosecutor. And then you have to lay out the fraudulent scheme, which, just like the fraudulent scheme, but, but another thing that ends up happening is you have to define some terms just in case, like the judge or, you know, the eventual jurors in this case are dumb dummies who don't know anything about baseball. And so you have to say, usually they agreed that class A would throw balls, parentheses instead of strikes, and slower quote slider pitches rather than faster cut fastball, quote cutter pitches. And this is an interesting little bit of business to me because it's like you know, the velocity, the. The velocity piece of this. You sort of feel like you have to establish, but you don't have to describe what a couple cut fastball is. Right. You're just like a cut, you know, like faster cut fastball, cutter pitches. It's like that part doesn't require. You don't need to describe. It would have been great if they had described the movement of a cutter.

[B]

I guess that's not the important part. The speed is what matters.

[A]

It's not, but it's important. It's important to me. It's important to me. Megan, trying to have some fun. A little bit of fun. I also love how literally lo fi the screenshots of the pitches are in this. Right. Like if you go on film room as you did to do your analysis of how often Ortiz or excuse me, Class A is like spiking balls in the dirt, which. Ben, very nicely done. Your whole piece was very well done.

[B]

Tickled me to use MLB's official film room to put together a reel of a player I know intentionally throwing balls for because of sports betting. But. I know, but yes. And the other little bit of comic relief in here, of course, was Andy Pais and his role.

[A]

Yes, I was just about to get to that. I was just about to get to that.

[B]

Thwarting a parlay where seven out of eight pitches paid off because again, it was being done intentionally, seemingly. And then Andy pas ruined it all. It's just like, you know, he's at the end of the Scooby Doo episode. Like, I would have gotten away with it if not for that darn kid who was such a. Inability to lay off that he spoiled it all. Just a. A hero, frankly, standing athwart the integrity of the game. Annie Pahes by being unable to hold up he. And then the text message exchange.

[A]

Oh my God.

[B]

Which is the one case where I guess it could have been construed as threatening. But I. I didn't get the sense that it was. It's like, yeah, that the better was ruing that pages had spoiled.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Best laid plans.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And then Classe was commiserating with like a sad puppy eyes emoji or so I just like these little human touches, you know? And I mean, I guess if Pahes had taken that pitch, potentially they could have had some huge parlay payout and maybe that would have actually brought them to the attention of people before they were brought to the attention because that would have been such a big windfall. So who knows? Maybe he actually helped them in the Long run. But. But that was amusing because I feel like we had entertained that hypothetical. Like, how do you know that? How can you ensure that you could get the ball? Because what if someone swings at it? Yeah, that. That actually happened. I guess he didn't spike it enough. Right.

[A]

I just love. Again, you gotta take your joy in these things where you can find it. I just love that. Like, on the one hand, if you're Andy Pies, maybe you feel good, right? You've spoiled part of a scheme that is a direct threat, existential threat to the sport. Right? If we can't trust to your point earlier that a pitch in the dirt is just either a missed throw or a bit of strategy to try to get a guy to chase, we can't trust that. We can't trust any of this, Right? Like it is a true. These sorts of schemes pose a true existential threat to the sport as we know it. So, like, you're. You're helping to foil that, right? You're not giving them what they want. And maybe if there's enough chase in the game, they'll stop doing this. Right? Because. Because, you know, we just read this whole prep. I just read this whole press release. They're not banning those bets. They're just making them less potentially lucrative. Right? And so, you know, but maybe, maybe, okay, maybe you. You chase enough and you chase this stuff right out of baseball. On the other hand, Andy Baez has his proclivity to chase. It's in the federal record, man, like that, that Andy Baez and his inability to lay off that Garbo pitch went to a grand jury.

[B]

That is mildly embarrassing, even if he was unintentionally more than mild. The side of righteousness. Right?

[A]

He had no idea in that moment.

[B]

He saved the World Series just last week or whenever it was, and here he is becoming national news in a heroic fashion, completely unwittingly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What a little cameo he made in this story.

[A]

A little cameo.

[B]

I did want to briefly lay out what you just alluded to, the little stat blasting. I did my contribution to the sleuthing here, and it doesn't seem as if the feds need a whole lot of help here when it comes to building.

[A]

Their case, except for their ability to render this stuff in 4K, apparently.

[B]

Yeah, maybe. But this definitely persuaded me even more than I was persuaded because I wanted to find some sort of statistical signature here, if not a statistical smoking gun. Just because there seemed to be such a commonality to at least all of the pitches that he rigged fixed through that were singled out in the indictment. They all seem to be almost all just thrown really low and just, you know, bounced basically in the dirt, if not the grass in front of the dirt. And so there seemed to be a pattern in how he was wasting these pitches. And I thought maybe that would show up if he had actually been doing this over the course of years and who knows how many pitches. And it does appear to. And so I did some baseball savanting and I, I looked up low waist pitches. So there's the waste zone as MLB defines it, which is beyond the chase zone. It's like, unless you're Andy Pahas, I guess you wouldn't even offer at that. It's such a waste, you couldn't even convince someone to swing. And I isolated three specific subsets of that zone, the low ones, where he seemed to be directing all these pitches. And I tried to isolate for these specific situations as best I could. On Savon, first pitch of the inning, essentially, you know, o O count, no outs, nobody on base. And I compared his rate of spiking these pitches, of throwing them in these super low waste zones in these situations, on OO counts and after OO counts, and then I compared that to the leagues as a whole. And again, it's entirely possible, I guess, that he took 2024 off. But all we know is that this activity spans May of 23 through just about up until he was caught and suspended. So I, I just looked from May of 23 through July of 25, and his percentage of spiked pitches on OO counts in those situations, 8.1%. I will try not to read too many numbers, but 8.1% on OO counts after OO counts, 3.9%, which might sound somewhat curious because he's spiking pitches half as often after the first pitch of the plate appearance.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Than on the first pitch of the plate appearance. And that's kind of counterintuitive because often that first pitch, especially the first pitch of an outing, that's kind of a get me over. Maybe it's, you know, not an auto strike exactly, but, you know, maybe you're throwing a fastball and you're just trying to surprise someone. One, and it's later in the count when maybe you're trying to induce a strikeout, you're ahead in the count, you're trying to get the hitter, not only Andy Pahes, to expand the zone and maybe you're throwing more breaking balls and maybe that gets away from you a little more often. So I looked at the pattern for the league as a whole. And over that same span, the league spike pitches 2.2% of the time on OO counts and thereafter 5.1% the time. So the league is more than doubling its rate of spiked pitches going from OO to after oo, and Class A is more than having it. So he is inverting the typical pattern there. And I thought, okay, is this such a small sample that maybe that could have just happened by chance and maybe someone else would have a higher rate of spike pitches? Nope. If I, I didn't even set the minimum right where Class A's pitch threshold was, I went lower to allow for possible more extreme results. And no, he's number one. That 8.1% spiked pitch rate on OO counts over that same span, number one in the league. And, you know, I'm talking hundreds of qualifying pitchers who, who threw enough pitches to show up there. And he was number one. And that's not all. It gets worse for him because, of course, he's a control artist. And so it's. It's one thing to spike a lot of pitches on the first pitch of a plate appearance if you just kind of do that regularly, you know, like Josiah Gray showed up fairly high on one leaderboard, for instance. Well, he just walked a lot of guys. You know, he doesn't have the best control, but Class A does. He doesn't really walk anyone. And so I then compared the ratio of the spiked pitch percentage on OO pitches and after OO pitches, just comparing the same pitchers to themselves. And Class A had a ratio of more than two. And no one else was even in that stratosphere. No one was in that neighborhood. In fact, only 10 of the 251 qualifying pitchers had even a positive ratio. That is, they spiked more pitches later in those plate appearances. Only 10 of them had so much as an even ratio. And Luis Ortiz showed up on that list, by the way, too. But. But Class a was number one by a mile, like 2.08. The next highest guy was 1.46. I mean, he was an absolute outlier. And that, to me, sort of cemented this, because I don't think you can say it's a small sample thing, really. And after I published this, I'm kicking myself for not thinking about this. But then again, this is why I like getting feedback from readers and listeners, because sometimes they make me think of things that I hadn't thought of. And I got this great email from reader Simon Kim, who said, just read the gambling piece on Class A and Ortiz and was wondering if you considered approaching the data from another way. How does Class A's in the dirt on OO rate change from before he supposedly started betting versus after? While it makes sense to compare him to the rest of the league and he's such an outlier that it's at the very least extremely suspicious, I think comparing him to his past self would show that change in even starker contrast. It's highly unlikely, but maybe there's a chance he's just a weird anomaly who happens to throw more dirt balls early rather than late. But if he wasn't doing that before this betting scheme, that would look incredibly suspicious. And I looked it up, same parameters. I looked 2021 to 2022. So the two full seasons prior to this scheme seemingly starting and nothing. He had a completely normal split in those seasons. He spiked 1.4% of his pitches on OO, counts 4.4% after. So very much like the rest of the league, spiking the more later in the plate appearance and then as soon as the betting started, reversed, inverted and became very curious and suspicious and in my mind, pretty suggestive. So doesn't prove anything obviously, but provides further corroboration. And you know, I included postseason in there, and we don't know for sure that I should have. It doesn't specify. But I will say that having gone through his postseason pitches, as I was doing, that there was one that really looked like all the others that were flagged here, and it was his first pitch of the ALCS in 2024, and it was kind of the ideal scenario because the guardians were up 7 to nothing, and it was his first pitch of the outing. He throws a 93 mph slider so low that Bo Naylor, who was catching, basically fell over trying to to glove it, and it. It fit to a te. The profile and the appearance of all of these other pitches identified in the indictment could be a coincidence, but certainly suggestive. And, you know, obviously he had a horrendous postseason in 2024, but it wasn't so much that he was wild, it was that he was giving up dingers. He infamously gave up, yeah, three homers, which was more than he had allowed that entire regular season. Right. And the Guardians bullpen had a. A net negative WPA in that postseason after having the best WPA on record for a bullpen during the regular season. And Class A was a lot of that. So I'm not suggesting that was intentional. I'm just highlighting this one particular pitch Because I think that one really stood out. But that just kind of reinforced for me that maybe this was happening during 2024, too, because that pitch seemed to fit the description.

[A]

You mean, you don't think that my suggestion that they got spooked by the IPPE stuff or.

[B]

I thought of it. I mean, it definitely. It makes some sense.

[A]

I think it makes some sense. I do want to make clear that it is speculating on my part. A theory, a wild. A wild notion. So, like, there's the. There's the competitive integrity piece of this, and there's the, like, what. Why you being so dumb? For a piece of this? And again, like, there might be stuff going on here. Maybe they have other deaths that we don't know about. Maybe there was some threat. We don't know. But we should entertain the possibility that they're just being doofy. We don't think it's a big deal. Think that they're helping out a buddy who's not making a bunch of money like they are, relative to, you know, their better one and two. And this is. This isn't anything, right? Nothing. This is the first pitch of an ap. What does that even. This isn't going to affect the outcome of a game. But so there's all of those things. And then I just wonder, like, how do you feel if you're. If you're a member of the Cleveland Guardians? You know, like, how do you feel if you're on that team?

[B]

What are their catchers think? Did they have any suspicions? Right.

[A]

You know, and. And I want to be careful to not imply that, like, I think they should have, because I. I don't think. I don't know that. I think that, you know, guys, spike balls, that happens to your point, maybe to a surprising degree with Class A, but it does happen, right? You know, so much of our understanding of the. Of sport and part of its power, both as participants in it and then as. As sort of bystanders who feel a close connection, right? Who make meaning off of the. The sporting endeavors of others, but in a way that's very real, is. Is like the. The obvious and potentially transformative power of pulling in the same direction, right? We're all pulling in the same direction. Maybe it doesn't work out. Maybe we lose in the playoffs, Maybe we don't get there at all, right? Maybe we have a lost season, but we're engaged in this. This thing together, right? And we, as fans get to experience the satisfaction of coming together around this group of folks pulling in the same direction. And so there's, like, the competitive integrity piece of it. But I do think that, like, some stuff like this undermines, in a much more sort of visceral way, one of the real joys and pillars of the activity itself, which is the coming together with other people for common purpose. I really feel for those guys today, and I feel for Guardians fans, you had a really fundamental trust violated, and that's a hard thing, and so I hope that that isn't. And I hope that that piece of it doesn't get lost, and that, like, part of why we want to maintain our understanding of this as being, like, a. A real contest that everyone is trying their very best to win is so that that piece of it can be maintained for people, because I think that's really great and powerful, and having it undermined really sucks. And for, you know, and for so a little. Not that there's, like, an amount of money that would make it okay, but it would at least make it, like, a. More legible to me. Right.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You know, if you're in a position where you can make. You can double your earnings, you can. You can make a. A million dollars. Okay. Like, I still think it's dumb. Over the course of a career, if you're, you know, really good pro athlete, even if you're bound to the vagaries and unfairness of an arbitration system and all of this, you know, nonsense, you're gonna make so much more. But it would be like, you know, it's a. It's a big number. It's around. It's a big round number, whereas, like, five grand, you know, that's tiddlywinks. That's, like, the kind of money that, you know, again, I apologize to the degenerate gamblers in our listenership, but, like, that's.

[B]

That's.

[A]

That's like degenerate gamble. Gambler, Normal Joe money. You know, like, you're risking all of this for that. That seems ridiculous. Even if it accumulates by magnitude, much like snow or, you know, maybe. Maybe there is some additional very scary thing going on here. We. We do have to allow for that possibility, but it just seems like such a. It's. Yeah, it shouldn't. Let me use the word tiddlywinks. I. I shouldn't be trusted with that word, tiddlywinks. And that's a funny word.

[B]

Why this is so pernicious, because if Class A and Ortiz were tempted by these amounts for whatever reason, right. Then imagine how that might appeal to a minor leaguer or to an Amateur athlete and.

[A]

Or an umpire.

[B]

Or an umpire, of course. Yeah. And there have been all sorts of instances of spot fixing, which is one term for it in other sports. And cricket and in tennis, you know, it's. It's not uncommon. In soccer, it's happened. And the lower the level, the more tempting it is, obviously, and maybe the easier to detect it is if there's suddenly a huge spike in betting activity, but the greater the temptation. And I do think that this really is serious, even if we can't point to a specific instance of this allegedly happening and say, well, that changed the outcome of that game and therefore it changed the outcome of the pennant race and it changed the outcome of the season. It's hard to connect those dots. And if you look at the individual instances that are flagged in the indictment, you can't really say this is why the Guardians lost that game in a lot of cases. Yeah.

[A]

Class A, Sometimes they won the games, right?

[B]

Yes. Oh, yes. Sometimes they won the game. Sometimes Class A, the first batter reached and then he stranded him. Sometimes he retired that first batter. Sometimes, you know, the Guardians had a lead and they just won anyway, or they were trailing and they lost anyway. And in the Ortiz cases, runs scored, and you could blame the pitch fixing for that. But then again, additional runs scored later in those games and the Guardians got shut out in both of them. So it's hard to have the counterfactual. But you also never know because.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Any pitch that is thrown and it's an intentional ball and you might have had a strike instead, who knows? Over the course of that plate appearance, that outing, that season, the wear and tear, the extra strain.

[A]

Right. Are you available any less than you would have been otherwise? Does the eventual score change if you know the margin is closer? And so your manager makes a different set of decisions around pinch hitting or who they bring, who else they bring in from the bullpen. Yeah.

[B]

It's the butterfly effect in action. And that's why I think this is really arguably more serious, and I think I might believe more serious than any betting scandal in baseball over the past century. And there have been a few of them for sure.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But, you know, Pete Rose, Tucapita Marcano. I still enjoy saying that name.

[A]

I wish I had a chance to.

[B]

Say it more often.

[A]

That's great. I mean, unfortunately, I think you're going to continue to get chances to say it in a context related to his being banned, but.

[B]

Yeah, but you know, him and the other players who were implicated with betting on baseball, or Pat Hoberg for that matter, all of these cases, no one was ever implicated. No one. There was never documented substantiated activity where a player actually changed something they were doing in a game, just tanked a pitch or a play or a game, or tried to throw anything. As. I'm not naive. I'm not saying it never happened. I'm just saying we're not aware that it happened. And, you know, maybe if this stuff was pervasive all this time and now it's actually coming to light, who knows? Maybe ignorance is bliss. Maybe we were better off not knowing if we can't completely fix it. Well, now we're just more aware that it's a problem. And is that actually better? I'd like to think that it's better if we could actually root it out. But the point is, like, this really crosses a bright line and all of that betting on baseball, that's problematic for sure. But if you can't connect the dots and say this player actually did something against their team's own interests because of a bet, well, that's meaningfully different, I think. And. And no, it's not throwing a World Series exactly what was happening here. But it's a difference of degree, not kind. Like once you cross that line of I'm actually not going to try on this pitch, that's huge. Like there's no coming back from that in terms of your career when that comes to light. And that's why I was thinking about Shoeless Joe and the Black Sox, and I started my article that way because Shoeless Joe Jackson, like part of the cult and the myth of him is that he couldn't possibly have been throwing that World Series because he played so well, because He's a top 10 position player in baseball in 1919. And then he tears it up in the World Series. On the surface, no one had a higher WRC plus no one had a better WPA or championship win probability added among hitters. And so it would seem that what he claimed I tried to win all the time seems to be backed up by the stats. But then if you look into it a little deeper and you do the splits, the games that the White Sox were throwing versus the games they were playing on the level. Oh, curious. He had a negative win probability added in the games that they were not trying to win. And the only runs he drove in in those games came late in the last game when the White Sox were down by several runs and there were suspicious plays in the field. So suddenly it actually starts to look pretty suggestive and now we have better data and more sensitive data where we can actually look at individual pitches and their speeds and their locations and crunch these numbers and look it all up on baseball savant in a way that you couldn't in 1919 to study the effort level of the Black Sox. And so I guess the positive would be that it's easier to identify this, maybe even though it didn't get identified in Classe's case. And, you know, the method that I use to sort of illustrate these suspicious data points about Class A, you could use that just to monitor all players, you know, almost in the way that they monitored spin rates when they're trying to crack down on the sticky stuff. Or it really. It kind of reminded me of. Of once we found out about the banging scheme. And then you go back and look and, oh, wow, I can hear the trash can. And how did I not notice this before? Or, you know, I did an article where I looked back and saw that even before the Astro scheme came to light, teams were taking longer between pitches when they were playing the Astros than when they were playing everyone else, because they kept cycling through their signs because they had their suspicions. Well, all that stuff was out there, but until it was actually reported, people mostly didn't know, and the public didn't know know. And so now we can look back and, oh, actually, there are seemingly some signatures here. There's some signal, not just noise. And so, you know, we'll see how Class and Ortiz handle this. Do they do the Shoeless Joe, where he did initially cop to having taken $5,000 of a promised 20, even though he said that he did not actually throw games when he was testifying before the grand jury. But then. And the judge who presided over that later testified that actually before he was talking to the grand jury, he did confess that he was not trying his hardest, but that no one could tell because he kind of hid it better. And then the rest of his life, he was constantly changing his story and exaggerating and sugarcoating and whitewashing and everything. And who knows how Class A and Ortiz will handle this ultimately, But I was struck by that, too, because she was. Joe took 5,000 bucks, and so did Luis Ortiz, and so did class A on June 15th or whenever it was. And the buying power of 5,000 bucks, much better in 1919 than in 2025. So Shoeless Joe, guess it was a bigger ask to throw a World Series than to throw a pitch. But still, maybe he. He got a better deal.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. How about that?

[B]

All Right. Well, that was a lot of ground to cover, and I guess I'm glad we did because this, it really is a pretty momentous story, I think, in a lot of ways and just a lot of, a lot of implications here. And hopefully this sort of thing, you know, can be a cautionary tale and maybe MLB is already learning some lessons and hopefully that's not just, you know, a fig leaf or kind of we'll throw them bone and we'll get him off our backs and then we'll just go back to doing what we were doing before. Hopefully that's a meaningful recognition that there is a real threat here to nlb, to sports in general, to this entire endeavor. Because you do have to believe that it's on the level. I mean, people watch pro wrestling. Not you, I know, but a lot of people, me sometimes. So you could, you know, it could all be. Be fake and maybe it could still be entertaining, but it would not appeal to me in nearly the same way. So I do not want to be thinking about these things. I don't even want it to be in the back of my head as I am watching baseball. And hopefully it won't be forever. Yeah.

[A]

But could I interest you in a payment for a horse?

[B]

Payment for a horse? It. It sounds, I mean, it is a euphemism.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It sounds like it's already a saying, you know, it's like.

[A]

Yeah, no, it sounds like, you know, like when you imagine like mobsters in a movie trying to conceal the fact that they are talking about cocaine. Right. They're talking about cocaine. They know they're being monitored by the FBI, and so they're like, this is payment for. For a horse. How many horses? We need 10 kilos of horses. And you're like, I think we've cracked your code, sir. You know? Yeah, payment for a horse. But again, I, I just, I need people to remember how good the follow up line is to that. Okay, Perfect.

[B]

Perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It reminds me of the euphemism when people poop but they don't want to say that.

[A]

I got to go see a man about a horse.

[B]

See a man about a horse. Yeah. Drop the kids off at the pool. You know, whatever.

[A]

Drop the kid. Wait a minute. Drop the kids off at the pool. What is that?

[B]

That one?

[A]

Drop kids off at the pool. Okay, first of all, if that is a euphemism for. For pooping, that's horrifying. Drop the kids off at the pool. That makes it sound like you're pooping in a pool. Ben, that makes it sound like you're about to go poop in the pool.

[B]

Yeah, it's not. Not a saying that I use, but.

[A]

I have drop that. I mean, I think you made it up. I think you invented it. Add a whole class.

[B]

I think it's up there. But. But payment for a horse. That may be a new coinage, but, boy, what an adventure this indictment was. I did not expect that we would be reading and critiquing and dissecting so many federal grand jury indictments.

[A]

We. I am just a girl sitting on her couch watching the Seahawks kick the crap out of the Cardinals, reading a federal indictment. It's a normal Sunday for Mick.

[B]

Yep. And, you know, we've. We've made the point so many times that I don't want to make it again and belabored again about how it's not hypocritical in the way that people often allege for MLB to have different standards for fans and for players who can directly affect the proceedings. And so to ban a player for betting on baseball and to also market betting on baseball to fans. Not inconsistent in my mind, but also, I think, not entirely divorced. I think there is some culpability there. There is some tough to quantify effect. And this stuff might be pervasive whether or not MLB had jumped in as wholeheartedly as it has and other leagues, perhaps to an even greater extent, but it has to have some effect. Just the constant inundation in this messaging just to normalize the idea, just to prey on people who are prone to being susceptible to problem gambling. If. If you're a player, okay, yes, you may know that different rules apply to you intellectually, but you're still seeing the signs. You're still hearing the ads. That's still washing over you the way that it's washing over all of us. And maybe that quiets that voice in the back of your head that says, no, this is not something I can do. Do not dare go there. Or it just. It overcomes the better angels of your nature and you. You throw caution to the winds and you just say, ah, everyone's doing it and the league's marketing it. That's not necessarily fully on the league if someone leaps to that conclusion. Because again, Rule 21, it's posted everywhere. It's the cartoon cardinal rule. They've been quite clear about that. But yeah, still, I could see how just the inescapability of this kind of messaging on baseball broadcasts and all sports broadcasts and everywhere, frankly, that has to have an effect just by Triggering that latent potential in someone to possibly act in this way. And I'm not saying in this particular case, I have no idea. But all told, it has to have that effect. It has to increase the odds of this thing becoming more common.

[A]

I think that we got a much more potentially benign example in this charging document. I mean, it wasn't a benign application, to be clear, but a much more benign example of the differences in the rules for players versus the general public. They don't care if you're on your phone at the game. They care if Emmanuel Classe is on his phone. Right. We have a whole rule about that. We have a rule about that because of. Of behavior that wasn't benign. You know, it wasn't benign for a different reason than it was in this case. But, like, you can't be. You can't be on your phone. Even if what you want to do is make an Instagram model feel good about herself on a given day, you still shouldn't be on. You still can't be on your phone. Right. Even. Even if you've gone through to see a man about a horse and you need something else to do while you're doing that. Can't be like in Thursia, kids off at school. I don't know.

[B]

You can take your iPad in there and scout opposing pictures if you want, but it can't be connected to the Internet.

[A]

Right. It can't be on the phone. So there are different standards and rules for professional athletes and those affiliated with the clubs than there are for the rest of us. Yeah, I. I do think that, you know, there is a moral squishiness that you introduced around the concept of gambling just as a whole when you make it this central to the sporting experience. But I. I don't want to grant the premise that the average big leaguer or minor leaguer or umpire or club official is altered by this kind of advertising such that it removes culpability from them. And I'm not saying that's exactly what you're doing here, but I think you kind of got to prove it a little bit with an individual guy that it blurred the lines for him.

[B]

Yeah. Because it would be letting them off the hook to say, oh, this creates a permission structure. No, it doesn't. It definitely does.

[A]

It really does not.

[B]

They are not permitted to do this, but I can still see how it might make it more likely to happen.

[A]

I guess I have sympathy. It's a limited amount of sympathy, mind you, but I have some sympathy for the guy who gets Jammed up because he inadvertently bets on baseball because it's one of like 10 legs of a parlay. And again, you have a responsibility as a big leaguer, as a big professional baseball player to ensure that doesn't happen. But like, the union has brought this up as a concern, right. That these parlays are so complicated, it's so easy to click through them that you might end up with a guy who genuinely makes a mistake and ends up, you know, running a foul of the rule. Maybe not to the degree that it merits a lifetime ban, but running afoul of the rule. Right. I have some limited sympathy for that. Although don't bet parlays. Just don't do it. Just don't. Just never, never do it. If you don't do it even one time, you can never make that mistake. So just don't ever do it. Right. It's. They're trying to take your money from you. Right. They're always trying to do that. They're especially trying to do that and.

[B]

Doing it more efficiently than usual.

[A]

Right. But I have some limited amount of sympathy for a guy getting jammed up that way. And I think that there have been some, some dudes where that has been the case. But this is just, you're, you got your phone and a ticket to the, the family section. This is, yeah, you know, this is above and beyond anything like that.

[B]

And in a way I don't know that this is worse. It's hard even to compare. But on some level, I almost respect cheating to win more than this. Right? Like class A taking steroids or someone stealing signs or something. And that's also bad. But at least they are trying to improve their team's fortunes.

[A]

And maybe it's selfish too.

[B]

Maybe they're trying to literally juice their own stats and salary, but at least you could spin it as, I'm so competitive, I want to win so badly that I did this, that I crossed the line. Whereas this is the opposite of that. And, and that stinks because, gosh, we ended last week, I think, talking about how baseball just seemed to be in a really good place. And I'm not saying this undoes all of that, but MLB was really riding high coming off of that postseason and that World Series and the bananas ratings and just all the positive signs about younger people being interested in the game and just it being a more compelling product and everything and you know, other sports having their issues also with betting scandals. And for a moment there it seemed like, ah, not all is well with baseball, but more is well than usual and the vibes are good. And this definitely disrupted the good vibes in short order.

[A]

I would say it's a very serious bit of business with some funny moments in it. You know, what they did today is a good first step to them addressing like I think the, the greatest point of vulnerability, the most obvious point of vulnerability. But I hope that they continue to go further. They should just ban these bets entirely. And I hope that we continue to see them take good proactive action on it. Because the way that people talk about the, the NBA now is really different than it was two months ago, you know, and that's, that's not good. You don't want people talking about the league the way that they're talking about the NBA. So.

[B]

Yeah. And if reliever of the year 0.61 ERA, third in the Cy Young voting name done. Almost half of AL MVP ballots.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Manuel, class A backbone of maybe the best bullpen ever. If he could be doing this, than in theory anyone could. Last thing I wanted to ask you about this, or maybe we can just throw it out to people for their suggestions because I don't know that I even have a great answer and it's kind of subjective. But all of this talk about the influence of this advertising made me remember an email we got from longtime Patreon supporter and former Patreon guest Peter Bonney who said I have a rant to get off my chest because this is the only sports related media outpost that has resisted the pull of gambling. Here's my rant. I have a soon to be 5 year old son and I refuse to allow him to see baseball and television because of the gambling ads. We rarely have the television on at all while he's awake. But I'd like to sit down with him to watch a daytime baseball game, or as much of a game as his attention span will allow just to introduce him to the sport. But I won't expose him to gambling advertising. I don't want him to hear about it, I don't want him to think it's fun, and I don't want him to grow up associating sports entertainment with wagering money. I'm probably in the minority on this, but it's not good for the long term health of the sport that any parent at all is considering MLB to be inappropriate content for a child because of the gambling ads, let alone a parent who loves baseball and would like to pass on a love of baseball to their child. What are we all supposed to do about this? How can we as fans Push back against the gambling tide. Who at MLB needs to hear that there are fans who won't let their kids watch games because of the gambling ads. Will it even make any difference? And I don't know that one person complaining about it would because they make a lot of money from this stuff, as do all the leagues, and they're probably willing to lose some individual's business for what they would see as the greater good, which is the greater revenue. And I guess this is something that I'll have to wrestle with. I also have a four year old, four year old girl. Maybe that's why this, this has not really weighed on me or has not crossed my mind.

[A]

As you said, the boys are not all right. The boys are.

[B]

There is a gender split here, obviously. Maybe it is profound. That's part of why this has not really been on my mind. And I, I guess I'm just, I'm generally, when it comes to parenting it, at least so far, sort of laissez faire when it comes to this stuff, I guess. And I don't know whether that's right or wrong, you know, no one knows what they're doing when it comes to parenting. We're just hoping we don't screw them up essentially. But I have been to this point fairly permissive, you know, when it comes to like language or, you know, seeing certain kind of media, because I partly, I just feel like it's futile, you know, I mean, it's not like, you know, me just like swearing like a sailor left and right. So Sloan's hurt it all right. But, but no, I just, I assume that she will be exposed to all these things and you know, maybe you can somewhat shelter a kid from that when they're four or five, but the clock is ticking on that, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And pretty soon it's going to be out of your control. And that's not to say just throw in the towel, whatever, but. But I do kind of feel like when it comes to that stuff, you know, they're going to get exposed to it and, and maybe even to not make it seem taboo just to be kind of nonchalant about it. Like if I were watching a game with someone, which I have, and so I guess maybe she's seen gambling stuff. I am so far from the target market that I almost. I don't even notice it anymore really. I mean, maybe on some subliminal level though, it's clearly not working on me when it comes to getting me to part with my money. But it's in one ear or eye and out the other, like it's just part of the fabric. But I don't even dwell on it anymore because I'm so utterly uninterested. And it's so not for me that I just immediately tune it out essentially. And you know, you can't count on that with a kid with a young, impressionable mind, of course. But I guess I would default to just not surrendering grounds, basically. Like if you love baseball and you think baseball is a great and precious thing, and I do, and you want to pass that love on in a non heavy handed, I'm going to impose my interests on you. But here's something that has enriched my life and I hope it will enrich yours. I think there are still ways to do that and I think it's still worth doing. And you know, maybe the question comes up, what's this betting stuff? And maybe you give your true reaction to it, which is that you couldn't care less and maybe that rubs off on your kid. Who knows, you know, maybe that's the best way to inoculate them against it is to show how utterly bored by it you are. Right, Right. And unless they're in the rebellious phase where they want to do the opposite of whatever you tell them to do, then maybe they will just kind of go along with that and you will sort of instill that in them potentially or, you know, depending on the age. Maybe you, you actually do sort of have a frank conversation about.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Here's what people like about this, here's why it's bad in many ways. You know, maybe there's a way to do it responsibly, but exercise caution. Like whatever you would say when you're introducing your kid to drugs or drinks or cigarettes or whatever it is, you know, at some point down the road that's, that's gonna come up.

[A]

So. Right.

[B]

I guess that would be my policy as opposed to just sort of ceding that territory because it's like, you know, don't let the bastards win, basically. It's like if you don't like what they're doing to the game, maybe one way you try to take it back. I mean, yeah, you could vote with your eyeballs and your dollars and just not watch and not consume the sport anymore. But then you're really surrendering and sacrificing something that's precious to you and potentially to your kid. And we get all kinds of questions about that, like I can't root for this team anymore because of the owner or because of the player's. Beliefs or behavior. And you always say, like, if you need to take a break, by all means, take a break. Maybe it's a brief break, maybe it's a permanent break. Maybe you and baseball are just not the best fit for each other anymore, or maybe you'll find your way back to it at some point. But I always just feel if there's a way to retain your holds, baseball's for you, it's for us, it's not for whoever is currently staining it in your eyes. So I would just, I would try to stick it out if I could, I guess. But, you know, to each their own.

[A]

I know that everyone is really clamoring for my parenting advice. I am mindful that the advertising, it is relentless. And I think, you know, I do wonder and I'm, I feel bad saying this because there are people we know who I think are good, smart folks and are trying to do good stuff, who, you know, they read gambling ads on their podcast. Right. They, they're telling you about draftkings and parlays and what have you. And I do wonder if we'll look back on this era and, and view it as akin to, you know, being in an ad for cigarettes. You know, the addictive power is just going to be viewed the same way.

[B]

And I think gambling ads should be regulated the way that the ads for cigarettes have been.

[A]

Yeah. And so, you know, I don't want to say that the advertising piece of it doesn't matter because, like, they're paying Jamie Foxx for a reason. Right. I do think that if it were me, I would rather have a conversation about it. And to your point, not sort of seed the ground and have it be an area where I just feel actively parent. And that sounds judgmental to your approach, which I, I don't mean it to, but, you know, it does strike me as a place where, you know, some active parenting around the question would go a long way. And the good news is that I do think that it is harder. It's like harder to sneak, you know, because the way that your kid would gamble is on a phone that presumably you are paying for. You know, if your kid decides to, that they're going to like, get on a bus and go to a casino to place a bet. Honestly, your kids should get to do that. Sorry. That's ingenuity. Right. That's doing the work that I think prevents problem gambling for a lot of people. But, you know, it isn't like smoking a cigarette behind the portable at school or like going and Drinking at a public park on the weekend with their friends. Like, I, I do think that your ability to intervene successfully on that stuff is on, on sports betting is, is pretty profound. And I don't think that mere exposure is enough to like a problem gambler make. And again, we should just say we hate this, we hate this stuff. And so I would just assume it not be there at all. You know, it's nice to watch. It was funny I was reflecting on this when it looked like we were going to get a Dodgers Mariners World Series. Ever so briefly, just in this brief little moment, I thought to myself, well, we'll still get ad reads on the national broadcast, but you're not going to see the same kind of advertising in ballpark that you do for other sports. Because California and Washington are both states where you don't have legal license sports betting like through the, like through DraftKings. But you still get those ads. You just get them differently. Right. Instead of getting an ad for, you know, BET MGM or BET three, you know what, like the, the Roger center has all kinds of like bet really big in T Mobile park. You get like the Muckle Shoot casino ads. Right. Or you get a, you get, you know, the EQC Tracer, the Emerald Queen Casino Tracer because it's all tribal casinos in Washington and I believe it's the same in California. But I was like, but you are not gonna see DraftKings AD. I mean you probably will get it at DraftKings AD read on the broadcast, but you're not gonna get it in, in ballpark. So it's just like a funny all that to say you should parent your kid how you think is appropriate. I tend to think that like parents, especially for very young children can really help sort of mold and smooth the way and you know, and first of all, a little kid's probably not actually cognizant of that stuff.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But at an age appropriate juncture, I think unfortunately you're gonna have to have a conversation with your kid about sports betting anyway because it's going to come down younger and younger and younger. Like we're already seeing these, these books trying to be present on college campuses. So I think having a conversation about it where you get to really be honest about the pitfalls so that the person they're hearing about it from first isn't Jamie Foxx is valuable.

[B]

All right, I just had a second to reread and digest that MLB press release. The bit about proactively creating new safeguards to limit pitch level markets is pretty Rich I would say this is the opposite of proactive. It's very reactive, but better react than not. In my piece I proposed a nickname for Classe and ortiz. If the 1919 White Sox were the black socks I suggested, then maybe these guardians could be the blackguards. See, it just doesn't work. It works in print because instead of black socks, it's black guards. Get it? Guards, Guardians. But it's pronounced blackguard so it just doesn't scan. Dictionary.com A man who behaves in a dishonorable or contemptible way. Well, that fits. I got a text from Jason Benetti, who brag after my piece was published just saying blackguards. But as I told him, I doubt the nickname will catch on. Maybe they don't deserve a nickname. Anyway, it's only two players, so I wouldn't want to tar the whole team with the same brush you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon Help us stay ad free and thus sports betting ad free by signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us remain solely listener supported and get yourself access to some perks. The following five listeners have already done so Liam Gio, Connor Sparks, Benjamin Gonzalez, and Kevin Windhauser. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams. Well, those are a ways away, but prioritized email answers, potential podcast appearances, personalized messages, discounts on merch and ad free fan crafts, memberships, and so much more. Check out all the [e-mail] effectively wild if you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastangraphts.com youm can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, and other podcast platforms. I got a comment on YouTube the other day saying you're finally on YouTube Music. Yeah, we have been for a while. I say it every day. What do you not listen to every outro? Preposterous. You can join our Facebook group facebook.com group effectivelywild. You can find the effectively wild subreddit at r effectivelywild and you can check the show notes at Fan Graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats recited today, as well as a link to sign up for Effectively Wild's Secret Santa. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance we'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then.

[A]

I wanna know about baseball. I wanna.

[B]

I want to know about every single team. I want to know about stat blast fan graphs and about.

[A]

Oh, oh, oh, Tony. I'm a very modern fan.

[B]

Reading up on all the analytics.

[A]

I want to know about baseball.

[B]

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