Prop betting could lead to the MLB’s worst nightmare

Every MLB pitch is suspicious in a world of prop bets. Baseball is the best sport for this type of wager, which allows a bettor to put money down on an individual game event such as a specific pitch — rather than the full outcome of a game.

The major leagues nearly collapsed after the Chicago White Sox threw a World Series to help gamblers win a bet back in 1919. As a result, Major League Baseball has spent all 106 years since then sending one message to all its players and coaches: Betting on baseball is the game’s ultimate sin.

The last thing MLB wants is its integrity undermined. But that day is already here.

MLB has instilled this in its players with a fervor that goes beyond all messaging about steroids, sign-stealing or any other issue that compromises the fairness of the game. Fans and players must be able to trust that the games they are watching are decided by skills and random outcomes, not individual players’ desire to win bets. When that trust disintegrates, so does the game’s reputation.

So the last thing MLB wants is its integrity undermined. But that day is already here.

MLB has put two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians — Luis L. Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase — on paid administrative leave through the end of August while it conducts an investigation into their potential use of sports betting apps to bet on baseball. MLB uses paid leave when an investigation holds a player in limbo — he is neither suspended nor allowed to play. The long-established punishment for betting on baseball is a lifetime ban.

“We’ve been on prop bets from the very beginning,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said last year. “When we lobby in states, there’s always certain types of bets that we have lobbied against — I mean, the first pitch of the game, we really don’t want that available as a prop bet.”

Clase, who has had a stellar season as the Guardians’ closer, hasn’t been accused of any specifics relating to his potential involvement in this sports betting investigation. The team had been looking to trade him while his market value was high, but it reportedly scrapped plans to do so when Guardians officials learned he would be under investigation by the league.

In the case of Ortiz, he is being investigated for throwing two specific pitches in early June that line up with a pair of bets that were flagged by a sports betting integrity firm. Those pitches — each of them an uncommon first-pitch slider — align with patterns flagged by a betting integrity watchdog firm.

MLB works in conjunction with the sports betting companies to track potential bets made by its players or staff members. This system makes it easier for MLB to root out potential instances of its players’ betting on baseball — their own games or others. Manfred has also said that “one of the advantages of legalization is it’s a heck of a lot easier to monitor what’s going on than it is with an illegal operation.”

Separately, MLB has official sponsorship deals with two major sports betting companies. Critics have described MLB’s business association with gambling companies as hypocritical given its centurylong derision of the practice. MLB maintains that every player and staff member is repeatedly informed that betting on baseball is against its rules.

Legalization has indeed allowed for a system of oversight and cooperation between MLB and the sports betting companies. But the proliferation of legal sports betting has also made it easier than ever to place bets on outcomes big and small.

This is the danger zone for baseball. It’s a sport that is beloved for its unpredictability, and manipulating the outcome of an entire game would be difficult — but not impossible — for an individual to do on his own. But betting on individual pitches or other prop bets? That opens the door to players’ betting on the outcomes they can control.

Easy access to legal wagering and the variety of prop bets available in baseball are a threat to the integrity of America’s pastime.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a particularly big deal if a player decides to swing at the first pitch he sees in a certain at-bat or a pitcher throws a certain pitch in a specific inning. Those deliberate actions don’t guarantee a specific outcome, but the slope gets very slippery from there. If a pitcher were to bet on a specific hitter’s knocking a home run off him, he can’t guarantee that outcome, but he can pitch in a way that increases the odds. An individual home run can be the difference between a win or a loss.

Sports betting combines the potential to make money quickly with the emotional high of winning a contest, but it can snowball into a larger problem when the bettor gets hooked on the highs and lows of the experience.

Prop bets are the gateway to the sports gambling ecosystem and MLB’s most important point of intervention. The betting stakes only get higher from there, and the potential consequences for the integrity of the game become significantly more extreme.

The collateral effects of baseball players’ betting on their own sport could affect anything from roster decisions to division races or — in MLB’s worst nightmare — the outcome of a playoff game. For more than 100 years, MLB has made it a priority to keep gambling out of its game. But the easy access to legal wagering and the variety of prop bets available in baseball are an existential threat to the integrity of America’s pastime.

Lindsey Adler

Lindsey Adler is a writer and reporter living in Brooklyn, New York.