Sports microbetting proves a bridge too far for players, problem gamblers.
A screenshot of video footage included in the indictment against Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz shows a Clase pitch landing in the dirt.
A screenshot of video footage included in the indictment against Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz shows a Clase pitch landing in the dirt.Eastern District of NY
The clumsy, into-the-dirt pitches by Cleveland Guardians starter Luis Ortiz — the subject of his recent federal indictment on bribery charges — have now been viewed by millions. Was the 26-year-old merely having a bad day on the mound or had he agreed to rig pitches that only a few online bettors had advanced knowledge of?
Federal prosecutors think it was the latter. Ortiz and another Guardians pitcher, Emmanuel Clase, “agreed in advance to throw balls (instead of strikes) on pitches in two games in exchange for bribes and kickbacks,” according to the indictment.
Those pitches, made in June 2025, were worth about $60,000 in winnings to those online bettors with insider information on exactly which pitches to bet on by way of a so-called prop bet — a wager not on the final outcome of a game but on one particular action (or inaction) within a game.
If you can think of it, you can probably bet on it — a kind of wagering that promises “instant gratification … enabling you to bet on every moment of every live sporting event,” one sports betting company advertises. Baseball fans can bet on whether a particular pitch will be a ball or strike. Football fans can bet on who will be the next player to score or even catch a pass.
The action generated by prop betting is fast and furious, the gambling behavior associated with it is even more addictive than simple outcome-of-game wagers, and the sporting events themselves are more open to corruption as a result, since it’s a lot easier and less conspicuous for a crooked player to throw a single pitch out of the strike zone than, say, throw the World Series.
And for all of those reasons, the time is right to rein in practices that experts in addictive behavior now deem detrimental to the public good. Sports leagues and their betting partners should impose limits on prop bets voluntarily, but if they won’t, the situation will cry out for government action.
On Monday, Major League Baseball, in conjunction with its betting partners FanDuel and DraftKings, announced its first attempt at self-regulation in the wake of the Ortiz and Clase indictments, placing a $200 limit on wagers on individual pitches. But that addresses only one subset of the problem and only in one sport.
The brave new world of online sports betting, made possible by a 2018 US Supreme Court decision, and launched here in Massachusetts in March 2023, has been allowed to grow with a minimum of regulation — and grow it has. In Massachusetts, mobile sports betting is likely to top $8 billion this year (with some $5.8 billion wagered through September and bets hitting a new monthly record of $800 million for September) and already exceeding annual Massachusetts State Lottery revenues of about $6 billion a year.
The consequences have been profound and almost immediate.
“America is still pretending gambling is all freedom and entertainment while a generation gets hooked,” wrote Isaac Rose-Berman, a fellow at the American Institute for Boys and Men, in a recent opinion piece for Stat News. “The problem isn’t just gambling, but its seamless integration into the technology we already can’t put down.”
Some 90 percent of bets are made not at casinos or racetracks, but on phones, Rose-Berman noted.
“You don’t need to drive anywhere, get cash from an ATM, or even get out of bed. It has never been easier to gamble,” he wrote.
Most people won’t fall victim to addiction. DraftKings reported this month that its “average monthly unique” paying customers, numbering some 3.6 million in the third quarter of 2025, produced “revenue” for the company of $106 each.
But some will become addicted, and others, especially young men, will end up shy of full-blown addiction, but “with gambling sucking up time and mental energy that might otherwise go toward relationships, hobbies, and personal growth,” Rose-Berman wrote.
It doesn’t have to be that way. At both the federal and the local level, lawmakers are proposing to rein in the more pernicious practices of the many-headed hydra that online sports betting has become — starting with those prop bets.
“The twin dangers here are addiction and corruption,” US Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told a news conference last week in Washington. Blumenthal is cosponsoring legislation that would put a host of new guardrails around sports betting in general and ban prop bets on college and amateur sports specifically — something already banned in Massachusetts.
At the state level, the Bettor Health Act, sponsored by Democratic state Senator John Keenan of Quincy, would ban all prop betting on games while they are being played and require sports betting companies to double their contributions to the state’s Public Health Trust Fund, which supports gambling addiction services.
If leagues and gambling companies don’t like proposals like Keenan’s — if they want to avoid the blunt instrument of an outright ban — they need to be more far more proactive in stopping practices that invite corruption.
Ohio GovernorMike DeWine, who supported a ban on prop bets in his state last summer when Ortiz and Clase were first placed on leave during the investigation, is now hoping for a voluntary rollback in other sports.
“By limiting the ability to place large wagers on micro prop bets, MLB is taking affirmative steps to protect the integrity of the game and reduce the incentives to participate in improper betting schemes,” DeWine said in a statement. “I urge other sports leagues to follow MLB’s example with similar action.”
This is not, after all, just a baseball problem — for a sign of how widespread the risks are, look no further than the recent indictment of former Celtic and current Miami Heat player Terry Rozier for allegedly faking an injury and conspiring with a friend to place a large prop bet on his underperformance.
It shouldn’t take another scandal in another sport for leagues and their publicly traded betting partners to rein in those practices — those prop bets — that provide the most temptation to players and bettors alike.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.