No sport is safe from gambling impropriety as legal sports betting explodes, but as Major League Baseball investigates another player for gambling, ESPN insider Jeff Passan worries that baseball could be most susceptible to scandals.
After breaking the news on Thursday that MLB is placing Cleveland Guardians pitcher Luis Ortiz on paid leave amid an investigation into his betting history, Passan joined The Pat McAfee Show to issue a dire warning.
“Baseball is just the kind of sport that when you have the ability to gamble the way that you do these days, is rife for potential corruption,” Passan explained.
“You can bet on individual pitches … to be balls or strikes. And when that’s the case and there are hundreds of pitches being thrown every game, the ability for a pitcher or a player to have one of those minuscule events turn into a windfall of money potentially, that’s why Major League Baseball and the other professional sports leagues have partnered as strongly as they have with gambling integrity organizations. Because the sports just leave opportunity for corruption to happen.”
Passan is alluding to the proliferation of live betting, in particular, as a danger to the integrity of MLB games. Because baseball stops and starts frequently, creating new outcomes with each pitch, at-bat, and inning, it is an ideal betting sport. In basketball, hockey, and soccer, there are fewer individual moments to bet on because the sport is fast-paced and free-flowing.
As a result, baseball pitchers like Ortiz can directly affect the success or failure of a wager simply by straying from the strike zone. This, according to Passan, is why MLB may bring the hammer down more aggressively than other leagues.
“In Major League Baseball, there is one rule and that rule is very simple,” he said. “Do not bet on baseball. And if you do bet on baseball, you face a lifetime ban.”
In other recent betting scandals, the primary focus has been on prop bets. These wagers pay off when players reach (or miss) individual statistical totals. Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter allegedly checked himself out of games with exaggerated injuries to hit the “Under” on his props.
Baseball bettors can go a layer deeper than that and bet on live outcomes, moment to moment.
As the conversation continues regarding the legal oversight of the sports gambling industry and potential regulations, new forms of wagers are likely to take center stage. When sports gambling was only available through secret bookies and casino sportsbooks, the options were more limited. Now, because sports betting happens entirely online and primarily through mobile apps, there is a seemingly unlimited number of bets to be made.
The problem is that live betting and parlays that include prop bets are the main drivers of new users and bigger winnings for the operators. They will likely fight any restrictions on those bets if the government challenges them.
More opportunities to bet on players to fail make outcomes easier to manipulate. When players can throw a ball on purpose, walk a player on purpose, or a hitter can strike out on purpose, it is extraordinarily easy to create a big win.
So Passan, like many, worries that even a closely scrutinized league is bound to miss plenty.
“It’s great when this sort of thing gets flagged, but it also makes you think, how many times does this happen where it doesn’t get flagged as well?” Passan added. “And what does that mean for the integrity of the game?”
Besides the nature of baseball as a sport, the league’s structure means that low-level players are among the least financially secure in all of professional sports. Someone called up from the minors for two weeks in August is relatively anonymous and not well-paid. These are exactly the types of accomplices that felonious gamblers could look to recruit.
There is no good answer to Passan’s line of questioning, at least until the federal government takes a more hands-on approach with guidelines or new laws to regulate the blossoming business.