Ex-Cleveland Guardians catcher Bo Naylor testifies he didn’t know gamblers bet on individual pitches

NEW YORK (AP) — Catcher Bo Naylor, a former teammate of Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, testified Thursday at their New York sports betting trial that he didn’t know gamblers could place bets on individual pitches until the criminal case arose.

The Canadian from Mississauga, Ont., called as a defence witness out of turn because he is heading to his wedding, made the revelation under cross-examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney James Simmons, who asked if he knew such bets occurred at the time of 2025 baseball game recordings shown to a Brooklyn jury.

“I didn’t know that before,” Naylor said. “I didn’t know that until the situation.”

“You didn’t know people bet tens of thousands of dollars on pitches?” the prosecutor asked him, though Naylor was stopped from answering when an objection by defence lawyers was sustained.

The testimony reflected how quickly sports-betting possibilities have blossomed in recent years. Legal sports betting has spread to 39 states in a steady expansion since the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for it in 2018.

Betting on whether a pitch will be a ball or strike is a form of prop betting, a popular type of wager often focused on individual players — like achieving a certain number of strikeouts in baseball, or points and rebounds in basketball or surpassing a particular passing yardage in football.

Naylor, who was traded by Cleveland to the Milwaukee Brewers in August just weeks before his new team won the World Series, was shown dozens of clips of pitches thrown by Clase and Ortiz in 2025 when he was questioned first by defence lawyers for the pitchers.

The lawyers elicited from Naylor that catchers notify pitchers what pitches they should throw and where they should aim them before each pitch.

Naylor said catchers and pitchers develop a strategy during pregame meetings of how to best pitch to each opponent to get an out based on an analysis of the weak spots in the hitting habits of each batter.

He also acknowledged that pitchers, even the best ones, cannot be sure that each pitch will go where it is aimed.

Clase, a three-time All-Star and two-time American League Reliever of the Year, had “pretty good command” of his pitches, Naylor said.

Clase, 28, and Ortiz, 27, pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges after they were filed a year ago. Prosecutors said the players accepted several thousand dollars in payments so sports gamblers could place bets on individual pitches, enabling the gamblers to pocket at least $460,000.

Prosecutors said Clase, who had completed the fourth season of a $20 million, five-year contract, began providing information about his pitches to bettors in 2023 and recruited Ortiz into the scheme in 2025. Ortiz earned $782,600 starting for the Guardians during the 2025 season.

Both are free on bail and are on nondisciplinary leave from the club without pay while facing prosecution.

Naylor, who studied Spanish so he could communicate better with Spanish-speaking teammates, acknowledged when he was being questioned by the prosecutor that he was not close friends with Clase or Ortiz.

Simmons also elicited from Naylor that he had frequently seen Clase on his cellular phone in the locker room.

Prosecutors have alleged that Clase sometimes broke Major League Baseball rules by communicating with gamblers during games.

Naylor also acknowledged that pitchers ultimately have the final say as to what pitch gets thrown because pitchers can wave off the catcher’s call in favour of a different pitch.

At one point during his testimony, Naylor was asked by Clase’s defence attorney, Michael Ferrara, if he had heard that Clase was into cockfighting with people he knew from the Dominican Republic, where he grew up.

Naylor said he had based it on “rumours I heard around the clubhouse.”

Clase’s lawyers have told the jury that the pitcher had friends who shared his enthusiasm for cockfights, which are legal in the Dominican Republic, and for playing dominoes, rather than sports gambling.

Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press