shohei ohtani alert

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"

^^^[2022] (the angels were actually good in 2002)

So the question remains: what bookie would stake $4.5M to a guy making $85k a year?

xp I think he may have also made a percentage from Ohtani’s income but I can’t remember where I read that

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?

Pretty sure this is the guy who ran the classic Dodgers blog, Dodger Thoughts.

I feel like how i felt when the entire trump administration got covid at the same time like wtf is going on

ippei wrote this at the end of 2022 for his old “monthly ippei” column:

“The World Cup is gaining more momentum, and Shohei also watched Japan's games when time permits, such as the game against Costa Rica. I used to play soccer as a kid and watched almost every game, not just… pic.twitter.com/XlsEbvsMBA

— hoesmad (@xxl233) March 22, 2024

at the end of the day this kinda feels like busting someone for smoking pot. yes, illegal in a few states and maybe you can stick ohtani with a few federal charges. but that's not where the culture is, that's not where the pro leagues are. steve cohen is advocating for a casino next to shea. i know there's a third rail here - an athlete betting on the sport they play in - but so far i don't think i've seen any allegations that shohei was throwing games (other than by our good friend timmy snakes). the feds going after PEDs is one thing but going after a future billionaire who's using a bit of pocket change - whether to help out a friend or to cover a few of his own bad, non-baseball bets - seems like it'll land flat in the court of public opinion. idk, what am i missing?

In terms of baseball's hypocrisy on this, you're absolutely right. I don't know how much that will help or not help Ohtani. Unlikely, but I could even see the league overreacting in an effort to mitigate its own embrace of gambling.

at the end of the day this kinda feels like busting someone for smoking pot. yes, illegal in a few states and maybe you can stick ohtani with a few federal charges. but that's not where the culture is, that's not where the pro leagues are. steve cohen is advocating for a casino next to shea. i know there's a third rail here - an athlete betting on the sport they play in - but so far i don't think i've seen any allegations that shohei was throwing games (other than by our good friend timmy snakes). the feds going after PEDs is one thing but going after a future billionaire who's using a bit of pocket change - whether to help out a friend or to cover a few of his own bad, non-baseball bets - seems like it'll land flat in the court of public opinion. idk, what am i missing?

gyac nailed it, this would be a much smaller deal if Ippei was caught by authorities stealing from Ohtani.

But we learned about these wires not via the FEDs/IRS, nor Shohei, nor the Dodgers nor MLB... but from LA Times/ESPN who waited til the team was on the other side of the world to start asking questions and threatening to go public.

Sending large amounts of money to an illegal bookmaker under false pretense (loan), I can imagine in the eyes of the law is much more severe than smoking pot (or even possessing/trafficking a material amount of). This is a federal felony territory, with potential wire fraud/laundering implications.

LAD hired a PR crisis pro (their VP of Comms?) to respond to the allegations and after 5 hours it was Ippei who came forth not in his role as a translator but rather as the heel of this kayfabe production, to give a 90 minute interview with ESPN explaining how he had an inexplicably massive gambling debt and he and Shohei paid the wires together.

But all this happened in the middle of the night Los Angeles time, and when the Dodgers legal team woke up a few hours later... suddenly Ippei walked back everything he had told ESPN and said that he alone was the actor and LAD legal's team declared Shohei the victim of a massive theft and that Ippei was no longer an employee.

Granted (as I said upthread) that his punishment will likely be a fine and a carefully-worded non-apology and perhaps some mild media attempts showing a sense of humor about it... but this is a PR nightmare because Shoehei had an absolute flawless celebrity image and now that is tainted, even with Ippei taking 100% of the fall.

(I could probably write more about the allure of gambling/pseudo-gambling in Japan, seemingly every family having a weird uncle who got caught up owing too much money to the wrong people, why there are so many Japanese-friendly hotels/restaurants in Las Vegas, but that can wait for another thread...)