Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano gets MLB ban for gambling; a wild night in Cleveland

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MLB has banned a player for life after he bet on baseball. Plus: Shota Imanaga has ascended to stardom, it’s the 50th anniversary of 10-Cent Beer Night and the Rhys Hoskins return to Philly was everything we could have hoped for. I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal, welcome to The Windup!

Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano gets lifetime MLB ban

It’s a credit to baseball that — before this year — the most recent example we had of a player or manager betting on games is Pete Rose, who has been banned from the sport since 1989 for gambling on Reds games in 1987. Before that, it was the 1919 Black Sox.

This is no longer the case.

Yesterday afternoon, Lindsey Adler and Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal reported that Tucupita Marcano of the Padres was under investigation for gambling on Pirates games while he was a member of the Pirates.

This morning, MLB announced a lifetime ban for the 24-year-old infielder, who hasn’t played since July 24, 2023, when he tore his right ACL. He appeared in 149 games from 2021 to 2023 with the Padres and Pirates. The league also announced one-year bans for four others: RHP Michael Kelly (who currently has a 2.59 ERA for the Oakland A’s); and minor-league players LHP Jay Groome (SDP), INF José Rodríguez (PHI) and LHP Andrew Saalfrank, who had a 0.00 ERA in 2 1/3 innings in last year’s World Series for the Diamondbacks.

A reminder: Per Rule 21, any player who bets on baseball in games that don’t involve their own team faces a one-year ban. But gambling on your own team? That’s when the lifetime ban comes into play.

This is, of course, not the first gambling scandal the sport has faced this year. As spring training gave way to the regular season, news broke that Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter Ippei Mizuhara was involved with an illegal bookie in California. Mizuhara is expected to plead guilty to bank and tax fraud stemming from the theft of millions of dollars from Ohtani later today. Ohtani himself was investigated by MLB and found to be free of any transgression in the manner.

Then last month, reports surfaced that infielder David Fletcher, who was Ohtani’s teammate in Anaheim, had placed bets with the same bookie. MLB is investigating Fletcher.

But neither Fletcher nor Mizuhara are believed to have bet on baseball, which makes this latest news an escalation of a very old problem.

For more on the league’s gambling rules, Mike Vorkunov has you covered. We’ll keep you posted here as more details become available.

Ken’s Notebook: Shota Imanaga’s unexpected success

From my latest story with Patrick Mooney and Sahadev Sharma:

Shota Imanaga stood on the pitcher’s mound during a recent bullpen session, and even in that setting he did not look like an emerging star. He doesn’t throw 100 mph. He doesn’t tower over his opponents. He isn’t another kid in a business that’s always looking for younger and cheaper. As a result, the global, multibillion-dollar baseball industry did not hype up the Japanese pitcher, nor could it predict that he’d author this generation’s version of Fernandomania.

Certain things cannot be measured, of course, and what the Chicago Cubs have learned about Imanaga throughout his ascent is that he possesses a rare, breezy confidence. It was yet another element that was not fully apparent to the major-league clubs that scouted him.

So on that bullpen mound, Imanaga rocked into his delivery and fired off the kind of sharp-breaking slider that caught the team’s attention and made his transition to the big leagues possible. Rookies are supposed to be seen, not heard, but in this way, too, Imanaga is exceptional. Perhaps it’s why he couldn’t help but offer those within earshot his own honest self-scouting report.

“Nasty s—!”

No one expected Imanaga to be this good, this fast. Not even the Cubs, who believed in him more than most. The organization began compiling an Imanaga scouting database back in 2018. But when the pitcher became available last winter, the Cubs did not jump out early and seize the negotiations. Even Imanaga himself understood his transition would be challenging.

Yet, Imanaga has gone from virtually unknown to North American baseball fans to one of the sport’s most valuable players so far this season. Ten starts into a four-year, $53 million contract, Imanaga has a 1.86 ERA. And just as Fernando Valenzuela won Rookie of the Year, a Cy Young Award and a World Series title in the same season, Imanaga has quickly established himself as a dynamic presence who pitches with passion and style.

There’s the long black hair and the high blue socks. There are the fist pumps and the screams on the mound. There are the shirtless dudes in the Wrigley Field bleachers who have taken to spelling out “S-H-O-T-A!” across their bare chests. In appearances on national platforms like MLB Network and “The Pat McAfee Show,” Imanaga wants to show his personality. Imanaga also does his job without being constantly attached to his interpreter, Edwin Stanberry, another sign of his growing comfort.

And sometimes there is no translation needed for the exclamations and expletives.

The chaos of 10-Cent Beer Night

Former Rangers player, GM and broadcaster Tom Grieve once told me a story about 10-Cent Beer night in Cleveland, 50 years ago today. It’s still a favorite, so here you go:

Grieve had just 16 career home runs in two-plus seasons leading up to that game, but had homered twice that night before the chaos descended. In the showers after the game, Jeff Burroughs offered condolences — because the game had been a forfeit, neither of Grieve’s home runs would count toward his career total.

Grieve fell for it completely and was pretty upset about it until Burroughs acknowledged it was just a joke.

That might be the one story about 10-Cent Beer night that didn’t make it into Zack Meisel’s absolutely masterful retelling, just in time for the anniversary of the June 4, 1974, debacle.

Meisel includes the important detail that the bad blood between Cleveland and Texas actually started a week earlier, when — also on a 10-cent beer night (but in Texas) — Lenny Randle pulled off an all-time “holy crap” moment.

The beers thrown on the field that night tend to be forgotten, since things got so much more unruly in Cleveland. What’s a few cups of beer on the field compared to a full-on riot?

The backstory, including the incendiary commentary in local Cleveland media leading up to the night, are two underreported aspects of the ordeal. It wasn’t just that there was cheap beer, it’s that the cheap beer was served while a rival was in town and emotions were running high.

The extent to which things got out of control is still shocking today. With the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge that there were no major injuries, it’s mostly entertaining. But in the moment, as Meisel explains, this was legitimately scary.

Rhys Hoskins returns to Philly

Well, that did not disappoint.

Rhys Hoskins hit 148 home runs in six seasons with the Phillies before missing last year with a torn ACL. He signed with the Brewers this offseason, and yesterday returned to Citizens Bank Park for the first time as an opponent.

As the slugger was introduced, he got a long standing ovation from the hometown faithful, along with a lot of cap-tipping from his former teammates. Throughout the game, there were hugs and acknowledgments from Phillies players, underscoring what he meant to the team when he was there.

In the middle innings, we got an incredibly wholesome series of events.

After a fifth-inning walk, Hoskins — who came into the game with 16 stolen bases in 707 career games — stole second base, which elicited some knowing smiles back and forth with Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto.

Two pitches later, on a single up the middle, Hoskins tried to score, aaaaaand was promptly tagged by Realmuto to end the inning.

Baseball karma!

J.T. Realmuto gets the last laugh against his former teammate Rhys Hoskins 😅 pic.twitter.com/s6s140ybGO

— Cut4 (@Cut4) June 4, 2024

Two innings later, Hoskins got to slow down and trot around the bases, as he hit his team-leading 10th home run of the year. The Philadelphia fans gave him an ovation, including a few boos (which, to be fair, is a Philadelphia ovation). Ultimately, the home team — with help from newest left fielder David Dahl — got the win 3-1, but unless you had a rooting interest in the Brewers or Phillies, the score was secondary to the emotions.

Handshakes and High Fives

This week’s Power Rankings have a new No. 1 and I don’t want to spoil it for you, but this team is at the top despite Gerrit Cole pitching zero innings for them so far this year (that technically applies to all 30 teams, so — not a spoiler).

As a companion to his Top 50 prospects piece earlier this week, Keith Law lists five prospects who have slid down the board since February.

Royce Lewis is expected to come off the IL for the Twins’ series against the Yankees tonight. When he’s healthy, he’s one of the game’s most electric players.

The Astros’ injury misery continues. On the same day we learned José Urquidy may need a second Tommy John surgery, Kyle Tucker — who was off to a monster start at the plate — fouled a ball off his shin and left the game (X-rays were negative). Meanwhile, GM Dana Brown says the team will not be sellers.

Former Nationals top prospect Victor Robles is reportedly signing with the Mariners.

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(Top photo: Charles LeClaire / USA Today)