We've all seen that meme online, the one that goes "the worst person you know just made a great point." It's been popping up a lot lately as Marjorie Taylor Green attempts to sound like a sane person for the first time, but it's also sure to make the rounds now that Scott Boras, the MLB super-agent that fans love to hate, has spoken out about Major League Baseball's gambling crisis.
Boras is known for being a ruthless negotiator, and his list of clients is as long as it is star-studded. He has a reputation for getting top dollar out of teams, even if that means helping a beloved homegrown player leave in free agency for greener (get it?) pastures elsewhere. That hasn't endeared him to fans who want to keep cheering on their favorites, but there's no denying that Boras is as smart and savvy as they come, and he does exactly what his clients pay him to do.
Scott Boras weighs in on MLB’s growing gambling scandal
Boras is currently handling the free agencies of Pete Alonso, Cody Bellinger and Dylan Cease, among others, but he had time to chime in on the gambling scandal that's rocked the league in recent weeks as Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz have been investigated and charged with fraud, conspiracy and bribery for their alleged roles in rigging certain pitches and passing that information along to gamblers.
As an agent, Boras has always put the players first, and he did again here with his comments at the GM Meetings: "You have to remove those prop bets to make sure that the integrity of the players is not questioned, because there's going to be all forms of performance questions given now to pitchers and such when they throw certain pitches to the back of the screen, or situationally, and really, we don't want any part of it. We want the players' integrity never to be questioned."
Boras is referring to apps such as DraftKings and FanDuel which have become legalized in many states in recent years, and how they offer bets on things like whether a certain pitch will be a ball or a strike. Bettors can also bet on the velocity of certain pitches and the outcomes of individual plate appearances. In short, it makes it much easier for someone to try to rig a bet for a single pitch than it would be to throw an entire game.
Despite the ease with which this scheme should have been able to be pulled off, gamblers are a greedy lot, and so when noticeably large amounts of money were being bet on single pitches, it raised red flags at these betting sites. Enterprising fans have even gone back in the wake of these investigations and put together compilations of first pitches that were nowhere close to being a strike from Clase, which is highly suspect given that he's regarded as one of the best closers in the game.
Emmanuel Clase has come in to the game at the beginning of the 9th inning 40 times this season. Here is his Statcast Waste% (pitches that aren't close to zone).
— Foolish Baseball (@FoolishBB) July 28, 2025
First pitch of 9th inning: = 17.5%
Every other pitch = 5.2%
Just speculating, but this how Luis Ortiz got flagged. pic.twitter.com/lZGwgQ2KdZ
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Scott Boras is right about the need to eliminate player props
The swiftness with which sports gambling has gone from being taboo to being plastered all over stadiums and on ESPN and in sports fans' faces 24/7 is alarming. Reasonable minds are free to differ on whether gambling should have been legalized in the first place, but we should at least all be able to agree that easily manipulatable props such as these should be banned.
It's not like this is an isolated incident. The NBA is dealing with a major scandal of its own after the FBI arrested Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier and Damon Jones in connection with illegal gambling. Rozier in particular is accused of rigging his player prop unders, just as Jontay Porter pleaded guilty last year to betting his unders and then taking himself out of games.
Multiple NFL players have been suspended for gambling too, though none have been accused of fixing their own results. Calvin Ridley is the most prominent example: Then with the Falcons, he was suspended an entire year for betting on games.
People who want to gamble will still have no shortage of things to bet on, even if prop bets like these are eliminated. We're hearing more and more about the negative effects gambling is having on players and their mental health, from guys being harassed online to even receiving death threats over their performance costing someone a winning ticket.
These athletes often make millions of dollars, but that shouldn't mean they have to take abuse like that. They also shouldn't have a cloud of suspicion over their every action just because of a few bad apples. It feels weird to say, but I'm with Scott Boras on this one. Now if he just makes sure the Polar Bear re-signs with the Mets, we'll really be cool.
