At every Major League Baseball game, league employees police how players use cell phones, a system put in place following the sport’s electronic sign-stealing scandals — including the famous scheme by the Houston Astros that tainted the 2017 World Series.
Baseball’s rules on electronics are now a key element in a different scandal: the illegal sports betting case involving two Cleveland Guardians pitchers, Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, who were indicted by federal prosecutors last month on charges they conspired with bettors to rig their pitches.
The duo allegedly predetermined how they would try to throw the ball and, via cell phone, clued in gamblers who turned the information into at least $450,000. Prosecutors say Clase not only sent texts during games, but made at least one phone call during play to an alleged coconspirator.
The Athletic has learned that MLB reprimanded Clase for impermissible cell phone use at least once before knowledge of the gambling issues came to light, according to two people briefed on his situation who were not authorized to speak publicly on the subject.
The indictment does not cite an instance of Ortiz using his cell phone, but alleges that Clase was paid to coordinate with a bettor on Ortiz’s behalf. MLB declined comment, and an attorney for Clase did not respond to a request for comment. Attorneys for Clase and Ortiz have previously said the players are innocent.
The two pitchers face lifetime bans from the sport if MLB finds they broke the sport’s most famous rule, prohibiting players from betting on baseball. But at least one of the pitchers also allegedly violated the game’s electronic-device regulations.
“With limited exceptions for personal use … MLB rules also prohibited MLB players from utilizing cellular telephones during MLB games,” prosecutors wrote.
Yet before this past season, feeling that the risk of sign stealing had been reduced, MLB and the players’ union loosened that policy, people briefed on the regulations said.
Clase started participating in the betting scheme in 2023, prosecutors say. During that year and the next, player cell phone use was outright banned during games. Before the 2025 MLB campaign — during which prosecutors say Ortiz began to participate in the scheme — the league gave players the freedom to use their phones in the clubhouse in the middle of games, a response to player complaints that the restrictions were unnecessarily tight.
The Players Association declined comment.
Luis Ortiz is alleged to have been brought into the scheme later. (Ken Blaze / Imagn Images)
Over time, “the risk of a sign-stealing issue has been reduced significantly,” said one person briefed on the league’s gameday monitoring program, which stations three employees at every game to enforce the devices policy.
For four seasons now, MLB has allowed a wearable digital communication system for pitchers and catchers called PitchCom that helps reduce the chance a team could intercept signs. With PitchCom, catchers don’t have to wave their fingers in a coded sequence to tell their pitcher what to throw.
“I don’t think (sign stealing) has been much of an issue since the regulations have changed, and the enforcement,” said Chris Young, the president of baseball operations for the Texas Rangers and once a high-ranking executive inside the league office, last month. “Last few years, to my knowledge, we haven’t had any issues.”
That led to MLB and the players’ union discussing ways to “potentially relax some of those (device) restrictions in those areas without increasing any risk of sign stealing,” the person briefed on MLB’s monitoring efforts said.
The sides agreed to newly permit phone usage during games this past season as long as it was for “personal use only,” according to the regulations. Players could not be near the dugout, bullpen or field while they were on their phones, but were in the clear if they were in the clubhouse. A “time sensitive text message to a spouse” and “playing music” were cited by the league in the regulations as examples of what players were free to do.
Clase, however, was allegedly up to much more.
On May 17 this year, during a game between the Guardians and Cincinnati Reds that began at 6:40 p.m., prosecutors say Clase sent a text at 8:24 p.m. to an unnamed gambler asking if they were “ready.” The bettor allegedly replied “of course,” and ten minutes later, multiple gamblers won about $10,000 by placing bets that Clase would throw a pitch out of the strike zone below 98 mph. Clase threw the pitch in the dirt.
A month earlier, on April 26, Clase allegedly sent a text in the middle of a day game against the Boston Red Sox to that same bettor, at 3:16 p.m. Then, “a few seconds later,” he had a roughly two-minute phone call with the same person. Four minutes later, several bettors won $11,000, prosecutors alleged.
Ideally, MLB’s gameday monitor group would catch players wrongly using their phones. One league employee is assigned to each team’s clubhouse and video room, and the third is a rover who monitors bullpens and also helps ensure that the baseballs used on the field are not doctored or otherwise mishandled.
“There are monitors throughout the clubhouse that are constantly checking,” Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said last month.
The monitors are supposed to mix up the patterns of when they visit certain areas. But no matter where an interaction takes place, players aren’t always cooperative with the league employees.
“They’re kind of, in a certain way, like hallway monitors trying to get grown men to adhere to policies, which is not always easy and causes some friction,” said the person briefed on the monitoring program.
MLB tracks whether teams are written up more at home or away to try to ensure regulations are enforced evenly. Specific incident rates are not public, but the Guardians did not stand out either way, according to that source.
If a player violates the policy, generally, MLB starts by notifying the club and the player of the infraction and asks the club to discuss that violation with the player. A front-office member or the field manager can have that conversation. After that, if issues continue, more formal discipline could follow.
The violations the league has seen are generally “small infractions that go against the policy, like using a cell phone in an area you’re not allowed to be using a cell phone,” the source said.
MLB does not appear intent on significantly altering or toughening its in-game monitoring protocols for 2026, at least as of now. For one, changes would have to go through the union, which will almost always oppose restrictions on players. But there’s also a sense among executives in the sport that no matter MLB’s policy — or how many compliance monitors it assigns to a given area of the stadium — someone will find a way to break the rules if they are intent on doing so.
“If you want to cheat at something, you’ll find ways to cheat,” said one president of baseball operations this week, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Said the person briefed on the gameday monitor program: “If a guy is willing to break a federal law, I’m not sure our cell phone restrictions policy is going to prevent him from doing anything.”
MLB believes it has curtailed the incentive for players to undertake a scheme similar to the Clase-Ortiz affair in a different way. One day after the indictment was unsealed in November, the league announced it had agreed with partner sports books to restrict the type of wagers involved — bets on the outcomes of specific pitches. Called prop bets, those wagers can now only be made up to $200, and cannot be included in parlays, which string together multiple wagers for a potentially higher-dollar payout.
But at least one alternative possibility is already mainstream. At some music and comedy shows, the audience is told to place their phones (and sometimes smart watches as well) in a pouch which can only be unsealed after the show, or in an emergency if they leave their seat and find an usher.
Players would likely never agree to do that every day at their workplace, however. Plus, what would stop a player from having a second or third phone they stash in a bullpen bathroom?
Asked last month whether MLB would need eyes on every player at all times to fully prevent such problems, Antonetti of the Guardians said, “I think you answered your question.”
When asked in November about the league’s cell-phone policy, Young, the Rangers’ president, said he wasn’t aware that phone usage was central to the Clase-Ortiz situation.
“Was it in-game?” he asked. “That’s something obviously the league will be on top of, and probably take a more stringent approach.”