MLB bans Padres player for betting on his team's games

• Tucupita Marcano has been permanently banned from the MLB for gambling on his own team's games.
• Marcano bet on 25 Pittsburgh Pirates games he didn't play in.

In yet another spots-betting scandal, the San Diego Padres player Tucupita Marcano has been permanently banned from Major League Baseball for gambling on hundreds of games — including his own team's.

MLB cited Rule 21, which states that players can't bet on games where they have "a duty to perform," but said Marcano didn't play in any of the games.

Four other players also received one-year suspensions for gambling, MLB announced Tuesday.

The league said it was tipped off by a sportsbook in March, and a subsequent investigation found Marcano had placed 387 baseball bets totaling more than $150,000. Twenty-five wagers involved the Pittsburgh Pirates when he was a member of the team.

Marcano, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in July and didn't play in any of the games he bet on — isn't appealing the decision, according to MLB.

"The longstanding prohibition against betting on Major League Baseball games by those in the sport has been a bedrock principle for over a century," Rob Manfred, the league's commissioner, said in a statement.

"MLB will continue to invest heavily in integrity monitoring, educational programming, and awareness initiatives," it added.

The lifetime ban appears to be the first since the baseball great Pete Rose agreed to a permanent ban from the sport in 1989 for gambling while he was a manager for the Cincinnati Reds. He's barred from being inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame because of his conduct.

Marcano's ban is the latest in a list of high-profile sports-betting scandals.

In April, the Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter was permanently banned from the NBA for leaking health information to a sports bettor, among other violations.

Separately, the former interpreter for the Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani was charged in April with stealing $16 million from the pitcher to pay off his gambling debts.

And in the UK, the Premier League star Lucas Paquetá is facing a lifetime ban from soccer over allegations that he purposefully sought to get penalized during games to help friends win their bets.