It took the internet minutes to dig up damning evidence against Emmanuel Clase

The MLB trade deadline, and the baseball world at large, got knocked for a loop on Monday afternoon, when ESPN's Jeff Passan reported that Cleveland Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase had been placed on non-disciplinary paid leave amid MLB's ongoing gambling investigation. (That same investigation resulted ensnared Clase's teammate, righty Luis Ortiz, just a few weeks ago.)

And just like that, one of the very best relievers in the sport had been taken out of commission — and contenders around the league that were hoping to land Clase with a godfather offer were forced to pivot elsewhere days before the July 31 deadline. It's a shocking development, to say the least; while baseball has seen its share of gambling-related infractions in recent years, Clase is by far the biggest name to be implicated to date, and now his very future in the sport has been thrown into question.

As you might imagine, speculation began almost instantly, with everyone wondering the same things: What was Clase suspected of doing, and when? Of course, because this is the internet in the year of our lord 2025, it didn't take long to start finding some possible answers. We knew that the investigation into Ortiz involved bets on the first pitch of a given at-bat being a ball, and sure enough ... well, just look at this first pitch Clase threw to Bobby Witt Jr. of the Kansas City Royals.

Granted, this sort of thing happens from time to time, even to big leaguers; every pitcher who takes the mound as often as Clase does in a given year will have the occasional pitch that gets away. But Clase didn't catch a spike on the mound, or lose his grip on the ball, or try to stop his pitching motion short, which raises suspicion on its own. And this is apparently just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to questionable behavior.

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Emmanuel Clase is going to have a hard time explaining these pitches

That was far from the only first pitch that raised everyone's eyebrows. Before long, whole threads had been unleashed on X, with stats to back them up: Of 22 first-pitch balls Clase has thrown with the bases empty so far this season, a full 11 of them were "uncompetitive", some nearer to the strike zone than others.

It's still way too soon to speculate; we don't even know if Clase is suspected of the same thing that Ortiz was, and certainly it's not out of the question for a pitcher to just miss with a first pitch every now and then. But the easing of regulations has opened this Pandora's Box, and MLB's failure to rein it in means that the public is right to wonder just how much of what they watch on the field is being influenced by betting activity off of it.

While Clase will be held out until at least the end of August, we don't yet know what the timeline of MLB's investigation will be. The punishment, though, could be severe: Baseball has, of course, had a long-standing lifetime ban in place for those who bet against their own teams, and although Clase and Ortiz's behavior might not fall into that category as such, allowing bets to directly compromise a player's own actions on the field of play is something that Rob Manfred and Co. certainly won't look kindly upon.