Ohio Governor Mike DeWine calls for Ohio Casino Control Commission to ban prop bets

The Cleveland Guardians were the latest professional sports team to fall victim to the latest crackdown on athletes’ involvement in sports gambling when the MLB placed Emmanuel Clase on non-disciplinary paid leave. And this has led to Ohio Governor Mike DeWine issuing a public statement to the Ohio Casino Control Commission on Wednesday, calling for prop bets to be removed from the legal bet types in the state.

Clase joins his teammate, fellow pitcher Luis Ortiz, on the MLB’s non-disciplinary paid leave list as the league looks into suspicious gambling activity around a specific prop bet that allows bettors to gamble on whether they think the first pitch of any given inning will be a ball or a strike.

While there are still details to work out in Clase’s case regarding the suspicious activity he was involved in, Ortiz’s case, which began when he was placed on non-disciplinary paid leave on July 3, is a bit clearer. In particular, there are two pitches from two separate games in June that came nowhere near the strike zone that the league is looking into.

MLB’s investigation into Luis Ortiz is about these two individual pitches which received action flagged by a betting-integrity firm, per @JeffPassan pic.twitter.com/2zvZhmrTlJ

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) July 3, 2025

Clase, in particular, being placed on non-disciplinary paid leave, seemingly put a significant obstacle in the Guardians’ plans for the MLB trade deadline that has come and gone on Thursday.

Not only were the Guardians sellers at the deadline, parting ways with former Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber, but it seemed like Clase could very well have been on the move, as he was rumored to be a potential target for several teams before the MLB investigation began.

With this in mind, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine issued a statement relating to the two Guardians stars being investigated. In the statement, DeWine called for the Ohio Casino Control Commission to remove all prop bets from the list of legal bets in the state.

The evidence that prop betting is harming athletics in Ohio is reaching critical mass. A particular problem is with micro prop bets – prop bets on highly specific events within games that are completely controlled by one player.

More: https://t.co/L2hpuPWOcl pic.twitter.com/FGZUh7nshT

— Governor Mike DeWine (@GovMikeDeWine) July 31, 2025

“The evidence that prop betting is harming athletics in Ohio is reaching critical mass,” wrote DeWine in his statement. “First, there were threats on Ohio athletes, and now two high-profile Ohio professional athletes have been suspended by Major League Baseball as part of a sports betting investigation. The harm to athletes and the integrity of the game is clear, and the benefits are not worth the harm. The prop betting experiment in this country has failed badly. I call on the Casino Control Commission to correct this problem and remove all prop bets from the Ohio marketplace.”

Interestingly, prop bets have been an area of concern for DeWine for an entirely different reason. Shortly after gambling became legalized in the state in 2023, DeWine condemned anyone who made threats against members of the Dayton Flyers basketball team that were made public by Dayton head coach Anthony Grant, and raised concerns about prop bets on individual performances.

This prompted the OCCC to remove prop bets on collegiate sporting events in 2024 officially. We’ll see if the OCCC agrees with DeWine once again and decides to outlaw prop bets altogether following this investigation into the pair of Guardians pitchers.