CLEVELAND GUARDIANS
Guardians share extreme, vulgar threats from bettors. 'It's a cesspool'
Ryan Lewis
Akron Beacon Journal
April 2, 2026, 6:01 a.m. ET
In early April 2024, Nolan Jones was in a Chicago hotel room after a brutally rough first few games to start the season for him. It was a low point, and it was about to get much, much worse.
Jones, then an outfielder with the Colorado Rockies, had committed four errors in the first five games, including two earlier that day, resulting in a loss. Wondering what was going so wrong with him in left field, he decided to call his wife and talks things over.
That's when the messages began rolling in.
Jones began to receive a steady stream of anonymous calls and texts. The nameless, faceless people on the other end of these messages told Jones they were going to kill him. They said they were going to kill his wife and his entire family. They said he should just kill himself.
Unbeknownst to him, Jones' personal phone number had been posted on social media a few minutes prior. It led to a flood of hate and threats to him and his family.
"When you fail at the biggest stage, at the Major League level, you can't expect not to hear about it, but I think sports betting has made it worse as far as social media, letters in the mail, threatening families and such," said Jones, who rejoined the Guardians organization last season and is with the team's Triple-A affiliate in Columbus. "It's not always butterflies and roses like some people may think."
Jones is among the players in the Guardians organization who say they have been subjected to threats by angry sports bettors.
Guardians, pro athletes deal with messages after Ohio legalizes sports betting
Professional athletes have always had to deal with angry messages from sports fans in some form. But the added access to sports gambling that came with legalization has led to a sharp increase in fury from angry bettors who just lost money and are seeking an outlet for that frustration.
Social media often offers that pathway. But sometimes, as happened with Jones, a personal phone number or, worse, private address is discovered and the threats hit even closer to home.
Ohio legalized sports gambling on Jan. 1, 2023. Many states had already made that leap. Several others have followed since.
Consequently, elite athletes at all levels are increasingly facing harassment and threats from angry bettors.
An NCAA study released last year, for example, found 21% of Division I men’s tennis players and 17% of DI men’s basketball players have received negative or threatening messages from someone who bet on their competition.
Dr. Kevin H. Yang, a psychiatry resident physician at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied the impacts of sports betting, told the online health platform Helio the rise of sports gambling is impacting athletes.
“Players across multiple sports have reported receiving death threats and hostile messages on social media when their performance affects betting outcomes,” Yang told Helio. “This concerning trend highlights how real-time betting can have unintended consequences beyond gambling addiction itself.”
Negative feedback online existed before legalized sports betting. It was always somewhat accessible as an outlet for anger, like a stovetop burner sitting on low. The legalization — and therefore the easy access to gamble for many, many more people than before — cranked up the heat and turned it on high.
For Jones, it all became real in an instant as he received threatening messages toward his family while he was stuck in a hotel room in Chicago. Calls were immediately made for security purposes, and the immediate threat was resolved. But a frightening moment like that will leave a scar of sorts.
"I'm the first person to beat myself up and know that I had a bad game," Jones said. "I'll be the first one to tell ya, the first one to admit it, the first one to know I had a bad game and the one who loses the most sleep over it. But if I'm worried about what everyone is saying and how much money they lost on me that day, it can become a heavy burden to carry."
It's a widespread concern among pro athletes and coaches.
Almost everyone in every clubhouse, if they've been in the major leagues long enough, has either experienced some form of anger from sports bettors through threatening or hateful messages on social media. Or if they haven't, it's largely because they simply don't check their messages at all.
Houston Astros pitcher Lance McCullers made national headlines last year when he and his family received graphic death threats online after a rocky start in which he gave up seven runs in the first inning. USA TODAY reported the threats later were traced to an intoxicated sports bettor overseas who blamed McCullers for losing money.
Most sports gamblers are just looking to bet a few bucks on a game and have fun with it.
This is the darker side of sports betting.
Tanner Bibee,says threats and personal attacks on social media by angry sports bettors "can put some guys over the edge."
"I feel like a lot of guys joke about it, but it's a serious thing, especially when someone's dealing with mental stuff," said Guardians starting pitcher
Tanner Bibee.
"A lot of us normalize it because everyone gets it a lot, but I feel like it's not something that should be normalized.
"Say you had a bad outing and some guy is struggling mentally and you get all these messages saying to go kill yourself, it can put some guys over the edge. It sucks, but it's the reality of it."
Many players try to not pay much attention to it, or try to simply understand that the messages aren't actually about them.
"I just kind of understand the situation as it's nothing personal against me," said Guardians starting pitcher Slade Cecconi, who's received messages from people suggesting he hurt himself. "You know, some people are in a bad spot in their life, and that's the avenue they turn to take it out on. And, you know, I just hope they find a way out of it."
Slade Cecconi, in the dugout during a 2025 game, says he's received message from people suggesting he hurt himself. "I just kind of understand the situation as it's nothing personal against me," he says. "You know, some people are in a bad spot in their life, and that's the avenue they turn to take it out on."
Guardians deal with anger from sports gamblers on social media
Fellow Guardians starting pitcher
Gavin Williams, who noted he gets hundreds of messages a month, added, "I kind of laugh at it. I think it's funny. People, I call them keyboard warriors. Sometimes I want to message back but I hold myself from doing that."
Not all of the harassment is just digital, though.
While some players acknowledge that sports betting in general has all brought more attention to the league, sports betting being legalized in more areas than only Las Vegas has also led to bettors yelling to players, as gamblers shout out what they need with their prop bets. It's particularly a problem in the NBA, where fans are right behind the benches.
In baseball, outfielders and pitchers who are warming up in bullpens right next to seats hear about what bets have been made on them.
Williams noted he'll have fans yelling out what prop bets they made on him while he's warming up in the bullpen before his outings. The catchers hear it, too.
"It's a scary situation right now, and [the in-game yelling] is annoying," Guardians catcher
Austin Hedges said. "You'll have three guys telling them exactly how many strikeouts they want to get or how much money they bet on it. And it's just like, it's a pretty annoying thing to hear because I know [the pitcher] hears it. And, like, yeah, I want him to strike out a bunch of dudes, it would be ideal so we could win, but it's still a distraction."
Steven Kwan celebrates his solo home run against the Marlins last season. Kwan says some sports bettors react with racist or vulgar attacks on social media when they blame a player for losing money.
Some of these social media messages are violent or threatening. Others are abhorrently racist, such as some Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan said he has received. That element isn't necessarily new, but now combined with the frustration of losing money on bets, it's only getting worse.
Kwan has a term for how he views the entire situation.
"It's a cesspool," Kwan said. "I'm sure I'm repeating what [other players] said, it's like, 'You suck, you lost me money, go back to wherever.' It gets extremely racist. It gets extremely vulgar. Luckily my wife is private on everything, but I know it's just a cesspool of stuff. It's crazy."
And there's a reason Kwan rarely checks messages, at least until the season is finished.
"After the season's over, it's like, oh, I wonder what bull---- is in my DMs," Kwan said. "Everybody's brave behind a screen. Once you get in person, everybody shuts down. I guess I try to empathize with them. You feel like you can win so much money, and they have to put their anger somewhere, but it's just so bad for the game."
It's all becoming an essential — and unfortunate — part of training when a prospect becomes a major leaguer.
"So many of these kids live on their phones, so how are you going to tell these kids that when you get to the big leagues now, stop using social media?" Kwan asked. "And, yeah, it comes with the responsibility and we signed up for this, but people didn't deal with this 10 years ago, five years ago even."
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