Infielder Tucupita Marcano, who is in the San Diego Padres organization, became the first player to be permanently declared ineligible for baseball betting since Pete Rose in 1989 after a league investigation found revealed that Marcano had bet more than $87,000 on MLB games, including 25 in Pittsburgh. Pirates games for which he was injured but on the major league roster.
The other four players – Oakland Athletics pitcher Michael Kelly, Philadelphia Phillies minor league infielder José Rodríguez, San Diego Padres minor league pitcher Jay Groome and Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Andrew Saalfrank – were ruled ineligible for a year after that investigation revealed they had all bet on MLB. games too.
“Strict enforcement of Major League Baseball’s rules and policies governing the conduct of gambling is an essential part of upholding our most important priority: protecting the integrity of our games for fans. The long-standing ban on betting on Major League Baseball games by players in the sport has been a bedrock principle for more than a century,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.
“We have made it clear that with the privilege of playing baseball comes a responsibility to refrain from certain types of behavior that are legal for other people. Since the Supreme Court’s decision opened the door to legalizing sports betting, we have worked with licensed sports betting operators and other third parties to put ourselves in a better position from an integrity perspective through to the transparency that a regulated sports betting system can offer. MLB will continue to invest heavily in integrity monitoring, educational programs and outreach initiatives in an effort to ensure strict compliance with this fundamental rule of our game.”
MLB, which was quick to allow its teams and national channels to air odds and ads for online betting companies during games once the Supreme Court cleared the way for legal sports betting, has insisted in a press release Tuesday that none of the players involved influenced the decision. results of the games they bet on and that “the betting data does not suggest that the results of the baseball games they bet on were compromised, influenced or manipulated in any way.”
The release explains that in March of this year, a legal sports betting operation reported the past bets of MLB minor and major league players, who then obtained the data on their bets. The league has long been clear about its position on sports betting: players can bet on other sports as long as they do so through legal betting operations, but they cannot bet on the baseball.
The league’s rule book states: “Any player, umpire, official or employee of a club or league, who bets any amount on any baseball game in which the bettor is under no obligation to play, will be declared ineligible for one year. » Meanwhile, “any player, umpire, official or employee of a club or league, who bets any amount whatsoever on a baseball game for which the bettor has a duty to play, will be declared permanently ineligible”.
Marcano last played in the majors in July 2023, when an ACL injury ended his season with the Pittsburgh Pirates. In total, MLB found that he bet approximately $150,000 on baseball starting in October 2022 and continuing through the summer of 2023. It was during that summer when he was listed on the injured list, but was still receiving treatment at PNC Park, that he placed 25 bets on the Pirates. He did not appear in any of these games.
The other four players did not bet on the teams they were registered for at the time, although some did bet on games played by their major league affiliates while playing in the minors. When Kelly was a minor leaguer in the Houston Astros system in 2021, he placed over/under bets on how many runs the big league team would score and how many strikeouts the individual pitchers would have, according to MLB. Kelly, who has since appeared in 48 major league games with the Phillies and A’s, including 38 this year, did not appear in any of the games he bet on.
The same was true for Saalfrank, a young left-hander who appeared in three World Series games for the Diamondbacks as a rookie in 2023. The MLB investigation found that Saalfrank bet 28 times on games in the MLB while in the lower levels of Arizona’s minor league system. Four of those games were Diamondbacks games, according to MLB, which says Saalfrank won only five of those bets.
Rodríguez, who appeared in one major championship game with the Chicago White Sox before being acquired by the Phillies before this season, placed seven bets on the White Sox while he was a member of their Class AA team in Birmingham in 2022. In total, he bet about $750 on 28 baseball bets.
Padres left-hander Groome has yet to make his major league debut, but he bet on the scores of Boston Red Sox games while a member of their high-profile Class A affiliate in 2020 and 2021. According to MLB investigation, Groome bet $453.74. on 30 bets related to MLB games and had lost $433.54.
The suspensions come as MLB continues to investigate former Angels infielder David Fletcher after his name was revealed in connection with Mathew Bowyer, the bookmaker with whom former Angels star Ippei Mizuhara Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, allegedly accumulated millions in debt that he tried to pay off. pay with Ohtani’s money. Coincidentally, Mizuhara appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom on Tuesday and pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud charges that carry a maximum sentence of more than 30 years in prison. Subsequently, MLB released a statement clearing its global superstar, Ohtani, of any malpractice in the scandal.
“Based on the thoroughness of the federal investigation that was made public, the information collected by MLB, and the resolution of the criminal proceeding without contest, MLB considers Shohei Ohtani to be a victim of fraud and this matter has been classified,” the league said in a statement. statement.
MLB does not typically announce investigations as soon as they are opened, so it is unclear whether other gambling investigations are also underway.
The fact that Marcano’s name now appears alongside Rose’s on the list of modern players banned for betting on baseball is a reminder of both the seriousness of this offense in the eyes of MLB and the complicated place Rose occupies in baseball history because of his.
Rose had long since become MLB’s all-time winning leader by the time he was accused of betting on 52 of his team’s games while managing the 1987 Reds.
Rose, who allegedly had control over in-game decisions that could have helped him win bets if he had chosen to make them, has denied the allegations. But he ultimately agreed to a lifetime ban in exchange for then-commissioner Bart Giamatti not releasing any formal findings about the extent of his gambling activities.
Because he was declared permanently ineligible, Rose was not inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, joining some of the corrupt stars of the steroid era as controversial exclusions. This exclusion has become a more frequent topic of discussion in recent years, particularly as MLB has adopted new sports betting partners.
Now, 35 years later, MLB has issued another lifetime ban — one that, because Marcano has 88 hits to his credit instead of 4,256, probably won’t seem as historically significant. But it’s worth noting that Tuesday’s wave of sanctions was actually unprecedented. The 1919 Black Sox were the last group of gamblers to be punished en masse for gambling-related violations. These gamblers, of course, were accused of gambling and hosting the World Series. So far, MLB says, it has no evidence of such manipulation of its daily meetings.