shohei ohtani alert

What bothers me about this:

1. it seems that if Bowyer was an illegal bookie in California, none of the agreements to place bets would be enforceable contracts. Any such contracts would be void as illegal and Ippei shouldn't have been liable to pay his "losses." Of course we'll never know if Ippei could have cashed out his "winnings" because of the house edge. Which makes it essentially a scam due to Ippei's apparent ignorance of the law.

2. I haven't seen any mention of the terms of Ohtani's employment or manager agreement with Ippei. Customary personal or business managers work on percentage. 10 to 20%. So you see losing $16m at this level is a lot less than 10% of a contract worth $700m. Manager is a different role than financial advisor who makes maybe .5 to 1% of the investment portfolio. Ok so maybe Ippei's compensation wasn't $70m. Then what was it?

3. California law heavily favors employees versus employers on almost every dispute. So while it seems Ippei's real mistake was lying to banks about being not who he said he was, it bothers me that someone so integral to the success of a mega high net worth talent is in a position where he needs this kind of money or is developing this kind of addiction. It's a shame when someone who is part of a talent coming up gets used and discarded. It's hard for me at this time to see this as a character flaw of Ippei for just the amounts of money involved because of what the amounts for a manager customarily are. The standard for when a person is considered an employee is when the employer "permits or suffers" a person to perform services of value. Placing a value on those services could be subject to dispute. If only Ippei had never lied to the banks and to Ohtani this could have been avoided.

4. On the other hand I can see a cynical motivation from other agents and commission takers for letting this happen to Ippei. One less intermediary and mouth to feed. So the weird thing is how CAA and Ippei first tried to handle this themselves with press releases. What a mess.

So in conclusion I don't like to demonize Ippei without finding out what the deal actually was. I mean lying over the mails and wires is bad, I get it, all the pieces matter. I just feel like the shackles etc. are kind of unnecessary. He got involved with professional sharks, legal and illegal and was just chum in the water due to lack of knowledge. The illegal bookie in California seems like the real villian here but make no mistake this would happen to benefit CAA and MLB to scapegoat Ippei as well.

#freeippei #freeshermanmccoy

What

Tldr: you shouldn't lie to banks or your employer or have an illegal gambling addiction

But also

Rich people shouldn't be stupidly cheap when paying people who work for them. Many rich people problems can be avoided by paying people what their work is worth. Not saying that's what happened here, just that I haven't seen that's not what happened.

The end.

Not saying that's what happened here, just that I haven't seen that's not what happened.

That....seeeems like license to believe anything, any old thing. Why speculate?

I think because of what I know about employment law and entertainment law, and I keep seeing these takes that want to paint Ippei as the total villain. I think people don't understand the work it takes behind the scenes to make overnight success happen over a period of years.

Baseball players are entertainers in the end. I personally prefer to see a happy story of everyone succeeding as a team. I think social media simplifies things to a point where people are wrongly overconfident about making snap judgments and ruining people's reputations and I had a lot more questions here about what really happened then some of the takes I've seen online.

And it's not license to believe in "anything." I wrote an extremely long detailed post laying out the particular pieces that were missing. If you want to take my tldr out of context that could seem like anything, but then why post at all if any piece could be taken out of context at any time.

I made a tasteless Parasite joke upthread but after reading f.'s posts I can see how it may indeed apply here...

...also "arbitration" ;-)

Exactly! Tbh I hadn't thought of the employment law angle until you mentioned Ippei's salary and "arbitration" a few weeks back. It has been bothering me ever since.

Parasite is a good reference. And the culture of keeping up and desperation portrayed in Squid Game. There's something so unnecessary here, like this whole Caught Stealing situation should never have happened.

f., I would like to declare that I/we are extremely fortunate to have someone of your background, experience and wisdom posting on this silly board.

I may have missed the opportunity to tell you but I always appreciate you!

You're too kind but it's appreciated nonetheless.

May all your tacos come in 10s :)

ah... such simpler times...

!!!!! Just realized I met Shohei's translator a long time ago when he was a fresh faced Red Sox employee... let me go dig up a picture lol.

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Friday, December 8, 2023 3:44 PM (four months ago)

You met Ippei? Wow!

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Friday, December 8, 2023 3:47 PM (four months ago)

I can't find it (my flickr account is now paywalled?). I sat next to him and Hideki Okajima at a sushi bar in SF when the Red Sox were in town to face the A's.

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Friday, December 8, 2023 3:55 PM (four months ago)

We've since learned that Ippei was only Okajima's translator for his short (and unfruitful) Spring Training stint with the Yankees which means the interpreter I met when Okajima was with the Red Sox was Ryo Shinkawa...

At any rate, here is a picture of Okajima's signature on MY translator lol, my trusty Sharp PW-SH4 which was a constant companion in my oversees biz journeys when an interpreter was unavailable.

https://i.imgur.com/jPik9IE.png

You met Ippei? Wow!

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Friday, December 8, 2023 3:47 PM (four months ago)

lmaooooo

We are all Ippei

Wrong Ippei address.

btw I don't think flickr is paywalled. But I seem to remember they did do something funky a while back that required going in and adjusting settings if you want any of your photos to be public.

Yeah, I couldn't find that pic when I first searched flickr but I was able to find it when I searched by year and location: 2008 @ Sakana Sushi

I saw Okajima pitch (LOOGy) the following year @ Fenway...

YOUR baseball photos thread

450ft
Hardest hit ball by ohtani so far
Hardest hit ball in 2024
Hardest hit ball by a Dodger in the statcast era
Just a bonkers bomb

https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/OPXxm8nszD

I know his HR is the big story, but (from Posnanski):

In case you haven’t been staying up for West Coast games, Shohei Ohtani is hitting .364/.430/.677 with 11 doubles in 25 games. As great as Ohtani has been, he’s never been much of a doubles hitter; his career high in doubles was 30 in 2022.

As longtime readers know, I spent a lot of time rooting for someone to hit 60 doubles in a season. It has not happened since 1936. Freddie Freeman ALMOST did it last year (he finished with 59), and Nick Castellanos ALMOST did it in 2019 (he finished with 58), so the dream goes on.

If Shohei Ohtani is the guy who challenges for 60 doubles this year, I might just explode in happiness.

Yeah, he's hitting 99% of his balls to right field (Source: eye test) and if they're a little further to the right than to the middle of right field, they end up doubles. Happens a lot.

make it 13 doubles in 26

On pace for 81. Easy.

Wtf 14 in 26. He gets a double in the 8th, and the 9th!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLci2DdaIAAZk8z?format=jpg&name=small

https://cdn8.openculture.com/2017/08/20195102/soviet-censorship-naval-commissar-vanishes.jpg

Stalin comparison is lol but also, that’s the worst Ohtani drawing! Strange when the visual is such a huge part of his appeal.

Ohtani’s on pace for 230 hits #sss

Shohei Ohtani was booed before and after his 1st AB at Rogers Centre. The fans acted like jilted lovers, seeing Ohtani in #Dodgers blue. After he responded w/ a HR, his teammates greeted him in the dugout with more boos. "He got a big kick out of that.”https://t.co/9WOdwssL3X

— Bill Plunkett (@billplunkettocr) April 27, 2024

They're still mad about the #ohtaniplane

I just love the idea of the dugout booing ohtani after all of his hits. "Booooooo stop making us look bad!"

dodgers are in pittsburgh the first week of june; hope the fans boo him for not signing with the pirates

Lol

changed my DN

brilliant, kudos

pretty good

Geez

Can confirm

Thought this guy was injured?

The 2025 rotation of healthy Ohtani, Glasgow, Yamamoto, Kershaw keeps me up at night, tossing and turning, cold sweats, mumbling prayers, visions of titanium UCLs, perfect games flash across the ceiling, post-season sweeps celebrations ringing in my ears

Then I wake up and we’re sweeping the braves

it's pretty hard to hit a ball 464 ft, even moreso to slightly opposite field.

Leading the NL in hitting and slugging, but Betts still #1 in bWAR (and OBP).

In his MVP and MVP runner-up seasons of 2021-2022, his bWAR for batting was 4.9 and 3.4 respectively, he's already at 2.4 and on pace for over 9.0, which is even more impressive considering how much of his previous WAR value was due to his pitching.

Wonder if a team's ever had two 10+ WAR guys.

Good place to start, the '27 Yankees: Ruth, 12.6; Gehrig, 11.9. Beyond that, probably not.

yeah, at least by fWAR, there have only been a handful of seasons where multiple players reached 10.0+ fWAR:

2001: Barry Bonds (12.5, SFG) and Randy Johnson (10.4, ARI)
1965: Willie Mays (10.7, SFG) and Sandy Koufax (10.0, LAD)
1961: Mickey Mantle (10.3, NYY) and Norm Cash (10.2, DET)
1948: Stan Musial (11.0, STL) and Lou Boudreau (10.9, CLE)
1927: Babe Ruth (12.9, NYY), Lou Gehrig (12.4, NYY), and Rogers Hornsby (10.4, NYG)
1924: Babe Ruth (12.3, NYY) and Rogers Hornsby (12.2, STL)
1921: Babe Ruth (13.7, NYY) and Rogers Hornsby (11.1, STL)
1908: Honus Wagner (11.8, PIT) and Christy Mathewson (10.8, NYG)

Almost three bWARs in 2018: Mookie (10.7), deGrom and Trout at 9.9.

Not enough energy to start looking up all the bWARs, but 2000 had Pedro and A-Rod both above 10.0.

Ohtani's batting average (.365) is currently higher than The Angel's win percentage (.361)

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/shohei-ohtani-gambling-scandal-interpreter-ippei-mizuhara-to-plead-guilty-faces-up-to-33-years-in-prison/

Mizuhara, described by the Attorney's Office as Ohtani's "de facto manager," will plead guilty to one count of bank fraud and one count of subscribing to a false tax return at an arraignment scheduled for May 14. He faces a maximum sentence of 33 years in prison, five years of supervised release and a fine of $1,250,000.

The 39-year-old former interpreter will be required to pay full restitution to his victims, which includes $16,975,010 to Victim A, Ohtani, and $1,149,400 to the IRS.

As well as the millions siphoned out of Ohtani's account to pay off gambling debt, Mizuhara also bought $325,000 worth of baseball cards on eBay and other online resellers in order to flip them and profit himself. In September 2023, Ohtani agreed to pay for Mizuhara's $60,000 dental work and provided him with a check. Instead, according to prosecutors, Mizuhara paid the bill with Ohtani's debit card and deposited the check into his personal account.

Mizuhara also admitted to falsely reporting his taxable income on his IRS tax returns in 2022, resulting in the tax fraud charge. According to the plea deal, Mizuhara falsely claimed he was single when he was in fact married and failed to report additional income of $4,100,000 that year.

Not a good day to be an ippei-stan

In September 2023, Ohtani agreed to pay for Mizuhara's $60,000 dental work and provided him with a check.