The Cleveland Guardians perennially run a paltry payroll and rarely make attention-grabbing offseason moves. So for president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti, the annual media availability session at the GM meetings is usually spent forcing small talk with a passerby or thumbing through his phone.
Because they never find the spotlight at a conference designed to stoke the Hot Stove, he has joked about recruiting his fellow Guardians executives to join him just to relieve the awkwardness. No one rushes to gather intel on his team at this event.
Until this week.
Antonetti, in a navy dress shirt, khakis and light blue Allbird sneakers, with a buttermilk-colored water bottle fastened to his belt, fielded a steady flow of questions at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, almost exclusively about pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz and their alleged involvement in a pitch-rigging scheme. As has been the protocol since early July, Antonetti declined comment on most of the questions.
For four months, the scandal has lingered around the club like a rotten stench. It surfaced when the Guardians tumbled to fourth place. It sparked a rallying cry at the trade deadline. It remained the prevailing discourse around the team when it surged to a division title.
Now, it has followed Cleveland’s brass to the Las Vegas Strip.
The morning of July 3, when Ortiz’s possible involvement first came to light, Antonetti and GM Mike Chernoff hopped on a flight to Chicago to meet with the team at Wrigley Field.
They didn’t have any answers then. They don’t have many now, either. They contend they have been kept in the dark throughout the process, and they’ve found it wisest to deflect. They haven’t been in contact with either pitcher since July. Over the summer, Antonetti and manager Stephen Vogt directed all inquiries to Major League Baseball, but the league declined comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
It’s taboo in other places, too. Atlanta Braves president Alex Anthopoulos said this week, “I just don’t want to touch the topic. Let other people answer that. I’m out.” Chicago Cubs president Jed Hoyer acknowledged the awkwardness of answering gambling-related questions while standing inside a casino.
Ortiz entered a plea of not guilty at a Brooklyn, N.Y., courtroom on Wednesday morning. Clase is scheduled to be arraigned in the same location Thursday afternoon. Both face up to 65 years in prison for charges of wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery and money laundering conspiracy related to a ploy that allegedly netted bettors more than $450,000 since May 2023.
For four exhausting months, the Guardians have shrugged publicly, fumed privately and wished they could fast forward to the end of this ordeal, to a time when a cloud isn’t hanging over the team.
“Once we get to the end of that process,” Antonetti said Wednesday, “it’s probably more appropriate for me to comment then.”
One afternoon in late July, a reporter approached a Guardians hitter at his locker and, without any pleasantries, fired off a series of questions about the visibility and legality of sportsbooks and their ties to professional leagues. The player, eyes wide and seemingly wanting to be careful not to utter anything that could be converted into a headline, offered a few shrugs.
As soon as the reporter turned to walk away, the player hollered for the team’s PR director and detailed the interaction. No one in the organization wanted to talk about Clase or Ortiz, whether they were intentionally spinning sliders out of the strike zone, or what it all meant in today’s sports betting landscape. No one knew how to talk about it.
“In the GM manual that I read, they left these chapters blank,” Antonetti said over the summer.
And so they kept it hush.
Any frustration bubbling beneath the surface about whether Clase and Ortiz were pre-determining pitches — to the club’s detriment — was paved over publicly with clichés and team-first platitudes. Veteran catcher Austin Hedges regularly spoke on behalf of teammates, and leaned on lines about tackling adversity as a group and focusing on the game at hand and on the players present in the room.
There was one revealing action, though.
On July 28, three days before the trade deadline and 25 days after Ortiz was sidelined, Clase joined his teammate on paid leave. Vogt first met with his staff, then his players. He told them it was OK to be devastated or furious or any other emotion that emerged. In his daily media session, Vogt said he had “no other details,” but said he’d be “happy to answer any questions about the baseball side.”
Ortiz was relatively new to the group, having joined the Guardians in a trade last December. But Clase, they knew. He had been in the organization for more than five years. His alleged involvement came as a shock to players and coaches. One referred to it as the ultimate gut-punch. Pitcher Tanner Bibee said he didn’t know what to do but laugh.
There were trade winds swirling as the team fielded offers for Shane Bieber and Steven Kwan, two of its cornerstones. (They had to pull Clase, who was also receiving interest, off the market.) The tension in the building was palpable.
Once the deadline passed, Kwan remained in Cleveland, and the club received assurances from MLB that no other players were involved in the sports betting investigation. The Guardians cleared out the lockers for Ortiz and Clase.
Ortiz’s No. 45 uniform and the family photos that sat at the front of his locker — gone. Clase’s No. 48 uniform, his black glove with “La Kabra” or “The Goat” etched in gold script, the case with the baseball-shaped AL Reliever of the Month trophy that he typically kept on the floor near his locker — all had disappeared.
In a press conference, Vogt reasoned that the team might have needed the locker space to accommodate trade deadline acquisitions. However, there are only 26 players on an active roster. The Guardians were sellers at the deadline, and there were plenty of empty stalls before they created two more. Multiple team sources explained that the group was ready to move on from the distractions and headaches and frustration with what may or may not have been going on.
But even when the Guardians mounted a historic turnaround to win the AL Central, the absences of and alleged betrayals by two key pitchers remained a part of the narrative. They resurrected their season despite dealing with that adversity. The pitching staff thrived even without Clase and Ortiz.
“We arguably played our best baseball after they left,” Antonetti said Wednesday. “It’s one of the things I’m most proud of our team for.”
They couldn’t escape it. Four months later, after the unsealing of a 23-page indictment, they still can’t.
Mere hours after learning Ortiz was bound for the restricted list, Vogt had a pit in his stomach and tears trickling down his face. A pitcher he adored became a sacrificial lamb, and it forced him to break his cardinal rule of managing.
A few hours before first pitch on July 2 at Wrigley Field, Vogt received word that Ortiz was going to be placed on paid leave. He wasn’t initially provided a reason.
Kolby Allard, a first-round pick and top prospect who broke into the majors at the age of 20, bounced around the big leagues for seven years, from the Braves to the Texas Rangers, then back to the Braves, to the Phillies and, finally, the Guardians. He signed a minor-league deal last winter, a depth option in the event Cleveland’s pitching staff got desperate. Vogt, who went from a part-time catcher in A-ball in his mid-20s to a two-time big-league All-Star, could appreciate Allard’s journey.
Allard found a home in Cleveland. He aced every test the Guardians handed him: long relief, spot start, even the rare high-leverage opportunity in late innings. That night, he tossed three scoreless innings of relief to lower his ERA to 2.55.
In the dugout, Vogt felt sick. He knew the painful conversation that was waiting on deck. The Guardians needed a couple of fresh arms in the wake of Ortiz’s absence, and Allard was going to become an undeserved roster casualty.
Vogt completed his postgame interview with reporters near the batting cages behind the visitors’ dugout and then conquered two flights of steps back to the Guardians’ clubhouse. That march felt like scaling a mountain that night. He retreated to his office, summoned Allard and explained that, despite the three scoreless innings and the near-spotless record of work, the Guardians were designating him for assignment.
And Vogt couldn’t tell him why.
Vogt won his second straight AL Manager of the Year award this week, the fourth manager in history to win it in consecutive seasons. One of the tenets of his approach is to maintain honest, direct dialogue with players, no matter the news he’s delivering. It’s a tactic he cultivated through experiences with Craig Counsell, Bob Melvin, Jim Hoff, Joe Maddon and even Pat Murphy, who has won the NL Manager of the Year award each of the last two years.
Every fiber of his being that night wanted to explain that it had to do with whatever Ortiz had going on. His absence, after all, had set in motion every difficult decision. But he couldn’t.
Allard, a mild-mannered Southern California kid who was finally realizing his potential, was livid. Vogt cried for a half hour that night.
His dad had taught him that when you wake up and stare into the mirror each morning, you get to decide whether you’re going to have a good day or a bad day. Vogt likes to say there’s rarely, if ever, a reason to have a bad day in the big leagues. Even after a 0-for-4 or an implosion on the mound or a managerial decision that backfires, it’s still baseball, on the grand stage, with a hefty paycheck, a chartered flight and a catered meal.
Vogt estimates he’s only had about 10 bad days since he made his debut with the Tampa Bay Rays on Opening Day 2012.
July 2, 2025, was one of them.
As it turned out, though, Allard cleared waivers and re-signed with the Guardians. He was back pitching for them the following week. Ortiz never again stepped foot in the Guardians’ clubhouse.
“That one wasn’t in the playbook,” Vogt said at the start of the postseason. “We’ve been through a lot.”
— The Athletic’s David O’Brien contributed to this report.