Yesterday, ESPN published a lengthy article on Tim Donaghy, giving in-depth insight on the twelve-year-old scandal—insight that hadn’t previously been public.
The piece gave specifics, and specifics are useful, because they help explain exactly how Tim Donaghy happened to the NBA—the specific decisions made by individual actors within a specific environment that led to what happened: a referee fixing games relative to the spread.
These specifics can also be used to identify how such a scandal could develop in other American sports upon which bets are placed.
Theoretically, gambling scandals should be easier to sniff out as sports gambling slowly becomes more legal across the country. With less of a need for shadowy bookies, more bets are being placed at sportsbooks, which can share data with leagues on who is betting which bet on which game at what times at what odds. On the other side, sports could be at a greater risk for gambling scandals as the industry swells. The more money involved, the stronger the incentive to cheat. The more people involved, the stronger the odds someone tries it.
Since we already know how a Tim Donaghy scandal could (and did) happen in basketball, and football is over six months away, let’s look at how such a scandal could arise in baseball.
Before we begin, we should acknowledge that one of these scandals already occurred, by way of the 1919 Chicago White Sox. Depending on whether you think Pete Rose fixed any games as a manager (whether he did or didn’t is uncertain to the vast majority of us), another such scandal might have occurred fairly recently.
Those scandals can teach us a lot about how baseball can be rigged from the in-game side of things, just as the Donaghy scandal gives us clues on how the financials of rigging it might work, from the gambling side. Before we determine how baseball could be fixed, though, let’s narrow down exactly what could be fixed in baseball.
Luckily for the MLB, gamblers are not wagering heavily on minor league baseball. With that massive branch of possibilities cut off, MLB events themselves the most realistically threatened. Futures bets on division championships, pennants, and World Series titles only pay out once a year, making them an unrealistic target for a gambler looking to rig things. Team win totals fall under the same boat, though they’re probably a slightly more realistic target than pennants or rings—one win could make a difference in some bettor’s pocketbook without altering the standings. Still, win totals are an unlikely target—they’re extremely difficult for one “fixer” to control, and as mentioned, they’re a once-a-year event. Futures bets on individual awards—the Cy Young, the MVP—are also off-target, as the only control a player might have over that would be to control that they don’t win it, and it’s hard to imagine any bettor being significantly incentivized to convince one player to sacrifice an opportunity at reaching the pinnacle of their profession.
With all of those ruled out, our eyes turn to the games themselves.
There are three primary bets offered for baseball games: the run line (a spread, always set at 1.5 runs, with variable odds), the total (often called the over/under in other sports), and the moneyline (who will win). These are the most likely betting fields within which a gambler could seek to fix a game. Who, then, could partner with such a gambler?
Let’s start with the umpires, since Donaghy was an official.
Baseball has some inherent advantages over basketball in preventing a rogue official conspiring to fix games. For one, much of baseball can be challenged by a manager. Out and safe calls, fair and foul calls, home run or non-home run calls—all of these are binary, clearly defined, and challenge-able, unlike basketball’s foul calls (Donaghy’s vehicle of choice), which rely in large part on judgment.
Of course, not all that umpires do is binary and clearly defined. Particularly, there is one heavily judgment-based piece of umpiring—calling balls and strikes. The strike zone is capable of playing a massive role in the outcome of a game. A few tight corners here, a few generous calls there, and a close game can pivot. More simply, a tighter zone can lead to a higher run total, and a larger zone can lead to a low-scoring game. The average umpire will call balls and strikes in roughly 40 games each season, creating a sample large enough that if an umpire agrees to fix every game he calls from behind the plate, he has a good chance of doing well enough for his partner to make a lot of money, which could then be passed back to him.
Thankfully, umpires’ strike zones are tracked relentlessly. The most obvious way to influence a betting outcome—tightening or loosening the zone to affect the total runs scored—would be noticeable if the MLB were paying attention to two variables: how big was an umpire’s zone relative to his average zone, and did the over or the under hit? This data is already used to influence where totals are set: certain umpires are known for tighter zones than others, so games they call have a higher total.
Still, the possibility exists, and while the run line and the outcome would be more difficult to control, it’s definitely possible for an umpire to steer a few crucial calls a certain way, or to drive up a pitcher’s pitch count, and the game presents enough ambiguity that an umpire with such ambitions would often have opportunities. It might not be as frequently successful as manipulation of total runs scored, but it isn’t unreasonable to think an umpire might get to a 60% success rate or so. Until balls and strikes are reviewable or in some way automated (if they ever are), baseball should be, and hopefully is, keeping an extremely close eye on its umpires and the betting outcomes of games they call.
In the dugout, the manager can, of course, impact the outcome of a game, or the total, or where the game winds up against the run line. An active general manager or owner could theoretically have some sway in this regard as well, influencing when a player starts or sits, or even, to a certain extent, in-game decisions on substitutions, pitching changes, and general strategy. Still, of all the off-the-field participants in a baseball game, it’s difficult to envision how any but the manager could have enough sway to reliably fix games.
Pete Rose might have done it. I’m sure someone’s dug into this—probably John Dowd, specifically, the lawyer who investigated Rose—but in lieu of that person’s findings, we can only speculate as to how a manager might influence a game, or betting outcomes.
One of the more subtle ways a manager, or just a person in the know, could sway things in betting markets would be to leak information to specific gamblers on daily lineups, which relief pitchers are available, etc. Lines move each day when lineups are posted, and are impacted when a reliever is publicly stated to not be an option in a particular game. This wouldn’t, practically, impact the “integrity” of the game to the extent other actions might—it’s insider trading, but unlike run-shaving or game-fixing, it doesn’t impact the action on the field if all that’s being done is leaking information to particular bettors. Still, it’s possible, and it’s important that the MLB watches betting lines to see if they move prior to these decisions being announced.
More dramatically, there are a number of ways a manager could actively try to win or lose a game. Because baseball is such a long season, it’s fair to say that managers are not playing to win every game. As Gabe Kapler demonstrated in his debut season, it’s possible to double down on a particular game, throw the whole bullpen at it, and make sure it winds up a win. It’s also possible to punt on a particular game—resting starters, putting position players on the mound when trailing, using the second or third tier of relievers, etc. Some of these decisions are made far enough in advance that they fall closer to the insider trading sort of market manipulation than actual game-fixing, but some are made in the moment. A manager can pull a starter early or leave him in too long. A pinch-hitter can be called upon or left on the bench (especially in the National League). A manager can call for a stolen base at a bad time, or a squeeze at a good time. A large portion of what earns managers the rage of radio callers and Twitter wailers could, in theory, be a calculated attempt to influence the outcome of a game.
Thankfully, there are enormous deterrents to a manager doing this. For one thing, they’re always in a battle to keep their job—few enjoy the job security of Tim Donaghy, or even Pete Rose. Every win matters. For another, it’s difficult to make work. There aren’t that many opportunities in a game, which is part of why studies of how effective managers are (like this now-somewhat ironic one from FiveThirtyEight) credit even the best managers—the Bobby Cox’s of the world—for only six wins or so above the mean, much of which includes longer-term factors like team chemistry, balancing players’ rest, etc.
Simply put, a lot of what happens in a baseball game is controlled by players on the field. So let’s talk about players on the field.
As the 1919 White Sox proved, individual players can impact the outcome of games. While it’s hard to imagine any player attempting to throw an entire World Series these days, throwing an individual game or a collection of games is a real possibility. One stroke of luck for baseball on this front is that, unlike Donaghy, a player can only really manipulate the outcome of a contest in one direction. If a player is good enough that he can make it significantly more likely his team wins, the obvious thing to do is to just do that all the time and sign a $300 million dollar contract.
Swede Risberg’s 1919 World Series performance is troubling, but it’s also reassuring. The White Sox’ starting shortstop, Risberg went 2-for-25 on the series and committed four errors (unfortunately, UZR wasn’t measured 100 years ago, so we don’t know how badly Risberg really played). Still, his team made it to Game Eight of the then nine-game series, and frankly, position players hit that badly over an eight-game stretch all the time. Had Risberg not had help, his actions would have been impotent in flipping the series.
That isn’t to say a position player (exclude catchers from the category of position players for a minute—we’ll come back to them) can’t fix a game, or a collection of games. It’s just to say that it’s hard, and it often requires actions on the part of multiple people, which is much more risky because as the number of people involved grows, so does the possibility of the news of the existence of the plot leaking (as eventually happened with Donaghy). Additionally, because a position player would need to play badly over a large sample of games in order to swing enough to his gambler’s side, he’d be risking the existence of his career, or at the very least his continued playing time, by carrying out such a plot.
More powerful, of course, in the terms of an individual game, are the pitchers. Lefty Williams, in 1919, lost all three of his World Series starts and posted a 6.63 ERA. Over his career, Williams posted a 3.13 ERA. Three bad postseason starts wouldn’t have been damning, had news not leaked elsewhere, but they were certainly effective in throwing the series. It was a small sample size. It wasn’t so obscenely bad that it was clear something was up. It was 100% successful in three attempts.
It isn’t hard to imagine a pitcher, even a very good pitcher, agreeing to fix one particular game—especially a regular season game of little consequence, or a spring training game (we could go on and on about spring training as a target for this, but frankly, the rigging of spring training games is only really risky if it’s a gateway to regular season games being fixed). Pitchers have bad starts all the time, and even a relief pitcher could seize an opportunity to melt down and earn money off a live-betting partner (live-betting meaning betting on the outcome of the game while the game is in progress). Still, convincing a pitcher to do this once a year, even, is unlikely to be a worthwhile use of energy on the part of a gambler. It could happen, but it’s hard to imagine it happening over more than one or two games—pitchers, like position players and managers, have job security to worry about.
Which brings us, finally, to catchers, who have perhaps the most subtly humongous influence on games of any players. Statistics on pitch framing, while young and of debatable precision, indicate that a catcher’s reception of pitches can be worth as many as four or five additional wins a year over the average catcher. Everyday catchers, unlike starting pitchers, play in the majority of their team’s games, and a concerted effort in a sizable portion of them (say, a dozen) could affect the outcome, or more plausibly, the run total, in enough to make a difference to a bettor. Catchers also have a huge influence on pitchers—because they call pitches and dictate, to some extent, the pace at which a pitcher works, a catcher could subtly but effectively throw off a pitcher’s outing.
Again, though, just because this is possible doesn’t mean it’s likely. Unlike starting pitchers, there are fewer than thirty catchers who play in the majority of their team’s games, and while pitchers or umpires might, on initial appearances, seem to be the ones having a bad game, teams know their personnel well enough that they could presumably notice any effort beyond the most subtle (and thereby least impactful).
In short, baseball has a number of advantages over basketball when it comes to evading gambling scandals. A baseball game’s outcome hinges on a broader array of individuals than that of a basketball game. Its stakeholders, outside of the umpires, lack the job security Tim Donaghy enjoyed. Many umpires are already largely reviled, and there’s an army of data-minded people tracking their every call, down to distinctions of fractions of inches on balls and strikes.
It could happen. It’s not exactly likely to happen, but it could. The NBA got itself in trouble because it failed to notice a jarringly obvious pattern: Tim Donaghy was calling more fouls on teams who wound up failing to cover the spread. It wasn’t a sophisticated, masterminded plot to sway games. It was one guy taking extra measures to change the outcome of games, and the NBA failing to notice the strong correlation quickly enough to say, “Hey, we should probably investigate whether that guy’s doing this intentionally,” before the FBI got involved and dictated how the events would play out.
To avoid this, the MLB needs to watch closely. Possibly more importantly, they need to let umpires, managers, and players (especially pitchers and catchers) know how closely they’re watching.
Still, no matter how closely the MLB watches, the possibility is there. We know what could be fixed about baseball. How, then, would the fixing play out financially?
The impetus could come from the potential fixer himself, or from a gambler on the outside. For a gambler on the outside, the scenario is obvious, which is why it’s framed a lot of our language so far on how this could go down—a gambler, looking to make a ton of money (technical term), could try to buy off a player, manager, or umpire. What, though, would happen if a player, manager, or umpire decided independently that they wanted to make extra money fixing games?
To start, this individual actor would have to find a partner. It has to be assumed that no one wishing to do this would take the idiotic step of placing the bets on their own. Placing the bets through a sportsbook would get them caught, and an illegal bookie would be unlikely to take bets from someone they thought was influencing the outcome of those bets (unless they were in on it themselves, which brings us back to a partnership). They would need at least one other person in on it with them, managing the placement of the bets themselves. They would need secrecy—maybe not burner phones like Donaghy used, but certainly some sort of coded communication, and extreme confidence that what they were doing was both secretive and subtle enough that no one would catch on. They would presumably need to transfer large amounts of cash. Most importantly, though, they’d need motivation.
I’ve graphed out here a basic utility function. These are used in microeconomics to model how much utility a person gets from a particular input. In other words, it measures how good their life is—how happy, fulfilled, satisfied, etc. they are—based on how much of something they have.
In this case, the independent variable is money. For each person, this utility function varies, but there are certainly some commonalities. For the most part, everyone’s utility function with regard to money will assume a shape similar to this one, eventually flattening out.
When a person gains $10,000, it will be more beneficial if they have no money than if they have, say, $100,000 already. Similarly, it will be more beneficial if they already have $100,000 than if they have $1,000,000.
A player making the major-league minimum salary is bringing home roughly $550,000 per year. The lowest-paid managers make about $700,000 per year. The lowest-paid umpires are making about $150,000 per year.
Donaghy’s partners were allegedly betting hundreds of millions of dollars on his games. This, though, was enough that it shifted the betting lines—something that should, assuming competence on the part of the MLB, draw suspicion. It also required an enormous amount of capital to invest up front. Donaghy didn’t have that capital. He was in this for thousands of dollars—still a lot, but not the hundreds of millions his partners invested.
Donaghy also was already gambling when he started betting on his own games. It sounds like he began with things like golf and horse racing, eventually got into sports, and finally made his way around to game-fixing. Pete Rose, from what’s known, got around to betting on baseball in a similar way. It’s unlikely that a player, manager, or umpire would make the leap to fixing games on their own if they didn’t already have some experience, or some addiction to, gambling. This narrows the pool of potential fixers, and adds a sort of “gateway” element where the MLB, by investing resources in avoiding gambling addictions (as I believe they do with alcohol and drugs), can take preventative measures.
So, done secretly enough, sure, an individual within baseball could fix games for the sake of an enormous profit. But would they?
Let’s dig a little deeper into that utility function, and add a few variables. We’ve got U, utility, on one side of the equation. Money, of course, is involved on the other. Let’s break that money into A, what they already have, B, what they could get betting, and C, what they could get over the rest of their career if they don’t get caught. We’ll call P the probability, between 0 and 1, of getting caught (or at least the individual’s perception of that probability), and T the thrill of the experience.
This is oversimplified, especially in that it doesn’t take into account the impact time has on these decisions—it’s always better to have money earlier than later. Still, it outlines what the MLB needs to do to keep its players, umpires, and managers from taking this initiative on their own, or from accepting the advances of a gambler wishing to persuade them into doing it.
The MLB needs to get P close enough to 100% that it outweighs B and T. Players, managers, and umpires need to think the probability of them being caught erases the potential benefits of the situation. Of course, it would help to raise A and C, but the most cost-effective move on the part of Major League Baseball is, as we said above, to make all parties believe as certainly as possible that they will be caught if they try to fix a game.
How to do this? Employ people to watch odds, and to watch statistics for any sort of aberrations in performance that correlate with certain outcomes. Enlist artificial intelligence. Partner with sportsbooks. Educate players on the danger of gambling. Partner with law enforcement (what got Donaghy caught eventually was that he was tied to bookies and bettors connected with organized crime). Publicize all of this.
It’s impossible to prevent, with 100% certainty, a Tim Donaghy-style scandal in baseball. Still, this is an area where, by getting ahead of potential issues, the MLB can look modern and protect the integrity of the game. Let’s hope they do just that.
