00:00Clearly, in that third inning of a couple of games, whatever it was, this player, Luis Ortiz of the Guardians, threw a ball.
00:07Pitchers sometimes throw a ball.
00:08And, well, yeah, one was real outside and one wasn't.
00:11But the way that they're looking into this, Major League Baseball and sports betting, is by finding people who are betting on very specific outcomes.
00:20And they found that what I just described was there was a spike in sports betting on specifically with Ortiz.
00:27So they've sat Ortiz down, and they're going to investigate.
00:31What more can you add to that?
00:34Yeah, Ortiz of the Guardians was put on non-disciplinary leave, which lasts through the All-Star break.
00:40And that's important to note because it was negotiated between the MLB Players Association and the league.
00:47So they're working together to kind of figure out what's happening here.
00:50Like you mentioned, we saw these videos of these two pitches that he threw.
00:54But there's a reason that those were flagged.
00:56It's this betting integrity monitoring service called IC360 flagged specific bets on those two games from Ohio, New Jersey, and New York,
01:06which were placed on these things called micro betting markets, if you don't know, where you can bet what the next pitch is going to be.
01:13In the NFL, you can bet what the next play is going to result in.
01:16In this case, there was a suspicious amount of activity placed on those two markets for him to throw either a wild pitch, hit the batter, or just throw a ball in general.
01:28Now, you parlay that with the stat cast tracking that we have.
01:32The first pitch that he threw on June 15th to start the second inning against the Rays was statistically the highest arm angle Ortiz has ever thrown on a slider all year.
01:43So you parlay that with the outsized betting activity.
01:47You've got flagging suspicious bet number one.
01:49Then next, on June 27th, there was another pitch to start the inning against Cardinals catcher Pedro Páez,
01:56which was statistically the worst pitch he's ever thrown in his career.
02:01So you have all these things that kind of add up along with the betting activity.
02:07Now, they're still investigating, and the MLB hasn't come out with anything more.
02:11But it does come at a time, you know, when we just, we've been talking about Malik Beasley under investigation in the NBA for potentially, you know, manipulating games.
02:20Of course, last year, you had umpire Pat Hobard was fired from the MLB for obstructing something in his betting investigation.
02:30You have got Tupakita Marcano.
02:33Several things have happened over the past year.
02:36So I think now we're seeing more attention being paid to these specific kind of things versus just this higher level, you know, was there, did somebody have a betting account?
02:46We're really watching what's going on kind of between the lines, especially in a sport like the MLB, which is kind of catered for these micro betting markets, these stop-start kind of things.
02:55We should know more after the All-Star break because that's when his non-disciplinary paid leave goes through.
03:02So because it was paid, I don't think there was anything found yet, but we should hear more after that.
03:07And hopefully it's good news for him.
03:09Hopefully it's not more bad news to be found.
03:13Yeah, no, we'll see.
03:13And I think it's fair what Major League Baseball has done.
03:16And it's really good that you brought up some of the arm angle stuff.
03:19I hadn't seen that, but it is interesting to note.
