shohei ohtani alert

Only during mound visits from Earl Weaver.

ESPN updated their story to say that Ohtani’s people reported Ippei to the authorities for theft. So now we wait!

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/could-shohei-ohtani-face-punishment-for-interpreter-gambling-scandal-what-legal-expert-mlb-rules-say/

"There are so many potential crimes here, state and federal, and the big dangers with violating the anti-gambling laws is they're all written to go after organized crime, which means all the organized crime statutes can kick in, like RICO and money laundering," said Rose, who has served as a government consultant to entities including the Arizona Department of Gaming, the Delaware State Lottery, the Illinois Gaming Board, the Michigan State Lottery and the New Mexico Gaming Control Board.

If Ohtani did knowingly wire the money to pay Mizuhara's debt, either to Mizuhara or directly to the bookie, he could be considered complicit in helping an illegal gambler collect, according to Rose.

"In other words, he's helping the bookie collect the debt. It gets extraordinarily bad if he knew any of this was going on and agreed to it," Rose said.

"Nelson Rose, an expert on gambling law and co-founder of the California Council on Problem Gambling..."--that's funny!

Yeah I saw the name Rose and had to look

lol i really thought it was good ol Pete, just what i get for only scanning

https://i.imgur.com/QYpF4vm.png

Posnanski's always free on Friday; he has some Shohei stuff in here.

https://open.substack.com/pub/joeposnanski/p/free-friday-ohtani-march-madness?r=1jtu0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

If the IRS finds zero significant transactions between Ippei & Bowyer and then chooses to go public with that information (ie, not backdoor to MLB/LAD for internal discipline), then Shohei is fucked.

Based on IRS/FEDs sports investigation history (notably Jeff Novitsky et al) there is no superstar athlete (eg Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones, Barry Bonds) too big for them to take on.

I’m not on Twitter, but Lincecum is apparently making some wild connections right now.

he hasn’t posted since 2012, does he have an alt?

The gf was sending me screen grabs. I actually do not think that’s him.

There’s like 5 posts and idk how to find the other ones tbh, I fucking can’t stand trying to use Twitter.

Ohtani Throwing Games: A Thread
(1) July 22, 2022, a bet of $1,000,000 was placed for the Atlanta Braves to score over 6.5 runs against the Los Angeles Angels parlayed with Braves -3.5. The bet was placed with a bookie in Mizusawa (Shohei’s home town). The pitcher for the Angels

— TimmySmokes (@timmy_smokes) March 22, 2024

No idea how one would gather that info and no real link to Ohtani himself. But those amounts - IF this is accurate - are huge. But I’m getting big time Ohtani flight tracker vibes from this.

That's gotta by gyac's alt... I'd put serious money on it.

Ha!

Actually I can't read anything beyond the initial post, does UNROLL still function?

Lmao @ comments about my alt

I’ll screenshot the thread for you brb

heres the rest

(2) that day? Shohei Ohtani. That stats for Shohei that day were as followed, 6.1 IP, 6 H, 6 ER and 1 BB. At the plate you ask? 0-3 with 2 strike outs. Was he throwing games? I’ll let you decide that

— TimmySmokes (@timmy_smokes) March 22, 2024

(3) July 4, 2023 (America’s Birthday!!!) a bet was placed in the same hometown with the same bookie for 4.2 million dollars on the over for the Padres run total! Guess who was pitching? You guessed it! Shofraud! 5 IP 5 ER while going 0-3 at the plate….

NOT EVEN 10 DAYS LATER A

— TimmySmokes (@timmy_smokes) March 22, 2024

(4) 10 MILLION DOLLAR BET WAS PLACED. Same bookie, same town….. a parlay with +2500 odds.
•Astros -1.5
•Astros o 6.5
•Shohei o 4.5 runs allowed
•Shohei u 6.5 K
•game total o 11.5
Shohei’s line for that day, 6 IP, 9 H, 5 ER while allowing 2 home runs. Shohei went 2-5 at the

— TimmySmokes (@timmy_smokes) March 22, 2024

(5) plate. The extra motivation to make the over cash really helped.

He has a true addiction and problem. He needs real help. Hopefully the true story gets out and the poor interpreter can be set free from this madness. @espn @JeffPassan @Ken_Rosenthal #Ohtani

— TimmySmokes (@timmy_smokes) March 22, 2024

thnkn' u froggo

kind of useless info unless we know how often giant bets like this are placed with Mizusawa bookies. I like Ohtani as much as anyone but I'm kinda rooting for a big gambling scandal. no real reason just think it would be funny

Lmao too fast

https://postimg.cc/gallery/wD0w4bN/07d7ba6f

Yeah seems like a pretty wild and unsubstantiated series of accusations, source makes no sense, @ing the reporters at the end threw me a bit though

Ok so how do you find out the point of origin data on betting?

Btw Tim Lincecum does have a Twitter account with a total of 8 tweets, this was the last one, RIP sweet king

Just got home from Benihana's and some solid cook-in-front-you-food, now comes the 'food coma'

— Tim Lincecum (@timlincecum) March 13, 2012

That's gotta by gyac's alt... I'd put serious money on it.

#1) Mizusawa officially changed its name to Oshu (note: NOT OHSHU) in 2006* which makes me a little sus...

*https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A5%A5%E5%B7%9E%E5%B8%82#%E6%A6%82%E8%A6%81

Just got home from Benihana's and some solid cook-in-front-you-food, now comes the 'food coma'
— Tim Lincecum (@timlincecum) March 13, 2012

Ippei's dad is an izakaya chef in Costa Mesa, c'mon people... DO YOU SEE!?!?!?!?!

ending this with "he has a real problem, free the interpreter" makes me suspect this is all made up, but hey I'm intrigued

Also if Timmeh had wrote that the bet was placed with a bookie in San Juan Capistrano (literally the whole reason Otani got snagged into the net) I would be much more intrigued.

_Just got home from Benihana's and some solid cook-in-front-you-food, now comes the 'food coma'
— Tim Lincecum (@timlincecum) March 13, 2012_


Ippei's dad is an izakaya chef in Costa Mesa, c'mon people... DO YOU SEE!?!?!?!?!

Calling on Kenesaw Mountain Manfred to sort this out.

And Benihana was founded by Rocky Aoki whose son DJ Steve Aoki has a Vega$ residency, where gambling *is* legal. So I'm all in on $hohei being legitimately mistaken.

This is Manfred's biggest crisis since Covid, right? These things do tend to define a commissioner--Kuhn and Aaron (well, Kuhn had a dozen of them), Giamatti and Rose, Selig and PEDs, etc.

(And before someone points this out, I know Landis had his entrenched opposition to integration as a--or the--major part of his legacy.)

ESPN just published a big timeline with some more granular information. A lot of questions remain, whole thing remains extremely messy. What stuck out to me is that ESPN has known about the wire transfers for months.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39784809/dodgers-shohei-ohtani-mizuhara-theft-line

Jeff Passan waiting there to drop his tweet about Ohtani’s new team back in December, thinking, I wonder how they’ll deal with this when it comes out?

So the Dodgers hire a PR crisis agent to coach Mizuhara for ~5 hours on how to soften the blow/get the story straight in the interview and then immediately after that interview Mizuhara changes his story and says he was lying the entire time.

LOL

should read: "...Mizuhara *is forced to* change his story..."

Ok but Ohtani is a CAA client, I would assume CAA have seasoned crisis comms people rather than hiring someone hastily? Wouldn’t the Dodgers have people?

5:30 p.m. ET Monday (6:30 a.m. Tuesday in Seoul): A crisis-communications spokesman for Ohtani, who had just been hired, responds to ESPN. Over the next several hours, he and an ESPN reporter will talk at various times as the spokesman says he is getting up to speed on information from the Ohtani camp.

This person has been ID'd as Jon Weisman, who claims to be a LAD employee (VP of Comms) so it's confusing as he wouldn't need to be hired?

...unless he was hired by Shohei in an outside capacity from his duties for the Dodgers?

I know Shohei isn't pitching this season but it's extremely on brand for misfortune and scandal to befall a dodgers pitcher. Half pitcher in this case.

What stuck out to me is that ESPN has known about the wire transfers for months.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39784809/dodgers-shohei-ohtani-mizuhara-theft-line

― Roman Anthony gets on his horse (gyac), Friday, March 22, 2024 1:54 PM (forty-three minutes ago)

I'm gonna say competition. LA Times (who had undoubtedly had access to the same FOIA docs and were equally patient to wait until the start of the MLB season) were going to print so ESPN decided to hard launch a few hours earlier to get more scoop-clicks.

and another thing: Shohei doesn’t like gambling. please dont put in the newspaper that he likes gambling. https://t.co/BiHexzUJPu pic.twitter.com/uB1C0klNV9

— M Y A S S I N J A C K P O T (@vodkasnowflake) March 22, 2024

Ok I’m not even halfway through an interesting Athletic post on this and now this comes through

MLB announced that “earlier today” their department of investigations “began their formal process investigating the matter” involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhari.

— Alden González (@Alden_Gonzalez) March 22, 2024

ok Mizuhara is really overplaying his hand here now I'm convinced he's just taking the fall

I hadn’t thought about this angle but this (from the Athletic) made me think about the background check part of things. They couldn’t have known about the debts but…when would this check be done? Before signing? Would the Angels willingly collaborate with Dodgers inquiries when they were trying to retain Ohtani themselves?

And given the shoddy way the Angels are run and the autonomy they gave Ohtani during his time there, what would they even know themselves?

What kind of background check did the Dodgers do on Mizuhara?

The recruitment of Ohtani in free agency was intense. Every bidder knew Mizuhara almost certainly would be part of the package. It’s possible the Dodgers and other teams, in their fervor to sign Ohtani, did not look deeply enough into his sidekick. It’s also possible they would not have uncovered his gambling debts if they had.

The Dodgers, however, had particular reason to be careful. They faced questions about the background work they did on Bauer after a woman alleged he assaulted her during two sexual encounters in 2021, and the Washington Post reported that two other women had alleged similar interactions with Bauer in the past. Bauer denied wrongdoing and was never charged with a crime, but those allegations led to his 324-game suspension, which an independent arbitrator later reduced to 194.

Bauer signed with the team earlier that year, and club officials told the Los Angeles Times they spoke about him with former teammates, coaches, clubhouse personnel and athletic trainers from his previous three clubs (Arizona, Cleveland and Cincinnati). They also had multiple conversations with Bauer about his use of social media.

Mizuhara told ESPN he has been paid between $300,000 and $500,000 annually. Ohtani, who signed a 10-year, $700 million contract, is much more valuable to the franchise. Yet, a rival club official said teams generally dig as deeply into the backgrounds of employees as they do with star free agents.

“Maybe not the exact same, but they would definitely do some work and ask around,” said the official, who was granted anonymity for his candor. “That said, I’m guessing it was assumed they were a package deal and Ippei had no known issues with the Angels.”

Asked what kind of background work the Dodgers did on Mizuhara, Stan Kasten declined comment.

Mizuhara told ESPN he has been paid between $300,000 and $500,000 annually.

He made even less than that, from today's ESPN story:

"At the time [2002], his salary with the Angels was about $85,000"