Ohtani Has Spoken

Well the man has spoken. Shohei finally addressed the media yesterday on one of the most convoluted and confusing controversies ever. And he was about as convincing as you can sound through an interpreter without fielding any questions.

Which is to say not convincing at all I want to believe the dude, and to be clear I'm not Team Tin Foil. I'm not trying to play Fox Mulder here and tell you there's some grand conspiracy or enormous cover-up going on.

But after that 15 minute presser, I and pretty much everybody else still have the same doubts and the same questions and the same confusion and the same lack of answers that we've had since basically the beginning.

It wasn't surprising that we basically got the long form version of Story B from Shohei yesterday. Story A was that Shohei covered Ippei’s $4.5 mil debt willingly. Story B was that Shohei had no idea about the gambling or the debt and Ippei stole the money from him to pay it down. 

How that’s possible and why that story changed remain everyone’s biggest questions. Along with this one: how did Shohei only find out about any of this last Wednesday? And how was he completely left out of the loop by his reps and by the Dodgers prior to last Wednesday, when they clearly had some knowledge that something was going on? Someone from his camp was setting Ippei up with ESPN to tell them his story, but that same someone never checked with Shohei directly if that story was true. That's astonishing. How is that possible?

According to Shohei, Ippei’s lies are to blame. Ippei's lies were the key. Ippei supposedly made every think Shohei was aware and Shohei was approving all of the messaging. Ippei was just lying his way through it. And that actually makes some sense, because we know that dude loves to lie.

We’re pretty sure Ippei loves to gamble, but we know he loves to lie. Anyone who lies about graduating from UC Riverside loves to lie, because what kind of psycho lies about that? No offense to you UCR, but usually if you’re gonna lie about graduating from a UC school, that would be the last one you would lie about. Someone who lies about graduating from UC Riverside loves to lie and also has no shame. So that actually scans when it comes to Ippei.

Apparently, Ippei’s lies were manipulating the entire situation from the beginning. And since he’s somehow the only intermediary between Shohei and the rest of the world, his lies were effectively able to control the narrative, at least at first.

Ippei first told Shohei’s reps that it was someone else’s debt that Shohei willingly paid. Then Ippei told them it was his own debt. And at no point in that process did anyone from Shohei’s agency or from the Dodgers ask Shohei any direct questions to confirm this. They just took Ippei's word for it. Which is either stunning malpractice by both the Dodgers and Shohei's representation or it's a lie. It's one or the other, and both options are BELOW NOT GOOD. 

Here was a part of Shohei's explanation... 

So once again, Ippei was controlling the narrative by telling everyone a false story. And nobody confirmed that false story with Shohei directly. And it wasn't until that Wednesday postgame clubhouse meeting in Korea that Shohei found out any of this was going on. Which, once again, is either egregious malpractice by the Dodgers and his representation or a lie. 

In theory, we're gonna find out. Because as it stands now, Shohei has completely denied gambling on any sports, let alone baseball, and completely denied sending any money to any bookie voluntarily. He also says he's a victim of theft and fraud. 

And he better hope that's all true, since this has been turned over to law enforcement. Theoretically law enforcement will do their job and investigate all of those claims. And we will find out if this was just horrendous malpractice by the Dodgers and by Shohei's reps or if it's all a lie. 

Because the police don't enjoy being used as props in massive public cover ups. If he's going this far and involving law enforcement and throwing around the words theft and fraud, he better hope that's all true. Because law enforcement is going to take that seriously. And those were the exact words he threw out there yesterday.

Look... I want to believe that he never bet on anything and didn't willfully send money to a bookie. I do think it's possible that Ippei had access to his money. And I do think it's possible that he could have overlooked the money coming out of his account, as wild as that sounds. And here's the other thing, if you listen and pay attention to people around the league, they also believe Shohei. 

A retired player told Yahoo anonymously: “zero chance he was gambling.  He’s a machine.”  And that is a retired player speaking anonymously, they can say whatever the hell they want. There's no reason to lie in that spot. Just like there's no reason for this anonymous former teammate to lie either.

“Ohtani does not give a f*ck about other sports like that.  I’ve seen him in clubhouses, planes, buses.  This man spends his time talking to people about his swing, watching his swing, watching bullpens. This man is obsessed with baseball. He is not cooking up prizepick parlays.” 

For the record, nothing wrong with Prize Picks... Don't blame the Prize Picks. Considering it's completely legal for MLB players to use Prize Picks. At least given that it's legal in the state the player is in and as long as they aren't making any picks involving baseball. 

But here in California, Shohei and Ippei both could have set themselves up with Prize Picks, no problem. In fact, if they had just used the promo code ROME and taken advantage of the first deposit match up to $100, this could have all been avoided. Prize Picks isn't the problem, Prize Picks is never a problem, the illegal bookmaking operation is the problem.

Bottom line remains, somehow 500k payments were wired from an Ohtani account to this alleged illegal bookmaker. And we still don't have the full picture of how that happened. Even if you believe every word Shohei said yesterday, it still isn't clear how that money left his account on a monthly basis without his knowledge. And until that's answered, there are gonna be people rocking tin foil caps doubting the hell out of his story. 

Again, I want to believe him, but it's hard to know for sure which story to even believe when the story is evolving every day. The only thing I know for sure is the people around Shohei bungled the hell out of this entire situation. Whoever is supposed to be protecting Shohei did a horrendous job protecting Shohei.