Major League Baseball, the US’s premier professional sport league, banned players on Tuesday (4th June) for breaking gambling laws in the post PASPA era. San Diego Padres’ infielder Tucupita Marcano has been banned from playing for the rest of his life. It was discovered that Marcano had placed bets on San Diego Padres himself.
According to MLB.com, four other players were also suspended up to one year. This included Oakland Athletics pitcher Michael Kelly. Before Tuesday, all other professional sports leagues had at least banned one player. Marcano is the second US professional league player to receive a life-long ban in this year. Jontay porter was banned for life by the NBA on 17 April after he shared his personal information and bets with another gambler.
The NFL last year suspended up to 10 players from the league for a period of one year due to various gambling violations. Since then, all have been re-instated. Shane Pinto was suspended by the NHL for breaking league rules in October last year. The PGA Tour also suspended two players last October for violating Tour gambling policies.
MLB Rule 21 states that league employees will be banned for life if they place bets on their team. A year’s suspension is imposed for betting on another team.
The legal operators will identify the violations
Most, if no all cases, the violation was discovered by the legal betting operators with whom the player bet. DraftKings notified the NBA of suspicious betting activity in Porter’s case. The NBA then launched an investigation. According to MLB.com, in the cases involving baseball, an anonymous legal operator reported suspicions to MLB back in March. The Wall Street Journal broke the news on Monday, 3 June that MLB was looking into five players. The punishments were announced one day later.
MLB’s probe included “authentication” data for bets, as well as contact with multiple legal sportsbooks. The suspensions of all players have been upheld.
Marcano was betting with the Pittsburgh Pirates, not his Padres team, since he hasn’t played an MLB game in July 2023. In Pennsylvania, as well as Indiana where Marcano played for Triple-A Indianapolis Indians’ affiliate games, betting is allowed.
Data from sportsbooks shows Marcano placed 387 bets on baseball, 231 of which were for MLB games. 25 of the bets Marcano placed were for Pirates matches while still on his roster. Marcano didn’t play in the games that he wast on. Marcano bet a lot of money on parlays, and more than $100,000 was bet in baseball.
The player who bet under $100 was A.
Kelly bet a total $99.22 while with the Houston Astros between October 5-17, 2021. Kelly won a total of $28.30 and did not wager on games that he participated in, or Astros games.
Both the Padres A’s and Padres issued statements expressing their “disappointment” at players violating league rules. Both teams made it clear that violations occurred before players were signed up by their teams. The teams both said that they supported MLB’s gambling policies and penalties.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred stated in a press release that “the strict enforcement of Major League Baseball rules and policies regarding gambling is an important component to upholding our top priority, protecting the integrity our games for our fans.” The prohibition of betting by Major League Baseball players on games has been in place for more than a century. The privilege of being a baseball player comes with the responsibility of abstaining from certain kinds of behavior that is legal for others.
