MLB's dismissal of umpire Pat Hoberg upheld following appeal

Major League Baseball announced Monday that it has terminated umpire Pat Hoberg for violating the league’s gambling rules. MLB’s decision was made in May 2024 and upheld following an appeals process in accordance with the league’s collective bargaining agreement with the MLB Umpires Association (MLBUA).

Hoberg has denied betting on baseball and an MLB investigation into his conduct found no evidence that he placed bets on baseball or that he took any action to manipulate the outcomes of any games. But by sharing legal sports betting accounts with a professional poker player and friend who did place bets on baseball and by impeding the MLB investigation through the deletion of messages with the friend, Hoberg was ruled by MLB to have failed to uphold the integrity of the game.

Commissioner Rob Manfred issued the following statement:

“The strict enforcement of Major League Baseball’s rules governing sports betting conduct is a critical component of upholding our most important priority: protecting the integrity of our games for the fans. An extensive investigation revealed no evidence that Mr. Hoberg placed bets on baseball directly or that he or anyone else manipulated games in any way.

“However, his extremely poor judgment in sharing betting accounts with a professional poker player he had reason to believe bet on baseball and who did, in fact, bet on baseball from the shared accounts, combined with his deletion of messages creates at minimum the appearance of impropriety that warrants imposing the most severe discipline. Therefore, there is just cause to uphold Mr. Hoberg’s termination for failing to conform to high standards of personal conduct and to maintain the integrity of the game of baseball.”

• Read the full summary of facts

Hoberg, 38, first umpired Major League games in 2014 and became a full-time umpire in 2017. He umpired postseason games every year from 2018 to 2022 and in the World Baseball Classic in 2023. He was widely regarded as one of the game’s best ball-strike umpires, especially after a 2022 World Series game (Game 2) in which the site Umpire Scorecards determined that he had called a “perfect game” with no mistakes.

MLB umpires are permitted to place legal bets on sports other than baseball. But MLB’s investigation into Hoberg’s conduct began in February 2024, when the league was alerted by a licensed sports betting operator that Hoberg had opened a sports betting account in his own name and that the personal electronic device associated with the account was also associated with the legal sports betting account of an individual not covered by MLB’s policies who had bet on baseball. After being informed of the investigation, Hoberg deleted messages between himself and the friend that had been sent via a messaging app called Telegram that were considered central to the investigation. In May 2024, Hoberg was informed of his termination, which he unsuccessfully appealed. He did not umpire a game during the 2024 regular season or postseason.

Consistent with Rule 2(c), Hoberg is eligible to apply for reinstatement no earlier than the start of Spring Training in 2026. He released the following statement through the MLBUA.

“As detailed in the statement that Major League Baseball issued today, Commissioner Manfred has upheld my termination based on my failure ‘to conform to high standards of personal conduct and to maintain the integrity of the game of baseball.’

“I take full responsibility for the errors in judgment that are outlined in today’s statement. Those errors will always be a source of shame and embarrassment to me. Major League Baseball umpires are held to a high standard of personal conduct, and my own conduct fell short of that standard. That said, to be clear, I have never and would never bet on baseball in any way, shape, or form. I have never provided, and would never provide, information to anyone for the purpose of betting on baseball. Upholding the integrity of the game has always been of the utmost importance to me.

“I apologize to Major League Baseball and the entire baseball community for my mistakes. I vow to learn from them and to be a better version of myself moving forward.”

The MLBUA also released a statement:

“We thank Commissioner Manfred for his careful consideration of Pat Hoberg’s appeal. As Major League Baseball umpires, we have devoted our professional lives to upholding the rules and integrity of the game. If our union believed that an umpire bet on baseball, we would never defend him. But Pat Hoberg did not bet on baseball. As today’s statement from the League makes clear, neither the neutral factfinder nor the Commissioner found that Pat placed bets on baseball. Yet we respect Pat's unequivocal acceptance of responsibility for the mistakes he made that led to his termination.”

MLB’s statement contains an extensive summary from a neutral factfinder that details how Hoberg began placing legal sports bets through his friend’s account in 2015 or 2016, initially indirectly before progressing to direct bets via his own mobile device while in the state of Iowa. Hoberg continued to use the friend’s account to place bets on sports other than baseball through Jan. 15, 2024.

Hoberg’s requests to the friend to place bets on his behalf were made through Telegram. After Hoberg was contacted by MLB investigators, the friend deleted his threads of messages with Hoberg and Hoberg deleted his Telegram account. Per the factfinding release, Hoberg told MLB investigators that he deleted the messages “simply because he was embarrassed by the frequency and volume of his legal non-baseball betting activity.”

Most of Hoberg’s direct bets were on football, basketball, hockey and golf. None placed via his devices were on baseball. But his friend’s devices bet on baseball 141 times from 2021-2023, including eight bets on five games that Hoberg umpired or had responsibility for replay reviews. The investigation and an analysis of those games did not find any pattern to indicate Hoberg’s calls were influenced by the bets being made by his friend. The average size of the bets on those games was in line with other baseball bets placed by the individual, and all eight of those bets were not profitable.

Throughout the process, Hoberg denied knowing that his friend used the shared account to bet on baseball.

“Hoberg acknowledged that he never told Individual A not to bet on baseball and said that it did not occur to him to ask if Individual A had done so,” the fact-finding summary reads. “Accordingly, Hoberg did nothing to disassociate himself as a Major League Umpire from Individual A's baseball betting for several years despite knowing that he was allowed to open betting accounts in his own name and bet on other sports.”