NEW YORK (AP) — Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz went on trial Monday on charges that they accepted bribes as they colluded with gamblers who made hundreds of thousands of dollars betting on individual pitches.
Their careers and possibly their freedom are at stake in the jury trial in Brooklyn federal court. Jury selection got underway after the players arrived in court in the morning. Several professional baseball players, including catchers and baseball executives, are among witnesses expected to testify at a monthlong trial.
Clase, the Guardians’ former closer, and Ortiz, a starter, have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges and are on non-disciplinary leave from the club without pay while their fate is determined.
According to an indictment, the pitchers accepted several thousand dollars in payoffs to help two gamblers from their native Dominican Republic win at least $460,000 on in-game prop bets on the speed and outcome of certain pitches.
Prosecutors allege that Clase began providing the bettors with information about his pitches in 2023 and recruited Ortiz into the scheme in 2025. Lawyers for Ortiz unsuccessfully sought to have Ortiz tried separately from Clase.
Clase, 28, is a three-time All-Star and two-time American League Reliever of the Year who had completed his fourth season of a $20 million, five-year contract when charges against the pitchers were revealed in November 2025.
Ortiz, 27, had earned $782,600 as a starting pitcher for the Guardians during the 2025 season.
The pitchers have been charged with wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery.
Defense lawyers are expected to argue that the pitchers did not collude with gamblers and instead were varying the placement of pitches strategically to fool batters.
On Friday, Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto, who is presiding over the trial, ruled that prosecutors cannot show the jury proof that Clase owed $500,000 in U.S. taxes because they had only provided the evidence to defense lawyers several days earlier and long after a deadline had passed to turn over evidence to their adversaries.
A prosecutor had argued that the government wanted to put the evidence in the trial to offset any claim by Clase’s lawyers that he had no incentive to collude with gamblers because he had several million dollars in financial accounts in the Dominican Republic.
Major League Baseball and the Guardians have both said they’ve fully cooperated with authorities. MLB has said it contacted federal law enforcement when it began investigating unusual betting activity.
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