MLB Pitch Tampering Scandal: Ortiz and Clase Indicted

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00:00Major League Baseball, one of them, an investigation going back to 2013, Emanuel Classé and Luis Ortiz

00:07indicted by prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, which is Brooklyn,

00:11with charges involving sports betting.

00:13As the story goes, it's an allegation right now, if you believe it,

00:16that literally because you can do in-game wagering on baseball,

00:20you can bet things like, is the next pitch a ball, is the next pitch a strike,

00:23does it hit the batter?

00:24You can even bet on, and this was a new one to me,

00:27and I thought I was really on top of all the gambling stuff,

00:30you can bet on the speed of the pitch.

00:33I never knew that one. I guess it makes sense.

00:35Why not? You can bet on everything else.

00:37So the allegations are that gamblers were waging six figures

00:42on the outcome of individual pitches,

00:44and then the payback to Classé and Ortiz was anywhere from, I think, $4,000 to $7,000

00:49if they did what they were asked to do.

00:52And apparently there's text messages going back and forth.

00:55Look, it seems like the feds probably have them dead to rights.

01:00They get their day in court.

01:02Their lawyers have already denied it at all.

01:05But if we're literally going to now try to fix the outcome of a pitch,

01:08and one of the bets was the next pitch will be over 95 miles per hour,

01:15which is not anything new like we see that from every pitcher in every game,

01:19that's crazy to me.

01:21That's not like I'm going to walk a guy.

01:24That's not like I'm the batter.

01:26I'm going to strike out no matter what happens on this at bat,

01:29which I do think happens, you know, with, you know,

01:32Giancarlo Stanton a lot because he swings and stuff.

01:34That makes no sense he's ever swinging at.

01:36But, like, to actually wage your money on over 95 miles per hour,

01:42only 95, ball strike.

01:44And then I guess in one of the examples, I think with Class A,

01:47he was supposed to throw a ball on a particular pitch

01:51to that center fielder for the Dodgers, Paget.

01:54All right?

01:54And the ball's like a way outside low slider, okay?

01:58And Paget swings at it.

02:01And it messes up the bet.

02:03But they lost the bet because Paget wasn't in on it, allegedly,

02:08and he swung the bat at a bad pitch.

02:10So they put all this money on he's going to throw a ball.

02:14The dude swings at it and misses.

02:16So it's a strike.

02:17What can I do?

02:18So the bet didn't cash.

02:20Yeah, can't do it.

02:20Which to me would be a pretty good defense, too.

02:23I wasn't doing anything untoward because I threw a strike.

02:26No, it wasn't really a strike.

02:28The guy swung at a bad pitch.

02:29Right.

02:29But it's going to be interesting, and I hate to do this,

02:32and I'm not doing it, like, for clicks and views and that stuff.

02:36I know it just comes with the territory.

02:38But one of these investigations, like I said, goes back to 2023.

02:42The other one was from this season, earlier in 2025,

02:46and the player was suspended while they were investigating

02:48whether or not they could prove that he was, you know,

02:50fixing pitches so the gamblers could make money.

02:53But again, it brings me back to the big one.

02:56These scandals and the length of the investigation

02:59and the details they're getting into with, I'm no joke now,

03:05how fast was a pitch thrown?

03:07That that now becomes an actionable assault on a player's integrity.

03:13And yet the Shohei Ohtani story disappeared.

03:16And if you remember again, when Ipe, the translator,

03:21first spoke publicly about the scandal,

03:25his first comment to, I think it was an ESPN reporter,

03:29was, Ohtani knew what I was doing.

03:32He sent the money to bail me out.

03:3524 hours later, when Ohtani's lawyers got involved,

03:39it went from, I misspoke.

03:41He had no idea.

03:43I stole the money and very quickly did a plea deal.

03:47And he's sitting behind bars right now

03:49for like four and a half, five years.

03:51And again, maybe Ohtani's clean as a whistle.

03:54I hope for the sport and for him he is.

03:56But every time I see the length of the investigation

03:59with these other lower level, less widely known players,

04:05in this case, Ortiz and Classé,

04:08I'm saying to myself, it seems interesting

04:11that they literally broke down a single pitch

04:16in a game in which he might've thrown 90 pitches

04:19and figured out that there was money on the line

04:23on the speed of a pitch.

04:25But with Ohtani, it went from Ohtani knew,

04:29Ohtani didn't know, Ohtani's clean,

04:33the interpreter's in prison, let's go win a World Series.

04:36And we've forgotten about it like it never happened.

04:40I want to be very clear.

04:41I'm hoping he is clean.

04:43I'm hoping the story we've been told is accurate.

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