Bo Naylor says he did not know bettors could wager on individual pitches in Cleveland Guardians case

Former Cleveland Guardians catcher Bo Naylor testified Thursday in New York in the sports-betting trial of Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, and his main contribution was blunt: he says he did not know pitch-level betting existed until the criminal case surfaced. For high-risk PSPs, that matters because the prosecution is centered on prop betting, the exact product type that turns individual actions into settlement events.

1. Naylor, who was called as a defense witness out of turn because he is heading to his wedding, said under cross-examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney James Simmons that he did not know bettors could place money on individual pitches when the 2025 baseball-game recordings shown to the Brooklyn jury were made. “I didn’t know before,” he said. “I didn’t know until this situation.”
2. When Simmons asked whether Naylor knew that people were betting “tens of thousands of dollars on pitches,” an objection from the defense was sustained before he could answer. The exchange underlined the scale of pitch-by-pitch wagering in the case, which is being heard in New York.
3. The betting at issue is a prop bet, the kind that ties wagers to a specific player action rather than the final score. In baseball, that can mean betting on whether a pitch will be a ball or a strike; in other sports, it can mean strikeouts, points, rebounds, or passing yards. The thing is, once the market moves from team outcomes to micro-events, the risk surface gets a lot more granular.
4. Naylor, who was traded by Cleveland to the Milwaukee Brewers in August, shortly before his new team won the World Series, was first shown dozens of clips of pitches thrown by Clase and Ortiz in 2025 by the pitchers’ defense lawyers. He testified that catchers tell pitchers what to throw and where to aim before each pitch, and that catcher-pitcher strategy is developed in pregame meetings based on hitters’ weaknesses.
5. He also said even elite pitchers cannot be certain every pitch will land where intended. Naylor described Clase, a three-time All-Star and two-time American League Reliever of the Year, as having “pretty good control” of his pitches. Clase, 28, and Ortiz, 27, have both pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges filed a year ago. Prosecutors say they accepted several thousand dollars in payments so sports bettors could predict individual pitches, allowing bettors to pocket at least $460,000.

Legal sports betting has expanded to 39 states since the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way in 2018. That expansion is the backdrop here: once regulated wagering reaches enough states, the market does not just get bigger; it gets more detailed, and pitch-level props are one of the sharpest examples.