On June 4, 2023, one of Major League Baseball’s most feared pitchers received a text message about livestock. Federal prosecutors said it was coded language for an illegal gambling racket.
The pitcher, Emmanuel Clase, of the Cleveland Guardians, had been tipping off his associates about the type and speed of forthcoming pitches, using words like “rooster” and “chicken,” prosecutors said.
Then, those associates would share the details with bettors, who wagered and won hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally on betting markets, according to prosecutors.
On that June day, the associate wanted to know about the first pitch of the ninth inning, when Mr. Clase would be taking the mound, referring to the pitch by its code word, prosecutors said.
“Yes, the same rooster,” Mr. Clase said in response, according to prosecutors.
The associate informed a group of bettors, who wagered on DraftKings that Mr. Clase’s pitch would be slower than 95 miles per hour. The radar gun read 88 m.p.h., and the bettors won $33,000, prosecutors said.
Mr. Clase and Luis Ortiz, a teammate of Mr. Clase who prosecutors said joined the scheme, are accused of defrauding the betting companies DraftKings, FanDuel and ESPN Bet.
Prosecutors plan to show that Mr. Clase threw 18 rigged pitches over the course of two years, while Mr. Ortiz threw two. If convicted at trial, for which jury selection began on Monday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, they face decades in prison.
A third man, an acquaintance of Mr. Clase from the Dominican Republic, Robinson Vasquez Germosen, will be tried alongside the pitchers. A fourth man, Luis Arismendy Paca Mendez, was extradited from the Dominican Republic and charged in the case, but will not take part in the trial, which is expected to last around a month.
Lawyers for the men have denied they ever conspired with gamblers to rig their performance. At trial, they will present evidence that they say shows the pitches were part of a normal strategy and that the bets could have been placed by skilled gamblers, without relying on insider information.
Elizabeth Geddes, a lawyer for Mr. Ortiz, wrote in a September filing that the case against her client was “remarkably thin.” In January, the lawyers for Mr. Ortiz and Mr. Clase argued that their communications referred to their interest in rooster fighting, a popular sport in their native Dominican Republic.
The allegations have been devastating to the once-promising career of Mr. Clase, 28, who was an All-Star and had been recognized as the top relief pitcher in the American League twice. Mr. Ortiz, by comparison, was a less established pitcher. Both were placed on leave in 2025.
The accusations are among a host of betting scandals that have led many to question the integrity of professional sports, at a time when American leagues have embraced widespread gambling.
While professional leagues argue that legalization and regulation have helped root out bad actors, some have raised concerns that ubiquitous gambling has allowed people with access to inside information to be easily corrupted.
The baseball trial will mark one of the first tests of the Justice Department’s ambitious efforts to crack down on manipulation in sports betting and prediction markets.
Specifically, the case against the pitchers revolves around the manipulation of prop bets, or wagers placed on an event or player performance that is not tied directly to the outcome of a game.
Such bets are lucrative for gambling companies, allowing them to sell wagers on stats like home runs, pitches thrown or stolen bases. It’s easier for one player to manipulate their performance — and for it to go unnoticed — than for an entire team to throw a game, for example.
Recent cases brought by Brooklyn federal prosecutors have highlighted the potential vulnerability of those wagers. Since 2024, prosecutors have accused three N.B.A. players of rigging their performance in categories like rebounds and three-pointers.
Prosecutors say that the baseball scheme originated in May 2023, but Mr. Clase didn’t start requesting and receiving payments for his services until April 2025, prosecutors said.
Usually, Mr. Clase would throw a ball, off-speed and in the dirt, and it would be on the first pitch of his outing, prosecutors said. The individual winnings from Mr. Clase’s rigged pitches ranged from $10,000 to around $60,000.
Mr. Ortiz joined Mr. Clase’s scheme in June 2025, prosecutors said, rigging two pitches and receiving a bribe of $5,000 from the bettors for his services, while Mr. Clase also received $5,000. Those payments, prosecutors said, were wired in smaller increments to “multiple individuals in the Dominican Republic,” before going to the pitchers.
In total, the scheme netted the bettors around $450,000 in two years, with around $400,000 of it derived from Mr. Clase’s pitches, prosecutors said.
In June 2025, after prosecutors said Mr. Ortiz had thrown his rigged pitches, Mr. Clase told Mr. Ortiz to tell his associates in the Dominican Republican to lie about what the bribe payments were for.
“Tell him that this is payment for a horse,” Mr. Clase told Mr. Ortiz in an audio message, according to prosecutors.
The post Trial Begins for M.L.B. Players Accused of Tipping Pitches to Gamblers appeared first on New York Times.
