CNN
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Major League Baseball placed Cleveland Guardians pitcher Luis Ortiz on indefinite leave on Thursday, with multiple reports indicating he is facing a gambling-related investigation.
MLB said in a statement that Ortiz was being put on “non-disciplinary leave through the end of the All-Star break” for the investigation. The announcement came just hours before Ortiz was supposed to take the mound as the Guardians starting pitcher for their game against the Chicago Cubs.
In a team statement, the Guardians said they had “been notified by Major League Baseball that Luis Ortiz has been placed on leave per an agreement with the Players Association due to an ongoing league investigation. The Guardians are not permitted to comment further at this time and will respect the league’s confidential investigative process.”
Sources later told The Athletic and ESPN that the probe is related to gambling. MLB declined to comment on the reports. CNN has reached out to the Guardians for comment.
MLB has had to navigate turbulent waters over gambling in recent years.
The sport was rocked by the high-profile scandal involving megastar Shohei Ohtani and his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara. Mizuhara was sentenced to more than four years in prison earlier this year following revelations at the beginning of the 2024 season that he had stolen nearly $17 million from Ohtani to fuel a gambling addiction. Ohtani, the Japanese two-way player who is breaking new ground in the league, denied ever taking part in any gambling activities.
Later in the 2024 season, the league banned San Diego Padres shortstop Tucupita Marcano for life after MLB determined he had been gambling on baseball. According to the investigation, Marcano placed 387 baseball bets, including 231 MLB-related ones, over two periods in 2022 and 2023 while he was a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates and while he was on the injured list. He gambled more than $150,000 on baseball, with $87,319 of that on MLB-related bets.
The MLB investigation found that 25 of those bets included Pirates games while Marcano was assigned to the Major League club. The MLB probe found that “almost all of Marcano’s Pirates bets were on which club (the Pirates or their opponent) would win the game or whether there would be more or less than a certain number of runs scored in the game.”
Earlier this year, the league fired Pat Hoberg – one of the sport’s up-and-coming young umpires – for sharing gambling accounts with a friend who had bet on baseball. The league found no evidence that Hoberg himself had bet on baseball, but the report stated that messages regarding the MLB’s investigation had been deleted and that the league found dismissal to be warranted.
