shohei ohtani alert

Should be fun. Tough loss for Glasnow, though the man can wear the hell out of a sock.

On the subject of whether regular people still think Ohtani gambles, our 18yo nephew was under the impression that Ohtani had been caught gambling and hadn't heard anything about him being cleared. He openly says he hates baseball, although we were playing trivia at a brewery showing the game so he did ask "Is Paul Skenes good?" 😉

That's related (though different) to what I was saying on a different thread: that my friend, a casual fan who assumes that Ohtani's story is just a cover, might be a better barometer of general opinion than more dedicated fans, who Want to Believe.

There's a pretty high correlation in 2024 between people who enjoy sports and people who enjoy gambling. Many would rather imagine Ohtani is a cool antihero gambler instead of accept that he is a fucking moron.

Those two qualities are a package deal btw

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/local-2/shohei-ohtanis-ex-interpreter-ippei-mizuhara-banned-from-delivering-for-uber-eats/3431730/

The former interpreter for the Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, Ippei Mizuhara, has lost his other job as an Uber Eats driver.

Mizuhara was banned from delivering for Uber Eats due to his pending litigation, a spokesperson told NBC4.

"Mizuhara has been an UberEats courier for a few years. Given these recent charges, he no longer has access to the platform," said Gabriela Condarco-Quesada, with Uber Eats.

what???

when it rains it pours

Can't imagine why he was so tempted steal millions when he had multiple lucrative income sources

a modern day Robin Hood #freeIppei

Ippei going to become a figure of speech… “Lately I’ve been livin kinda Ippei”

born ippei

That’s right baby

I've got a game on that I'm not really paying attention to, I look up and immediately see a high fastball get absolutely smoked, without even registering an outline of the player I immeidately know it's Ohtani. only thing similar i can think of is that one year where Steph Curry was constantly shooting from 30+ feet out and drilling an insane percentage, before everyone tried to do that (before getting yelled at by their coach)

New balance collection dropped. I really like the t shirt design

https://www.newbalance.com/pd/shohei-ohtani-graphic-t-shirt/MT43717.html

https://archive.ph/gTbAR

https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/sports/2024/08/08/former-ippei-mizuhara-prosecutor-discusses-socal-s--largest-illegal-bookmaking-operations-

38hr, 35sb. Inside shot of the first 50-50 season

I'm assuming no one has joined the 40-40 club in the month of august either?

39-37 today. Just got a base hit. I wanna see him attempt to steal 2nd, 3rd and home everytime he's got the chance. I believe in 50-50!!!!!

dodgers: “we need a gold shohei bobblehead”

bobblehead manufacturer: “best i can do is gold Bill Clinton” https://t.co/bQEmsolKyF

— Emily Nyman (@EmSheDoesIt) August 23, 2024

Wow

What a way to get it. Base hit would do, but 40/40 called

That was so sick. High recommend to watch the bottom of the 9th. Took a lot of luck to get him to the plate there! Great team inning capped off by what everyone hoped for, but no one thought would happen in that spot (choke up the bat! Single will do it!)

50/50 up next?

You know it (he is in pace!). 32 games left for 9 hr and 10 stolen bases.

I really think only injury can keep him from 50-50 at this point. First 50-50 leads to first DH MVP

genuinely wonder if it's possible he could've been like a +5 WAR pitcher as well, it boggles the brain

Very excited to watch the answer to that question next year. he's currently at 6.3 war DH for 42mil. Average free agency $/war is 6.7mil (https://www.paraballnotes.com/blog/the-trend-in-war-for-free-agents) so he's playing to at least to the average $/war in an injury year when he's literally only half the player he is supposed to be. Most likely ends up above average with an extra month to go. Very vindicating to play to the highest ever contract amount (By AAV and Total) while injured and still totally be worth it.

43/43

Back to the ol' stomping ground today. Boos/cheers ratio?

47/47

twenty-three minutes later 47/48

genuinely insane, like this guy's whole deal was that he could hit AND pitch at a high level, now he might be the first ever to do a 50/50 season, like what the fuck

He's currently tied for 3rd on the Dodgers single season home-run leaders. 50 puts him as the all-time dodgers record holder. Beat his own single season record today too. He has touched a new ceiling of what can be expected of his bat, going to be interesting to see to what level it regresses as he picks up the ball next season

Genuinely surprised a dodger has never reached 50

Even the padres have a guy

49 for...Shawn Green!

Wasn’t DS famously HR suppressing?

there have been 7 seasons where a Dodgers player hit 40 since they moved to L.A. for the 1958 season, which seems crazy.

the only one to do it twice is Green.

Green - 49
Beltre - 48
Ohtani - 47 and counting
Bellinger - 47
Sheffield - 43
Green - 42
Piazza - 40

even 35+ is tough, afaict the player who has done that the most is Muncy (4x)

idk if that's particularly low tbh, it just seems like not a lot considering the players they've had over 65+ seasons.

to solve this mystery i googled 'dodgsters stadium park factor'. after looking at a few charts i have come to the conclusion that i am no closer to solving this than i was before i started.

Chavez Ravine was always an extreme pitcher's park through the '60s and '70s (most famous benificiary: Koufax), not sure after that.

I don’t know how much the park has been tinkered with over the years, but savant has it as the 10th most pitcher friendly park over the last few years. ESPN used to have a park factor chart that covered a pretty decent period of time, but it looks like they took it down

Not 100% sure why, but dodger stadium went from the most pitcher friendly park to a slightly-more-pitcher-friendly-than-average from 2005 to 2006

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast-park-factors?type=year&year=2005&batSide=&stat=index_wOBA&condition=All&rolling=

There's no batters from recent decades I thought had hit 50, though if you told me Belli hit 50+ in his MVP season I'm not sure if I'd have questioned it. Might have also believed it if I was told Duke Snider hit 50+.

I'm surprised Corey Seager topped out at 26 HRs as a Dodger. Would have thought for sure he hit the 30 mark at one point

here come those santa ana winds again...

babylon hitters... rake it!

yeah no, the Santa Anas blow in at Dodger Stadium:

https://i.imgur.com/lvRPcnw.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/bEDLXrr.jpeg

http://www.andrewclem.com/Baseball/DodgerStadium.html

roll over dimension changes

might be most impressed that he's only been caught stealing four times

Tbf he has been picked off a few times as well.

Also here's something I do not understand. Ohtani has 47hrs but an xhr of only 42.3 for this season. In all but three parks (Dodger stadium, Citizen Bank Park, Great American Ballpark), he has a lower xhr.

Note: xHR tells how many of this player's home runs would have been out of other stadiums. The "Adjusted" view here accounts for different wall heights, distances and environmental effects using Statcast Park Factor data.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/shohei-ohtani-660271?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb

Dodgers stadium is a hr stadium this year. It has the highest HR park factor of all stadiums played in by and mlb team in 2024, bar "Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu". I wonder how much of the park factor is effected by the high slug of the home team? The methodology for defining park factor is based on the results of the teams playing in said stadiums (which kinda makes the park factors sorta useless in isolating what characteristics are specific to the park?)

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast-park-factors?type=year&year=2024&batSide=&stat=index_wOBA&condition=All&rolling=no

Dodgers stadium always seemed harder to hit homers at night. Seemed like you got a ball up it would die in the warning track.