When Lucas Giolito made his Major League Baseball debut in 2016, Twitter had been in existence for a decade and teens were starting to share the stories of their lives on Instagram.
Now those social media platforms allow “disgruntled” bettors to anonymously harass athletes, to the point where Giolito says he’s worried “a player gets assaulted or killed.”
Giolito said he took his concerns directly to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred this month. He told Baseball Isn’t Boring podcast host Rob Bradford Tuesday that Manfred seemed a bit “taken aback” at Giolito’s level of worry.
“He seemed a little surprised, maybe not surprised, but maybe taken aback — ‘Maybe this is something we should look into,'” Giolito said. “We saw what happened when Lance McCullers came back, he had a rough one. We all have rough ones, it happens. And no one is more upset about it than the guy who didn’t show up.”
According to ESPN, McCullers and Boston Red Sox reliever Liam Hendricks were both targets of online death threats in May. Death threats are the pinnacle of a bigger trend in sports — losing bettors harassing athletes.
McCullers and Hendricks are the latest in an increasingly digital world, that this year alone includes sprinter Gabby Thomas, tennis player Jessica Pegula, and golfer Scottie Scheffler, who deleted his Venmo account because of it.
In April, FanDuel became the first digital wagering platform to announce that it will now ban bettors found to be harassing athletes or coaches. Online sports betting companies all include the right to ban bettors acting inappropriately or who are deemed to be abusive, but FanDuel massaged the language in its terms and conditions to be specific to harassment.
Several states, including Ohio, also have anti-harassment policies in place.
‘I’m getting messages after every game’
Giolito says harassment is now an everyday part of the game. Manfred has been visiting MLB teams across the country giving a “spiel” about growing the game, and Giolito took the opportunity to get a sidebar with Manfred and express his concerns.
“I asked him about something that has been on my mind about sports betting, with the access on social media,” Giolito said. “There are threats to their family, threats to their life, it’s getting very tiring. I worry for people who are new to the league and maybe aren’t ready for this.
“When it comes to the gambling, it’s obviously causing an uptick in insane people online — well, not insane, but disgruntled. I’m getting messages after every game, even games when I pitched well.”
Giolito says he gets harassed if he didn’t hit the over or under on his pitch count, and that “people put hundreds of dollars on it, and they don’t have a lot of money, but they bet money on it anyway, and they are freaking out.”
Giolito, who missed the 2024 season for elbow surgery, said most the harassment comes mostly via X and Instagram, neither of which offer much in the way of help to eliminate it. “‘No action was taken,’ ‘No action was taken,'” is the response Giolito said he consistently gets from Instagram.
Players can stay off social media, block accounts, or employ cybersecurity measures, he said, but the level of harassment escalated between his last start in 2023 and his Red Sox debut in 2025.
“It’s getting worse. Like by the year, by the week, by the day,” he said, “Is it going to take a player getting assaulted in front of their apartment building from some guy who lost a bet for real action? Because we have cybersecurity, but it only goes so far.
“It’s astronomically more [since 2023]. Sports betting has always existed, but I think the access to it has become easier and easier. The apps, you do it off your phone and they are designed to psychologically suck you in and when you lose big … “
Increased availability
At the start of 2025, U.S. consumers could access digital betting platforms legally in 38 states and the District of Columbia. That number is up from 30 at the start of 2023. And in December, Missouri will become the 39th state to offer online betting. Mobile wagering is legal in Massachusetts, home to the Red Sox, as well as 12 other U.S. jurisdictions with MLB teams and Ontario, Canada.
Giolito says the harassment doesn’t affect him when he’s on the mound. In 2025, he’s 6-2 with a 3.97 ERA, and is 4-1 with a 2.97 ERA in his last seven games. And while he’s worried that younger or new players may not be ready to handle the harassment, there’s more to it than that.
“My worry is a player gets assaulted or killed or something,” Giolito said. “I am well aware that you develop gambling addictions, it ruins people’s lives, so you never know when someone is in a drastic state what they are going to do.”
