Peter Labuza

Image courtesy of Ron Johnson-Imagn Images This is the first in a weekly recap of the Women’s Professional Baseball League. If you have things you would like to see here or suggestions, please comment or use the Contact Us page. The Results Wednesday, August 5th Boston Hunters 4, Los Angeles Queens 12 Thursday, August 6th New York Heights, 13, San Francisco Firebells, 8 Friday, August 7th Firebells, 3, Hunters, 12 Saturday, August 8th Hunters, 9, Heights 6 Queens, 3, Firebells 10 Sunday August 9th Heights, 7, Hunters, 6 (extra - 8 Innings) Breakdown The Boston Hunters will have a long way to recover this season, dropping two of its three games and losing its manager in the process (more on that below). The Queens offloaded on pitcher Alli Schroder early on Wednesday, who gave up 10 hits and 3 runs while only striking out one. While the Hunters loaded the bases in the top of the seventh to make it interesting, Second Baseman Kate Blunt lined into a double play to stop the threat. Things improved on their Saturday game against the Heights with a seven-run sixth inning that included five walks, but they fell on Sunday in extras. Right fielder Natsuki Yonetani lined a double to take a two-run lead that Claire O'Sullivan protected thanks to two base-running errors and a nice scoop by London Studer at first to close it out. Currently, the Heights are hitting under the Mendoza Line as a team, and their pitching ERA is over 9. After winning their inaugural game, the San Francisco Firebells came back down to Earth with two losses while edging a win against the Queens on Saturday. Despite an early lead, the Firebells had bases loaded in the second against Heights pitcher Jaida Lee on Thursday but only managed to score on a wild pitch. The New York offense then took batting practice against the pitching staff, including two home runs from Keira Izumi (who pitched a scoreless 1 2/3 IP to close the game) and battery mate Denae Benites. The Firebells then split their back-to-back games against the Queens in both lopsided affairs. Savanah Bananas alum Kelsie Whitmore looked particularly shaky after allowing 7 earned runs over 3 IP. Whitmore got her revenge on the plate, scoring two runs against the Queens. The best performance came from Jill Albayati, who threw four innings with four strikeouts as well as managed two singles and a walk at the plate. Despite getting their first loss on Saturday, the Queens have emerged as the league’s dominant team with a +13 run differential in their first four games. Michell Roche threw 8 2/3 innings over two of the three games, only for three earned runs (though errors resulted in an additional seven in her total). Jamie Mackay homered in back-to-back games while shortstop Thaima Maximiliana went 4-for-7 from the plate, including two for extra bases. In total, the Queens are hitting .361, and their pitchers have a 1.85 WHIP over their first handful of games—the lowest in the league. The Heights edged out their Sunday night win as mentioned above and otherwise looked solid thanks to catcher Denae Benites’ massive start to the season. Keira Izumi has managed well at the plate but had a whirlwind week on the mound. In her game against the Firebells, she kept them to three runs—all scoreless—over five innings and notched three hits. But her Saturday game against the Hunters did her no favors, allowing a single and three straight walks without recording an out in relief. Thankfully, the aforementioned Yonetani also continues to put on a show with three doubles and nine runs scored to start the season. The Heights go into Week 3 while just nudging into a positive run differential. MVPs of the Week Heights catcher Denae Benites has become an unstoppable force at the plate in her brief 18 plate appearances, including four dingers and five steals this week (not to mention. Her OPS+ of 296 is over 50 points higher than the next hitter (Jamie Mackay of the Queens). On the mound, Ayami Sato currently leads pitchers over her eight innings with the best single appearance of the week with her five innings against the Firebells. While she has an inflated 4.50 ERA, her 3.52 FIP leads the league. Off the Field In a perhaps stunning move, Hunters' manager Keith Foulke has been removed. Reporting from Howard Megdal suggested this was for baseball reasons “only” rather than any impropriety or any other unwanted reason. Jemile Weeks has taken over in the interim and is expected to manage the rest of the season. Loren Foxx appeared on Sunday’s broadcast to do play-by-play. He is Queens catcher Maggie Foxx’s father and has worked as an official scorer for the Red Sox. The first two games from last week featured Trackman data. Jaida Lee leads the league in pitch velocity, averaging 76.2. Benites smashed a line drive at 104.3mph. Thanks to Evan Davis of Expected Own Goals for collating stats for the league. You can find his data here. View full article

Image courtesy of © Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images MLB.TV subscribers might be able to breathe a small sigh of relief that this season comes without a price hike—but there’s an ESPN catch meant to capture extra cash anyway. While pending a formal announcement, the MLB.TV market packages have gone up on some team websites, with a price of $149.99 for the season. Monthly prices will remain at $29.99 a month (though the league has yet to write the copy for that; it simply describes them as "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur."). Single team packages will run anywhere from $99.99 a year to $129.99 a year for teams that have partnerships with cable bundles such as Spectrum LA and the YES Network, and will not be subject to the same blackout restrictions as those on the out-of-market packages (national games will continue to be subject to blackouts). However, the legal language notes that “ESPN Unlimited is required to purchase MLB.TV.” Yet—this is where it gets tricky—they do not need to keep the subscription. In fact, customers will receive a one-month free trial of ESPN Unlimited. As the legal language notes, “ESPN subscription is not required to maintain MLB.TV subscription.” But it’s easy to see what the game is here. MLB.TV purchases will be encouraged to try ESPN Unlimited or simply forget that they signed up for the trial. More likely, those who sign up via phone or Smart TV might not even notice the language (for now, the purchase website currently redirects to ESPN’s home page). Research suggests that over 40% of consumers forget entirely about cancelling subscription services they no longer use. The idea is thus to “capture” any additional revenue from those who might not notice the extra charges on their credit card bills. For those in the tech world, Cory Doctorow has described this process as enshittification. For a platform, “First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers.” You can see enshittification in a lot of things, particularly big tech. And for years, it has been almost impossible to argue against MLB.TV as a product is about more than blackouts, which are slowly being fixed as cable giants forgo streaming rights. But this ESPN backend does seem like part of the future. What happens next year, for example, for those who canceled ESPN Unlimited? Do they still get a free trial? Or do they need to pay up an extra $30 just “to purchase” MLB.TV? All this is the result of the new TV deals Manfred struck, which essentially kept the same amount of league profits while increasing the product to do so. When Manfred decided to break the ESPN deal, the league perhaps presumptuously thought it could get something better. This resulted in NBC signing the rights for Sunday Night Baseball and Netflix securing the Home Run Derby among a newly restructured deal with ESPN. ESPN ended up signing for the same amount of money, but for a different set of games in addition to full rights to put MLB.TV in their system. At that point, that included the standard out-of-market package and seven dedicated team channels. But since then, the collapse of Main Street Spots Group has resulted in that increasing to fourteen teams and potentially soon sixteen—all at no additional cost by ESPN to the league. It was never clear what the relationship between MLB and ESPN would be, as MLB.TV became one of its flagship products. For now, we’re getting a sense of what it might mean: more money for the same service by any means necessary. View full article

Image courtesy of © Ken Blaze-Imagn Images On Sunday morning, the Department of Justice dropped a damning indictment against starting pitcher Luis Ortiz and closer Emmanuel Clase. The two Cleveland Guardians had been placed under administrative leave since mid-season for purportedly tossing intentional balls in games for the purpose of fixed bets. Neither player appeared in the team’s final stretch run to win the AL Central or its wild card games against the Detroit Tigers, and until this moment, their exact fates had remained uncertain. The DOJ charging document fills in major holes, and almost certainly suggests they will never be seen on a major league mound again (Both Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase’s lawyers have maintained their innocence). Both are charged with four major counts: wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery, and money laundering conspiracy. The basics according to the indictment are this: the scheme began with Clase as early as May 2023, when the ace would often toss the first pitch of his appearance as an off speed pitch way outside the strike zone. The bettors he worked in collaboration with would either bet on the pitch under a particular velocity (slower than his fastball, which usually comes in around 98-100mph) or that it would be a ball, both schemes offered on the betting sites allow such specific bets. In total, Clase threw around 100 pitches in total according to texts and gambling site reviews investigated by the DOJ. Ortiz joined Clase in the scheme in June 2025, and Clase began sending money to the bettors to wager on Ortiz’s pitches as well. In all, the bettors earned around $450,000 for their scheme, a portion that was eventually kicked back to the two pitchers. While every fan should review the entire 23 page indictment, there are some major takeaways from the obvious I think that should be noted. MLB’s Cell Phone Policy Needs Enforcement The charging document notes that during some of the games, Clase was texting with the bettors during game time. In one case, he took a two-minute phone call. MLB has been strict about the no cell phone policy, especially after the Red Sox were caught using Apple Watches to steal signs in 2017. Fans may remember Rodolfo Castro awkwardly losing his phone in a slide to third in 2022 and serving a short but at least notable suspension for it. MLB supposedly employs Game-Day Compliance Monitors meant to stop such things as cell phone use; but it didn’t work here. If Clase was doing it near the bullpen area, it seems none of the Guardians staff or other pitchers noticed, or perhaps wanted to notice. If MLB is serious about this issue, they need to get better about not turning a blind eye toward this kind of behavior. Gambling Isn’t About Money; It's An Ideology None of us know the exact financial circumstances of Clase or Ortiz. We might know what their posted dollar says on Roster Resource, which is difficult to know after agencies, managers and taxes. And we have no idea about any potential trouble they may have arrived by overspending those amount. That said, most of the pitches Clase threw netted the pitcher around $5,000 from the bettors. In 2024, Clase threw 983 pitches—under his salary that year, that was around $2,500 per pitch. He was set to make $6.4 million next year with the team securing club options for $10 million each of the following two years. On his current trajectory, his free agency could have netted something similar to Josh Hader’s $95 million contract with the Astros. None of that seemed to factor into Clase’s decision. Ortiz was only on his second active year as a pitcher, where his career trajectory (and earnings) seemed less certain. But for Clase? This man had proven himself so valuable he finished third in Cy Young voting in 2024—the first to place in the top three since Eric Gagne's win in 2003—while still managing to waste pitches for gambling purposes. Many gamblers have described that at some point money loses its material use, something we use every day to purchase goods and services, loses its meaning. As Dave Zirin notes, "The ubiquitous betting app commercials, which always end with a rapid repetition of the gambling addict hotline, feed the idea that you are limiting your fun by not 'getting in the game.'" Barstool Sports has made an entire subculture through the sports betting bro that extends into dating and politics. And under our current societal structure, more and more aspects to life feel like a gamble: from “prediction markets” encouraging bets on war, to cryptocurrencies tied to the feelings of particular autocrats, to the giant bet by major financial firms on generative artificial intelligence changing our entire life. Gambling, as Benjamin Charles Germain Lee argues, is now the de facto point of American society: Clase didn’t need the money perhaps; he needed the juice. MLB’s Sportsbook Partnerships Promised Scrutiny; It’s Falling Apart at the Seams MLB alongside every other major sporting league has partnered with the major sports gambling apps. About a third of the league appears on an RSN named for one of them. If there has been one defense of MLB’s relationship with sportsbooks, it has been that the digital surveillance state has made “catching” players—such as the four minor leaguers booked last year—easier to monitor than if they were betting through illegal means. Just a few weeks ago, Rob Manfred noted, “Once you’re in that environment where sports betting is happening, the crucial issue is access to data.” For example, NBA player Jontay Porter supposedly threw his game on March 20, 2024 and the NBA announced its suspension five days later. Emmanuel Clase has been supposedly throwing pitches for over two years before getting caught. In fact, it seems had Ortiz not joined him, he could have continued to do so in perpetuity. Why did it take so long? Or better yet: how many individuals are betting in the outcome of a single pitch that the first ball Clase ever threw away did not arise any suspicion? MLB has no answer for what to do about this. NBA League Commissioner Adam Silver has argued that the value of the sportsbooks is at least putting in light what was previously in darkness. (Perhaps this is naive thinking, but if you, average bettor, went to an illegal bookie with a $10,000 bet on a single pitch, my sense is your night would end with some broken kneecaps). MLBPA leader Tony Clark has advocated for the end of “prop” bets that focus on a single player or event in the game. These bets are especially dangerous in baseball, where we now know that a Cy Young candidate can allegedly scratch almost 5% of his entire year for the purpose of fixed bets and not raise an eye. Update: On Monday morning, MLB announced that in collaboration with its sportsbook partners, all pitch-by-pitch bets will be limited to $200 and banned from parlay bets. But it won't end at the legal sports books, because even that is changing. What will MLB or any other league do about Polymarket or Kalshi where they have no partnerships? These so-called “prediction markets” are completely unregulated by individual states, instead falling under the federally operated Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). While the CFTC could take action against itheir deliberate shift toward sports betting (which is now 95% of its business), President Donald Trump’s initial nominee to run the CFTC was formerly a board member at Kalshi—only pulled because of pushback from crypto influencers. More so, Trump’s private business operation Trump Media has announced plans to open its own prediction market. If one were hoping that the federal government intervention suggested by Manfred might take shape, he is deliberately ignoring reality. Kalshi doesn't care what you think; they truly believe that you'll eat up any slop you see, including in their ads. There’s no end to this, really. The Black Sox scandal has been a cornerstone of baseball’s legacy. It’s quickly becoming just another Tuesday. Baseball has so much to be excited about. Over 50 million people across three nations tuned into its Fall Classic. I heard from a significant handful of people who had never once talked to me about baseball exclaim excitement over these final games. A few years ago everyone kept nagging that baseball is dying; it's now hitting a genuine upswing. And yet, there's one way it all fizzles: when you can't trust the thing you see in front of your eyes. What happens when you see a weird pitch, and all you can think, "Payment for a horse"? That's when Major League Baseball might stare into The Abyss, and The Abyss might begin staring back. View full article