NEW YORK — Catcher Bo Naylor, a former teammate of Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, testified Thursday at their sports betting trial in New York that he did not know gamblers could bet on individual pitches until the criminal case was opened.
Naylor, called as an untimely defense witness because he was on his way to his wedding, made the revelation during cross-examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney James Simmons, who asked whether he knew such betting took place at the time of the 2025 baseball game tapes presented to a Brooklyn jury.
“I didn’t know that before,” he said. “I didn’t know that before the situation.”
“You didn’t know people bet tens of thousands of dollars on the land? the prosecutor asked him, although Naylor was prevented from responding when an objection from defense attorneys was sustained.
These testimonials demonstrate how quickly sports betting opportunities have grown in recent years. Legal sports betting has expanded to 39 states with steady expansion since the Supreme Court of the United States paved the way for him in 2018.
Betting on whether a pitch will be a ball or a strike is a form of prop betting, a popular type of bet often focused on individual players – such as achieving a certain number of strikeouts in baseball, or points and rebounds in basketball, or exceeding 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, saw dozens of clips of pitches thrown by Clase and Ortiz in 2025 when he was first questioned by the pitchers’ defense attorneys.
The attorneys asked Naylor that catchers inform pitchers what pitches they should throw and where they should aim them before each pitch.
Naylor said catchers and pitchers strategize in pregame meetings on how best to throw to each opponent to get an out, based on a weak spot analysis of each hitter’s hitting habits.
He also recognized that pitchers, even the best, can’t be sure that every pitch will go where it’s aimed.
Clase, a three-time All-Star and two-time American League Reliever of the Year, had “a pretty good command” of his pitches, Naylor said.
Clase, 28, and Ortiz, 27, pleaded not guilty to the conspiracy charges after they were filed a year ago. Prosecutors said the gamblers accepted several thousand dollars in payments so sports gamblers could bet on individual fields, allowing them to pocket at least $460,000.
Prosecutors said Clase, who finished the fourth season of a $20 million, five-year contractbegan providing information on his pitches to bettors in 2023 and recruited Ortiz to the program in 2025. Ortiz earned $782,600 starting for the Guardians during the 2025 season.
Both are out on bail and are on non-disciplinary leave from the club without pay pending prosecution.
Naylor, who studied Spanish to better communicate with his Spanish-speaking teammates, acknowledged during questioning by the prosecutor that he was not close friends with Clase or Ortiz.
Simmons also learned from Naylor that he frequently saw Clase on his cell phone in the locker room.
Prosecutors alleged Clase sometimes violated Major League Baseball rules by communicating with players during games.
Naylor also acknowledged that pitchers ultimately have the final say on which pitch to throw, as pitchers can ignore the catcher’s call in favor of a different pitch.
At one point during his testimony, Clase’s defense attorney, Michael Ferrara, asked Naylor if he had heard that Clase enjoyed cockfighting with people he knew in the Dominican Republic, where he grew up.
Naylor said he based it on “rumors I heard around the clubhouse.”
Clase’s lawyers told the jury that the pitcher had friends who shared his enthusiasm for cockfighting, which is legal in the Dominican Republic, and for playing dominoes, rather than sports betting.
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