Clase, Ortiz Teammates No More With Self-Defense In Gambling Trial | Analysis

Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were teammates for the Cleveland Guardians for one season in 2025.

During the final weeks of that tenure, federal prosecutors allege that Clase, then one of Major League Baseball's top closers, recruited Ortiz, a starter, into a scheme to manipulate pitch outcomes for gamblers in exchange for kickbacks.

The joint trial on wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to influence sports contests by bribery, and money laundering conspiracy began today with jury selection in a Brooklyn, N.Y., courthouse in the Eastern District of New York. Eventually, Ortiz’s lawyers will argue he was an unwitting participant in Clase’s scheme to inform bettors of his pitching tendencies to win prop bets.

Clase’s defense will contend there was no gambling scheme, and that savvy bettors learned to predict and capitalize on his performance data to cash bets on his location or pitch type.

With upwards of 65 years in federal prison at stake at the end of what is expected to be a month-long trial, Clase and Ortiz are no longer teammates.

This stark either/or scenario for jurors has been building on the docket for months.

First, Ortiz asked Judge Kiyo Matsumoto to “sever,” or separate their cases.  The reason for the request soon became apparent to Clase's legal team.

In court documents filed in February, Clase’s legal team then asserted that “a joint trial would violate Mr. Clase’s Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him and prevent the jury from making a reliable judgment on innocence or guilt. Severance is necessary to prevent substantial prejudice to Mr. Clase’s right to a fair trial” once it became clear that Ortiz’s approach would conflict.

Defendants rarely succeed in having cases severed from alleged co-conspirators, leaving, in this instance, Ortiz’s defense team to distance him from the court.

“Ortiz definitely would rather not have [been] sitting there with Clase, for sure,” Former Assistant Director and Deputy General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Greg Brower told TheLines, “but now, here we are, and there will generally be an instruction [from the judge] that kind of gets at that fact, that just because they're sitting there together doesn't mean that if you find one guilty you need to find the other one guilty, or words to that effect.

"There are ways to deal with it.”

Federal Prosecutors Allege Broad Conspiracy with Guardians Pitchers

Federal prosecutors contend that Clase intentionally manipulated the outcome of 18 pitches in 17 games from May 2023-May 2025, including one in Game 1 of the American League Division Series against Detroit in 2024. They said in filings that they believe questionable pitches occurred in more than 45 additional games.

Federal prosecutors accuse co-defendants Robinson Vásquez Germosen and Luis Arismendy Paca Méndez of funneling information about Clase’s and Ortiz’s upcoming pitch-rigging to bettors in the Dominican Republic.

Prosecutors allege Ortiz rigged two pitches, both in June 2025, shortly before he was placed on leave and the alleged scheme became public. Prosecutors allege that gamblers yielded in excess of $450,000.Brower said

Matsumoto would be expected to explain to the jury that each defendant can face a different level of culpability. Ortiz’s legal team must convince the jury that he was a victim in Clase’s conspiracy and shared insider information. The fact that Ortiz is still on trial with Clase could be telling.

“Before [the Department of Justice] makes a charging decision, especially before, if [the defendant's] lawyer can convince the government to understand ‘My guy may have done this, which technically might be illegal, but, look, he didn't know what he was doing, and he was just a victim of these other guys, and so my guy will testify against them if you don't charge him or if you give him immunity’,” Brower explained, “that's the sort of discussion that typically will take place.

"And if the government buys that, maybe they can use his testimony against the others, that he could be valuable, so we'll give him immunity. They can make him the star witness. But that's not what happened here.”

That possibility ended when the trial began. According to court documents, the prosecution sought 18 business days to present its case. The defense sought three.

MLB Gets its Unwanted Moment of Gambling Scandal

Numerous co-defendants in the Terry Rozier and Malik Beasley sports corruption indictments have taken plea deals, presumably to cooperate with federal prosecutors. Beasley, a former Detroit Pistons shooting guard accused of underperforming in certain statistical categories to cash “under” prop bets for gamblers, changed his plea to guilty last week. So why couldn’t Ortiz strike a deal? Perhaps he hopes for reinstatement if the jury is hung or returns a not-guilty verdict, Brower said.

That seemed part of Clase’s thinking in the early months of the process, with his lawyers unsuccessfully pushing for a speedy spring trial that would have begun early in the MLB season. Both he and Ortiz have been on non-disciplinary, unpaid leave since July of 2025. They were indicted in November of the same year.

“Their agent can say, ‘Look, my guy didn't admit to anything. And they were never convicted of anything. So you can't keep them from making a living in Major League Baseball,” Brower theorized. “But if they were to take an immunity deal or plead guilty, I think that potentially would just be the end of [their career].

There's no really coming back from that. At least in the short term.”

The question remains whether Clase or Ortiz could come back, regardless of the outcome. While the National Football League and National Hockey League have allowed players to serve suspensions and return after having been proven to have wagered on sports, MLB has shown zero tolerance.

While Calvin Ridley and Isaiah Rodgers re-signed with NFL teams after one-year suspensions for betting on league games and Shane Pinto returned to the Ottawa Senators following a 41-game suspension for using a proxy account to bet on other sports, MLB has banned numerous players and umpire Pat Hoberg for similar activity. Or less.

And none of those banished were ever accused of fixing outcomes. An investigation found that Hoberg neither bet on baseball nor manipulated outcomes from his influential position, but shared a sports betting account with a professional poker player who did wager on MLB games.

In upholding MLB’s decision to fire Hoberg, Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement: “The strict enforcement of Major League Baseball’s rules governing sports betting conduct is a critical component of upholding our most important priority: protecting the integrity of our games for the fans. An extensive investigation revealed no evidence that Mr. Hoberg placed bets on baseball directly or that he or anyone else manipulated games in any way.”

That stance would suggest the sort of leniency for Clase and Ortiz that was leveled against the 1919 Chicago White Sox team that successfully threw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, and earned the eight involved lifetime bans.

Taking the stand, Brower said, could help Ortiz separate himself from Clase, but it is “fraught with complications,” including a language barrier, since both defendants are Spanish-speaking, and it almost never happens in criminal trials.

The prosecution’s witness list includes Guardians general manager Nike Chernoff, former Cleveland catcher Bo Naylor and current Guardian Austin Hedges.

Among the defense’s filings was an assertion from former Houston Astros assistant general manager Scott Powers that there were strategic “baseball reasons for Clase to aim his pitches outside the strike zone,” which included an above-average chase rate for the former All-Star.

Statistician Sameer Despande argued that bettors could have used publicly available information to bet on the Clase pitches in question.

“But, of course,” Brower said, “those witnesses won't be able to testify at all about the the meat of it, which is was there an agreement to do this?”

Ultimately, with the stakes so high and careers so young – Clase is 28, Ortiz, 27 – there might have been nothing to lose in hoping to sway just one juror, Brower said. Clase led MLB in saves from 2022-24.

“When the defense lawyers have decided with their clients that the evidence isn't so clear-cut that they have no choice but to take a guilty plea, that means at least the defense lawyers think there is something to talk about,” Brower said. “...the consequences of a guilty plea are nearly just as bad as a conviction at trial, then sometimes you see defense lawyers say let's just roll the dice, because if we can just get one juror to hang up on on the case, you're not convicted, but if you plead guilty now, whether you're a Major League Baseball player and you're going to be banned for life, or let's say a casino executive and you're going to lose your license and never work in the industry, sometimes just pleading guilty means the death of your career.

"And, so, you just can't do that. So you take a shot at trial. I don't know what the defense lawyers are thinking here, but we'll see how strong the defense is.”

Self-defense, for certain.