- Gamblers tipped off by Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz cleared at least $460,000 on ball-or-strike markets, prosecutors say.
- Prosecutors have flagged at least 18 Clase pitches across 17 games between May 2023 and May 2025, and two Ortiz pitches from June 2025.
- Defense lawyers say bettor Enoc Pena lied about having inside information, and Ortiz’s lawyer says his client never contacted a gambler.
- MLB and its sportsbook partners capped pitch-level wagers at $200 and barred them from parlays in November 2025.
BROOKLYN, N.Y. – The Clase-Ortiz trial opened in federal court Wednesday with a prosecutor branding Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, the Cleveland Guardians pitchers on trial, “cheaters” who “sold their pitches,” and with defense lawyers answering that a gambler invented his inside line on both men.
What Prosecutors Say
The pitcher’s first customer, Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Urquiola said, was a bettor Clase got to know back home in the Dominican Republic early in 2023. Clase agreed to signal which pitch was coming, then asked for a cut once he saw the gamblers winning, she said. Ortiz joined in 2025, by her account, and the government will lean on texts in which chicken and rooster served as code, and on testimony from some of the gamblers themselves.
Prosecutors said the winnings topped $450,000 when Guardians pitchers were charged in November 2025 and now put the total at $460,000 or more. Each pitcher has pleaded not guilty to four conspiracy counts, one apiece for wire fraud, honest services fraud, sports bribery and money laundering, and both remain on unpaid leave from the Guardians. U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto is presiding over a trial expected to run about a month.
Defense Case
Clase’s attorney cast Pena, 41, as the author of the case, a gambler with more than 7,000 bets between 2023 and 2025 who latched onto the pitcher, sold other bettors a fiction about inside knowledge and still lost more than 200 wagers on Clase’s pitches. Why, the attorney asked, would a closer four seasons into a five-year, $20 million deal gamble it for a few thousand dollars?
Ortiz’s attorney said his client never exchanged a word with any bettor and that the government’s whole case against him rests on two pitches, both balls. “That’s not a conspiracy. That’s just baseball,” he said. Prosecutors said last week they no longer plan to call Pena. Ortiz’s attorney told jurors the gambler had cut a deal that keeps him out of prison and in the United States.
Sportsbooks And Pitch Limits
The sportsbook side of the case reached the witness stand Wednesday. Joel Trella, who leads special investigations at DraftKings, walked jurors through the operator’s review of a cluster of accounts it believed were linked and that bet on Clase’s pitches. Cross-examination begins Thursday, ESPN reported.
MLB moved on this market within days of the indictment. Effective Nov. 10, 2025, all MLB-authorized operators capped wagers on pitch-level markets at $200 and removed them from parlays on legal MLB betting sites that MLB says represent more than 98% of the U.S. betting market.
The league said micro-bet markets carry heightened integrity risk because a single player can decide a one-off event, and the government’s account fits that description. Prosecutors say a pitcher’s advance word on individual pitches produced at least $460,000, while a winning even-money bet at the $200 cap nets $200, so matching that haul would take 2,300 winners.
The players’ union proposed in June that baseball join it in lobbying sportsbooks and daily fantasy operators to bar props on individual players across legal sports betting, according to a union source cited by ESPN. An MLB official said the league would respond during labor negotiations.
