Tag: pete rose

Clase And Ortiz Join A Sad Tale In Professional Sports

Without a doubt, professional sports has embraced their relationship with gambling. It used to be taboo to associate the two, but now there is an incredible amount of advertising revenue associated with it.

Most people our age grew up with the pro and college football betting sheets in which you would pick a three, four, five (or perhaps more) parlay to win some cash through a “bookie”.

Heck, when we were in high school, another student passing out the “schedule” and taking wagers on the NFL.

But the leagues themselves condemned wagering, mostly because the players would have to be involved with “ne’er do wells”. We know about the Black Sox Scandal and Pete Rose, but probably less are aware that in 1963, the NFL suspended star players Paul Hornung, the ’61 league MVP and Alex Karras for betting on games.

Basketball has had point shaving scandals mostly involving college basketball, and of course the whole Tim Donaghy scandal whereas a referee, he was betting on games and making calls that influenced them.

Even though there is legal gambling now, we really don’t do it much, in fact, if we do, it is usually when we are out of town. And because we have been around sports our whole life, the prop bets are something we stay away from, because so many things can influence them.

We bring this up, of course, because of the news involving Guardians’ pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz this past week. It is very likely neither will ever play Major League Baseball again, and even if somehow, they are only suspended for a year, the organization won’t allow them to throw another pitch for Cleveland.

There is no defense for either pitcher. There is a mandatory meeting in spring training that covers gambling and although we have never been in a big-league clubhouse, it has been reported that there are signs about gambling posted.

We are sure both Clase and Ortiz felt they weren’t doing anything to alter the outcome of the games, but they are just fooling themselves. Of course, they were.

It was reported that Clase was allegedly texting his co-conspirators during games, which is also a violation of MLB rules. Reading that gave us the chills.

And we are sure there are other situations such as this being investigated in the big four professional sports. Just in the last month, you have had this and the situation involving Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat, Chauncey Billups, and former Cavalier player Damon Jones.

MLB recently asked its partners in gambling to place a limit on the amount of money wagered on these prop bets to $200. Perhaps a better solution would be to ban these types of bets in all major sports.

You can bet on the overcome of the game, but not on individual performances.

As soon as people don’t have confidence that the result in professional sports is not on the up and up, it’s the end of the popularity.

If Clase is indeed found guilty, he wasted what could have been a great career. He’s arguably the best closer in the baseball right now, leading the American League in saves three straight seasons (2022-2024) and has a career ERA of 1.88 over 360 innings and 366 appearances.

It’s time for professional sports to be proactive in getting this situation under control, and they need to do it right away.

Call Us Names, But Talking Baseball Is Tough Now

We love baseball. It has been our favorite sport as long as we can remember. And one of the reasons are the statistics. As broadcaster Bob Costas has always said, those stats are part of the game.

Everyone knows “714” is the number of home runs Babe Ruth hit. The same with “755” which is Hank Aaron’s total. Pete Rose had 4256 hits, Cy Young 511 wins. These numbers have become part of the sport.

However, today the numbers seem to have become “exit velocity”, “horizontal break”, “hard hit rate”. All of them are interesting numbers and certainly can add some context to how a player may perform. However, none of them have any influence on winning or losing.

And as long as they are keeping score, that’s what the game is all about.

We are sure at least one person will refer to us as “get off my lawn” guy and a boomer but let us say that we were a voracious reader of Bill James’ Baseball Abstract when it came out, and it certainly changed the way we view the game.

A person currently on the radio in northeast Ohio once said the best use of analytics is as a justification for doing something, especially when it doesn’t work out. For example, asking a manager why he pinch hit a certain batter. It’s because he hits .382 vs. right-handers. The hitter might have popped up, but there was a reason for the decision.

That’s fair.

The hitting statistics do not take into account the number of times a hitter strikes out. For example, Hitter A, has an average exit velocity of 92.9 MPH and a hard hit rate of 50%, barreling the ball 13.7% of the time, currently 13th in baseball.

Hitter B’s average exit velo is 86.3 MPH, his hard-hit rate is 21.4% and the barrel rate is 2.9%.

Hitter A is Cal Raleigh of the Mariners, who is currently batting .203 (to be fair a 786 OPS) with 20 strikeouts in 73 plate appearances. The other is Steven Kwan, who is batting .333 with an 893 OPS and eight whiffs in 73 times at the dish.

So, when Raleigh hits it, he hits it hard a lot. The problem is he doesn’t make contact 27.3% of the time.

And yet, some people will tell me that Raleigh is a very good hitter, which he is, for a catcher, but there is a lot of swing and miss in his game.

As for the break on pitches, we sometimes wonder if a batter just stood there and didn’t swing, he might walk or at the least get ahead in the count. We see videos of ridiculous breaking action on pitches, but a lot of them don’t land in the strike zone.

There are people on social media thrilled that this information was put on the scoreboard at Progressive Field. Never have a watched a game and thought wow, how much did that break?

It’s fun to see after a game, but during? It doesn’t matter to us.

On Tuesday night, Bo Naylor was 0 for 1, with a walk, sacrifice fly, and sacrifice bunt. To us, he contributed to the offense. Games where a batter goes 0 for 4 and doesn’t walk? He has contributed nothing to the offense.

And hitters who do this on a regular basis are anchors in the batting order.

Look, these things are fun to look at for the newer fan. We get that, but let’s remember the game is about 27 outs and scoring more than the opponent. Simple numbers, correct?