Gambling on Baseball Remains the Ultimate MLB Crime

Tucupita Marcano’s lifetime ban shows the league’s cushy relationship with legal sports betting is at odds with protecting the integrity of the game.

MLB banned Marcano for life. / Joe Rondone/The Republic / USA TODAY

If the number is so big it has commas, they might be addicts. If it’s so small that there are numbers after the decimal point, they might be imbeciles.

Of the five players Major League Baseball disciplined on Tuesday for betting on baseball, only San Diego Padres utilityman Tucupita Marcano bet more than $1,000 on baseball. Philadelphia Phillies minor league infielder José Rodríguez bet $749.09. Padres minor league lefty Jay Groome bet $453.74. Arizona Diamondbacks reliever Andrew Saalfrank bet $445.87. Oakland A’s reliever Michael Kelly bet $99.22.

The three major leaguers were due to make approximately $750,000 this season. Marcano, who bet more than $150,000 on baseball in 2022 and ’23, including games in which his team played while he was on the injured list, is out of the sport for life, the first lifetime ban levied for betting on baseball since Pete Rose’s in 1989; the others, who bet on major league games as minor leaguers from 2020 to ’23, will sacrifice a season. None of the players are appealing their discipline. Officially they are being punished for violating Rule 21. Unofficially they are being declared too dumb to play baseball.

Only one Major League Baseball rule offers no do-overs. If you do drugs or commit theft or beat someone up, there are ways back into the sport. If you do any of those things with your DraftKings account open to a parlay that includes your team, it’s over for you.

It’s posted in gigantic font in every professional clubhouse: “Any player, umpire, or Club or League official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has no duty to perform, shall be declared ineligible for one year.” And “Any player, umpire, or Club or League official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform, shall be declared permanently ineligible.” To be clear: They can bet on any other sport, so long as they do it legally. Just not baseball.

Players sit through interminable sessions in spring training, in multiple languages, in which they hear about the repercussions of betting on baseball. Seemingly every few weeks, Rose, a Hall of Fame talent who remains in exile for betting on Reds games in which he played and managed, resurfaces in the news insisting he has served his time. (Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he has no intention of reinstating Rose.) It would be impossible to be around the sport and not understand the consequences.

To be fair, it’s also impossible to be around the sport and not hear about gambling. Since a 2018 Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for legalized sports betting, the league has seemed at least as interested in catering to people who want to bet on games as to people who want to teach their kids to keep score. In 2018, Manfred named MGM the “Official Gaming Partner of Major League Baseball.” Last year, the league named FanDuel “a co-exclusive Official Sports Betting Partner of MLB.” We seem only weeks away from having broadcasters share betting lines on each pitch.

And addiction is a disease. Anyone who suffers from it deserves to get the help they need. But the players who are not addicted should simply be embarrassed.

There are worse crimes a person can commit against humanity. There are no worse crimes a person can commit against the sport. The entire enterprise rests on the public’s belief that the games are legitimate; the idea that people involved in the outcome might have goals other than winning chips away at the integrity of the sport. (It is in part for this reason that tanking so grates on fans.) And with the proliferation of prop bets, against which the league has strenuously lobbied with lawmakers, the possibilities have only multiplied. It’s a lot easier to track when someone is throwing games than when he is throwing one at bat.

Still, a lot of people are checking, some more nefarious than others. Even when a player is not betting on games in which he is playing, as seems to be the case here, it’s not hard to see the precariousness of his position. All five players insisted they had no inside information on the games on which they bet, and the league seems to have accepted that explanation. But when the losses start to climb past Groome’s $433.54, the danger only increases.

The starkest recent evidence of the risk came in the form of disgraced interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, who until March worked as the interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani. On Tuesday Mizuhara pleaded guilty to bank and tax fraud and admitted to stealing nearly $17 million from Ohtani to pay off his sports-gambling debts to an illegal bookmaker. Mizuhara has insisted he never bet on baseball, and no one has yet said differently. MLB announced that in light of the plea, it considers Ohtani to be a victim and its investigation into him is closed. The league seems to have avoided that particular nightmare.

Meanwhile, MLB investigators work closely with legal sports betting operators, and indeed it was from one of those that the league learned in March that accounts connected to professional players had made bets on baseball. Four of them will be eligible to play again next season. We will see how many teams want to employ them. For, in Kelly’s case, $9.92 at a time, these players may have thrown away their careers. (Kelly was found to have placed 10 bets on baseball.)

The league did not release the net gains or losses of Marcano and Rodríguez, except to say that Marcano lost 95.7% of his baseball bets. Groome lost $433.54. Saalfrank lost $274.44. Kelly won $28.30. They may have lost everything.