San Diego Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano became the first player since Pete Rose in 1989 to be permanently disqualified for betting on baseball after a league investigation revealed that Marcanovet had bet more than $87,000 on MLB games. Marcanovet bet on MLB games, including 25 games for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who was on the major league roster despite being injured.
Four other players — Oakland Athletics pitcher Michael Kelly, Philadelphia Phillies minor league infielder Jose Rodriguez, San Diego Padres minor league pitcher Jay Groome and Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Andrew Sahlfrank — were also suspended for one year after investigations found they had bet on MLB games.
“Strict enforcement of Major League Baseball's rules and policies regulating gambling activity is a key component of protecting our overriding priority of protecting the fairness of the game for our fans. The long-standing prohibition on sports officials betting on Major League Baseball games has been a foundational principle for more than a century,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.
“We have been clear that the privilege of playing baseball comes with the responsibility to refrain from certain behaviors that are legal for others. Since the Supreme Court decision legalized sports betting, we have worked with licensed sports betting operators and other third parties to ensure we are in a better position from an integrity perspective through the transparency that a regulated sports betting system can provide. MLB will continue to invest heavily in integrity monitoring, education programs and awareness activities with the goal of strict adherence to this fundamental rule of our game.”
After the Supreme Court paved the way for the legalization of sports betting, MLB was one of the first to allow teams and national broadcasters to air betting odds and advertisements for online betting companies during games, but insisted in a news release on Tuesday that none of the players involved had any influence on the outcomes of the games they bet on, and “the betting data does not suggest that the outcomes of the baseball games on which they bet were in any way compromised, influenced or manipulated.”
The announcement explained that in March of this year, legal sports betting operators reported past gambling activities by major and minor league players to MLB, and MLB obtained the data on their bets. MLB has previously made its stance on sports betting clear, stating that players may bet on other sports as long as it is done through a legal betting operator, but may not bet on baseball under any circumstances.
The league's rule book states that “any player, umpire, club, league official or employee who bets any amount on any baseball game in which he has no obligation shall be disqualified for one year,” while it also states that “any player, umpire, club, league official or employee who bets any amount on any baseball game in which he has an obligation shall be disqualified permanently.”
Marcano last played in major league baseball in July 2023, when an anterior cruciate ligament injury ended his season with the Pittsburgh Pirates. MLB found that Marcano bet approximately $150,000 on baseball from October 2022 through the summer of 2023. During the summer, when Marcano was on the disabled list and receiving treatment at PNC Park, Marcano bet 25 times on the Pirates. Marcano did not appear in any of those games.
The other four players did not bet on the teams they played for at the time, but some did bet on games from their major league organizations while playing in the minor leagues. According to MLB, Kelly bet on how many runs major league teams would score and how many strikeouts each pitcher would get when he was a minor league player with the Houston Astros in 2021. Kelly, who has since played 48 major league games with the Phillies and Athletics, including 38 this year, was not involved in any betting games.
The same was true for Saarfrank, a young left-hander who pitched in three World Series games as a rookie for the Diamondbacks in 2023. MLB's investigation found that Saarfrank had bet 28 times on MLB games while playing in the lower levels of the minor leagues in Arizona. Four of those games were Diamondbacks games, and Saarfrank only won five of those bets, MLB said.
Rodriguez, who played one major league game with the Chicago White Sox before being acquired by the Phillies before this season, has bet seven times on the White Sox as part of a Class AA team in Birmingham in 2022. In total, he has wagered about $750 on baseball across 28 bets.
Groom, a left-handed pitcher for the Padres, has yet to make his major league debut, but it was discovered that he bet on the scores of Boston Red Sox games while he was with the team's Top A team in 2020 and 2021. According to an MLB investigation, Groom wagered $453.74 across 30 bets related to MLB games and lost $433.54.
The suspension comes as MLB continues its investigation of former Angels infielder David Fletcher after Mizuhara Ippei, a former interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, was linked to gambler Matthew Bowyer, who allegedly tried to use Ohtani's money to pay off millions of dollars in debt. Coincidentally, Mizuhara appeared in court in Los Angeles on Tuesday and pleaded guilty to bank fraud and tax evasion, which could carry a maximum sentence of more than 30 years in prison. MLB later released a statement saying Ohtani, the organization's global superstar, had committed no wrongdoing in the scandal.
“Based on the thoroughness of the published federal investigation, the information collected by MLB, and the fact that the criminal complaint was resolved without contention, MLB has determined that Shohei Ohtani was a victim of fraud and the matter has been resolved,” the league said in a statement.
It is unclear whether other gambling investigations are also underway, as MLB typically does not announce when investigations are opened.
That Marcano's name appears alongside Rose's on the list of modern players suspended for betting on baseball is a reminder of both the seriousness of the crime in the eyes of MLB and the complicated place Rose occupies in baseball history because of it.
Rose was already MLB's all-time hit leader when he was accused of betting on 52 team games while managing the Reds in 1987.
Rose, who had in-game decision-making power that may have helped him win the bet, denied the allegations, but ultimately accepted a lifetime ban in exchange for then-Commissioner Bert Giamatti deciding not to launch a formal investigation into the extent of Rose's gambling activities.
Rose was given a lifetime ban and therefore cannot be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, joining other tainted stars of the steroid era in a controversial removal that has become a more frequently discussed topic in recent years, especially as MLB welcomes new sports betting partners.
Thirty-five years later, MLB has once again handed down a lifetime ban. It may not mean as much historically, since Marcano only had 88 hits, not 4,256. But it's worth noting that the set of penalties handed down on Tuesday was virtually unprecedented. The 1919 Black Sox were the last group of players to be banned en masse for gambling-related violations.
