Tucupita Marcano, Michael Kelly, and Jay Groome; these are just some of the various players throughout Major League Baseball who have been suspended for violating the league’s gambling policy. Some of these men, like Kelly and Groome, have been reinstated by the league after their one-year bans were lifted. But other’s, like Marcano, will never step on a Major League field again.

But now, it looks like the Cleveland Guardians’ SP Luis Ortiz is the newest face to be associated with the gambling policy. According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, it looks like the 26-year old righty is being investigated after a “betting-integrity firm flagged a pair of pitches that had received unusual gambling activity.” They reportedly saw a crazy amount of bets on those two specific pitches to be a ball or a hit batter, to the point where a report was triggered and sent to the various sportsbooks involved.

These pitches? They came in Cleveland’s June 15th meeting against the Seattle Mariners, and their June 27th bout against the St. Louis Cardinals.

MLB’s investigation into Luis Ortiz is about these two individual pitches which received action flagged by a betting-integrity firm, per @JeffPassan pic.twitter.com/2zvZhmrTlJ

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) July 3, 2025

Ortiz, for those of you who are unaware, has been struggling a bit for Manager Stephen Vogt’s squad. Through 16 starts this season, the 4th-year vet has posted a stat-line consisting of;

4-9 Record, 4.36 ERA, 96 Ks, 1.38 WHIP

He has been “meh” for this failing Guardians squad, who is currently 2nd place in the AL Central at 40-44 as of writing this. But now, he has been placed on a “non-disciplinary paid leave” that will end July 17th.

THIS…..this is one of the weirdest stories that I’ve seen in quite some time. Sure, in my MANY years of following sports and writing articles for the internet, I have seen my fair share of gambling stories pop up in the news. I have seen athletes ruin their careers, and even their lives, by placing a stupid bet on a stupid game.

But NOW, we have firms focusing on SINGULAR PITCHES in baseball? Gambling has become SO BIG in our society nowadays, to the point where we need to focus on the pitch-by-pitch analytics of the sportsbooks? I truly never thought we’d come to this, which is odd to say because I know how crazy the world has become.

The best part about the situation though? It HAS TO BE the pitches in question. They are literally polar opposites of each other; with Ortiz’s slider against Seattle looking relatively innocent, and the one against the Cards resembling a bloody finger print at a murder scene. It just SCREAMS guilty, with the way he skipped it off of the batters box towards the backstop. I mean WOW!

In the end though…..this is just one of those odd situations in sports that we need to let play out. With the technology that this league, and these companies, have at their disposal? They can dive DEEPER into Luis Ortiz’s life, and every single nuance of his game, than an “average joe” like me could ever DREAM of.

BUT, if he is found guilty…..let’s just say this will bring a WHOLE NEW LAYER to the world of sports gambling. In the end though, as always….what do I know? I’m just a guy from the Midwest, with a beer and a laptop, trying to make sense of this world.