Podcast Summary: The Windup – The Roundtable | Clase & Ortiz Indicted on Pitch Rigging and Will Skubal Get Traded

Date: November 10, 2025
Hosts: Grant Brisbee & Sam Miller (without regular co-host Andy McCullough)
Episode: 192

Episode Overview

This episode of The Windup’s “Roundtable” revolves around two explosive baseball stories:

1. The high-profile indictment of Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz for pitch-rigging tied to illegal sports gambling.
2. Rumors swirling around a potential Tarek Skubal trade and the wider implications for the Tigers and modern MLB.

Grant Brisbee and Sam Miller take a deep dive into the ethics, mechanics, and existential threats of sports gambling infiltrating baseball, blending deep concern with their trademark humor and personal anecdotes. In the latter half, they debate the logic and emotional impact of trading a star pitcher like Skubal.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Missing Co-host, Travel Woes, and Table-setting (01:27–04:33)

• Grant and Sam joke about Andy McCullough being waylaid by travel interruptions, ironically in Las Vegas as a gambling scandal rocks MLB.
• They swap misadventure travel stories to set a conversational, freewheeling tone.

2. The Emmanuel Clase & Luis Ortiz Gambling Scandal (04:33–34:14)

The Shock and Banality of the Clase Indictment

• Both hosts agree the scandal is darkly serious, even if there’s a sliver of dark humor in its execution.
• Sam Miller (05:06):

  “Emmanuel Clase is a guy who's making $10 million a year… and he's throwing rigged pitches for, like, two grand, seven grand. Nothing... explains this. It went on for years and spread... we weren't thinking Hall of Fame closer torching his career and the sport for $7,000.”

Why Is This Different?

• Grant reflects on earlier columns and how modern accessibility and normalization of gambling changes the risk profile.
• The casualness worries Sam:
  • Sam Miller (10:06):

    “It's just so much more... it seems from the indictment... casual. He like told a teammate, yeah, like, I sometimes rig the game. You want to do that with me? That freaks me out.”

  • Both agree the normalization among a generation raised with easy gambling—like sports apps and daily fantasy—poses an existential threat.
• The “banality of evil” phrase is used by Grant (13:58) to describe how understated and ordinary the crime felt compared to past black marks like the Pete Rose affair or the Black Sox.

Accessibility, Endorphins, and New Temptations

• Sam and Grant recall the difficulty of betting as kids and compare it to today's one-tap app access.
• Sam Miller (15:35):

  “As a kid... it was hard to find a house to take your money. Now... the bets are just always there.”

• They worry about “rig-curious” players:
  • Sam Miller (16:44):

    “Probably this increases the number of players who are... rig curious in the future.”

Detection and Enforcement are Lacking

• The indictment’s details are examined for their blend of incompetence and how difficult it still was to catch:
  • Sam Miller (26:07):

    “They did it really badly. They didn't do any of the decoy stuff... and guess what? It took three years for Clase to get caught, which is... troubling.”

Existential Threat and Spectator Trust

• Both hosts express fear that even a few such incidents could permanently corrode public trust in the fairness of games.
  • Grant Brisby (32:52):

    “That’s the existential threat... you have to have trust in baseball. So if you’re talking about payment for a horse, pitches... I’m going to think that all the time. Probably with those exact words now that you’ve said them.”

Notable Quotes

• Sam Miller (31:38):

  “Endorphins are endorphins. Emmanuel Clase... did he need the money?... But did he need the endorphins? Everybody needs endorphins. Some people go weird paths to get them.”

• Grant Brisby (34:09):

  “That’s why this is a big deal.”

Memorable Moment:

• The phrase “payment for a horse” (seen in the indictment explaining payoffs) becomes a running in-joke and a potential new lens of paranoia for watching wild pitches (31:38–34:09).

3. Tarek Skubal Trade Rumors – Logic & Emotion (35:49–47:10)

The Familiar Cycle of Trade Chatter

• Sam lays out the predictable sequence of trade rumors: initial denial, “blown-away offers only”, then eventual inevitability.
• He asks if there’s ever a return that would make a Skubal trade feel worthwhile.

Are Star Trades Ever Worth It?

• Grant brings “happy fun times” as the base value unit of a baseball franchise. Trading an established star removes guaranteed joy (and wins) in favor of speculative prospect packages that almost never “add up” in the same way.
• Grant Brisby (42:50):

  “Once you have someone on the team and you’ve got the happy fun units... that enters the discussion a little bit. You’ve already got one of the main goals of baseball, which is to entertain your fans.”

• Sam agrees, noting the “friction” involved and that “vibes get lost in the journey” whenever a beloved or homegrown star is traded (45:16).

The Loss Aversion Fallacy, and When Trades Make Sense

• Both hosts acknowledge (through the Kershaw/Cabrera thought experiment) that trades rarely work out even in historically productive exchanges.
• The little value in “addition by division” is discussed – it's rare for teams to truly recoup the fun or performance lost from dealing a star.

Notable Quotes

• Sam Miller (47:01):

  “You take Skubal from the Tigers where he is already producing happy, fun times, you rip him out... Even if he pitches just as well... there's friction involved in the exchange. There is a psychological loss... It takes time to build up the same sort of fun and love in the new team. Vibes get lost in the journey.”

• Grant Brisby (47:06):

  “Trading Tarek Skubal is real loser, right?”

Memorable Moment:

• Continued playful riffing on “payment for a horse” and if a GM trading Skubal would qualify (41:02).

Additional Engaging Moments

Riffs, Humor, and Cultural Asides

• Sam’s analysis of the indictment as writing “like a baseball blog post” and critiquing its tone (23:43–24:01).
• The discussion on past forbidden pleasures (gambling, THC sodas, finding pornography as teens) as analogies for changing access and risk in baseball and life (49:51–51:50).

Key Timestamps & Sections

• [04:33–34:14]: Main discussion on the Clase & Ortiz pitch rigging scandal, gambling normalization, existential threat, detection failures, and lasting impacts.
• [35:49–47:10]: Deep dive on Tarek Skubal trade rumors, the philosophy of trading stars, and the calculus of fandom, value, and “happy fun times.”

Notable Quotes – At a Glance

• Sam Miller (05:06):
  "…Hall of Fame closer torching his career and the sport for $7,000. Somebody pointed out that he was making less on these bets than he was making throwing the pitch…"

• Grant Brisby (13:58):
  "The banality of evil, right, is kind of what you're describing. Like, this is the banality of evil outcomes. It's just… so boring…"

• Sam Miller (31:38):
  "…Endorphins are endorphins. Emmanuel Clase… did he need the money? Maybe… but did he need the endorphins? Everybody needs endorphins. Everybody."

• Sam Miller (47:01):
  "…Vibes get lost in the journey… the scales are not even. They're not balanced. Joy would be lost in the aggregate…"

Tone and Style

• The discussion is candid, intelligent, and laced with a dry, self-aware sense of humor.
• Both hosts seamlessly balance the gravity of existential threats to the sport with irreverent anecdotes and humane skepticism.

Takeaways for Listeners

• The ease and normalization of gambling pose a profound, potentially uncontrollable threat to MLB—even among its most privileged, high-salary players.
• The damage isn’t always from desperate crime or vast profit, but often from casual, “banal” bad choices that now infect baseball’s culture.
• Trust, not just results, is the baseball commodity most at risk.
• In debates about trades, the “happy fun times” metric—what a star means emotionally to a team and fan base—may outweigh even smart, cold logic.

An engaging, eye-opening episode for any baseball fan concerned about the sport’s present and future—and anyone who’s ever debated the pain or payoff of a blockbuster trade.