Tucupita Marcano is banned from MLB for gambling on baseball. He cost himself millions of dollars in estimated future salary, pension, and benefits.
Tucupita Marcano is banned from MLB for life for betting on baseball. What he will lose in career earnings is exponentially greater than the amount he wagered.
While playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates, he made 387 baseball bets through a legal sportsbook, including 231 MLB-related bets—some of which involved his own team. Altogether, he wagered more than $150,000 on baseball and only won 4.3% of his MLB-related bets, most of which were parlays.
As Maury Brown details, Marcano won’t be the last player to fall into trouble for gambling on baseball, especially now that MLB and other professional sports leagues have partnerships with sportsbooks.
As a result of his ban, he will lose not only his current salary, but all potential future earnings as well, including wages, benefits, and pension. Based on his production as a player and his service time, we can project how much he could have earned if he had stayed active in MLB through 2028.Salary
The 24-year-old Marcano wasn’t a star, and he was never a top prospect. In parts of three seasons, he batted .217/.269/.320 over 447 plate appearances while playing mostly shortstop, second base, and left field. He was a versatile bench player, but he tore his right ACL last July. The Pirates waived him in November and he was claimed by the San Diego Padres, who placed him on the injured list to start the season.
Had he not been banned from MLB, there’s no guarantee he would’ve remained on the active roster once he got healthy. If he had, he would’ve earned $746,000 as a pre-arbitration player. Presumably, he was earning a pro-rated amount of that until his suspension, but we don’t know when that officially began.
At the beginning of this season, he had one year and 141 days of service time, which is written as 1.141 years. With a full year of service in 2024—including time accumulated on the IL—he would have 2.
