Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2150: Crime Doesn’t Ippei

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley react to news about Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara being charged with bank fraud, discuss the revelations in the government’s stunning, detailed complaint, and assess the implications for Ohtani and MLB. Then (1:06:58) they banter about Jordan Montgomery changing agencies after his offseason Boras debacle, a Juan Soto fan-pandering […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2150 of Effectively Wild, a Fangrafts baseball podcast brought Sometimes I'm flustered. I'm amped. I'm, boy, what a day we've had. You know, I came into today, Thursday, April 11, thinking we were going to talk about Riley Greene's pants splitting open. You know, I was ready to do like 20 minutes on the pants. Scandal. Did you see where those pants split on a routine slide? Right on the seam. Yeah. Right on the seam. Yeah. Right on the seam. Everybody's talking about it. Yeah, it's just the talk of baseball today.

Yeah, I thought we might talk about that too. Maybe we'll talk about some other stuff. We'll see if we get there. But the baseball world has been derailed on Thursday. I guess it's a good thing that we didn't record earlier in the day. Yeah. By the release of some gripping reading, I guess it's a good thing that we didn't record earlier in the day by the release of some gripping reading, I guess one could say, USA versus Mizuhara. This is an affidavit, a criminal complaint, and gosh, is there a lot to complain about. So, Special Agent Chris Seymour of the

IRS Criminal Investigation Unit has, the affidavit has been released in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant for Ipe Mizuhara, who is going to be charged with bank fraud. And you know what? Having read the complaint, I think the charge is going to stick. This is really something. When we talked about the Otani-Ipe Mizuhara gambling scandal, sports betting scandal, when it first dropped, I think there were two things we said. One was that this is all going to come out one way or another. There's going to be a paper trail, a digital paper trail. We're going to know what actually happened here. The feds are going to

be able to check everyone's phone, check the bank records, check the statements, check the texts. It's all going to come out one way or another, which is one reason why when Otani came out with as strong a denial and also accusation of his former interpreter as he did, I think a lot of people's takeaway was, well, gosh, he can't be lying about this, or at least it would be extremely ill-advised to lie about this because that lie will be exposed. Another thing we said is that this is going to be a sad story regardless. Even in the best-case scenario, which is Otani is cleared of all Ron doing. He had no knowledge

of bets. He didn't place any bets. It would still be an extremely sad story about Ipe and about Otani being taken advantage of. I think both of those things we said, I think those things were true because having read this complaint, which is an absolutely wild journey that I would recommend everyone take, frankly. I mean, we will summarize what stood out to us here and talk about it in depth. But it's a 37-page complaint, and it's a page-turner, I guess you could say. I mean, it is dismaying. It is flummoxing. There are so many facepalm-worthy moments. There are moments where you feel sympathy. There are moments where you are taken aback by the depths of the deceit and the depravity here. it, everyone check it out. But the upshot is that based on this complaint, which was produced with the full cooperation of both Otani and Ipe. I mean, Ipe has basically turned himself in. I

mean, he has, we'll see he hasn't shown up in court yet, but he's cooperating fully. It seems he turned over his phone. Otani turned over his phone. They have everything. They have voluminous records here. And it certainly seems to support the story Otani told, which is that he's the victim here, victim A, as he was called in this complaint. And that it goes deeper and is worse than we knew and thought. I mean, this was not four and a half million as we thought the initial numbers that were bandied about. This was more like 16 million that was straight up stolen from Otani's account by Ipe.

I guess we need to attach a blanket allegedly to all of this because it's not done, but it appears to be pretty open and shut just based on these details without having heard from Mizuhara himself, except through this agent. It is shocking stuff.

Yeah. I don't know this man. Right. And I'm not a mental health professional and I'm not an addiction specialist. But like the sheer numbers being bandied about in this complaint, not just what he is. We'll just do the we're just going to do the blanket alleged. Right. So everyone like just attach that like it's like uh just attach that word to everything we're saying here yes yeah you don't want to have to hear us say allegedly 200 times

on this episode right so not not only the amount of money that he is alleged to have stolen from otani but the amount of money he is said to have gambled oh my goodness um with this bookie is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes, it's incredible, the scale, the volume of this. I was working on some other stuff when the complaint hit, and you started sending me screenshots. And I initially took the number there to be like the total size of the illegal book. Right. The whole operation. The whole operation. I was failing to appreciate that this was attributable to Mizuhara on his own. Yeah.

There are references being made in this complaint to him incurring separate losses through cryptocurrency. Calling them bets comes with a bit of a value judgment, but it's also a value judgment I kind of mean. So we're going to say bets here. Yeah. Makes me wonder if Ipe was the one to get Otani into the whole FTX spokesperson thing, but who knows? That's beyond the purview of this complaint. Yeah, that's beyond the purview of this complaint. Yeah, that's beyond the purview of this complaint, but is a question that we have long been rankled by, right? And just the frequency and size of some of these bets. So here I am quoting from the complaint and in the course of the complaint, Ipe's sort of account with the bookmaker is designated as 35966.

So that's why that's the relevant here. The 35966 records reflect approximately 19,000 wagers between December 2021 and January 2024, and nearly 25 bets per day on average. The wagers reflected in the 35966 records ranged in value from roughly $10 to $160,000 per bet, with an average bet amount of roughly $12,800. During this period, the 35966 records reflect total winning bets of $142,256,769. Hey, great news. Wow. What winnings? Is there more to this sentence?

And total losing bets of $182,935,206.68, leaving a total net balance of negative $40.6 million. Jesus Christ. Now, the subparagraph immediately following that is an important one, which is that the 35966 records do not reflect any bets on baseball games. So, you know, honor among thieves, I suppose, in the strictest sense. But a truly staggering degree of wager here. Perhaps unsurprising when you read through the text messages that were sent between Mizuhara and the various sort of individuals associated with this bookmaking operation, there are multiple people sort of identified here. Just a perpetual string of, hey, can I get a little more, right?

Asking to have his limit bumped. There's not a lot to enjoy in this, but one sort of peculiarity of these sorts of criminal complaints are the very specific ways in which agents of the federal government have to assert facts in these complaints. And so there is a footnote describing what a bump means in the parlance of sports betting. So we got to take our enjoyment where we can, because this is ultimately a sad story. And like, again, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not an addiction specialist, but, you know, as a lay person, this reads to me as the behavior of someone dealing with a profound gambling addiction. And I don't say that to excuse the betrayal here that was perpetrated over years, you know, and was pervasive not only to Otani directly, but to other representatives. We will get to the behavior of other representatives here in a second, because boy,

are there some things to be said, but indicates to me a person who was just wildly addicted to gambling and seemingly aware of the degree to which he was good at this, but, you know, was just racking up debt left and right, struggling to stay ahead of it. And ultimately, according to the complaint, resorting to theft to sustain this, you know, and one wonders how long would this have lasted? I know. How, what was sort of the endgame here? What did Mizuhara think the sort of upshot of this would be for him? Now, I don't know how rationally he was sort of behaving around any of this stuff. But again, I don't want to make light of any of this because, again, I don't know Otani either. either but if this happened to me and i had suffered a betrayal like this from a close personal friend and and business associate and then had been and this is my opinion me meg let

down pretty profoundly by some of the people who were meant to be guarding my interests i would find that quite destabilizing oh yeah um and i And I think I would struggle to trust people for a while afterwards. So, again, I don't want to speculate, but that's how I would react to this kind of a situation. I don't want to make light of it. Also, pretty bad criminal, you know, just like in terms of his execution here. Although, one who was able to sort of get away with it for a while. I mean, bad in the sense that, you know, they have him dead to rights here basically. Yeah, there's a pretty extensive forensic trail being collected from multiple sides.

Yes, but not bad in the sense that he was able to pull the wool over the eyes of everyone in his and Otani's orbit seemingly. And this could still be going on if not for this federal investigation into the bookmaker, which was not solely based on Mizuhara or Otani. They were just kind of part of the net that was being dragged. Right. So if that hadn't happened, this would still be going on right now. It's not like Otani or anyone else in his camp had any sort of suspicions about this. You know, no one was asking questions. Well, some people were asking questions and then getting seemingly very unsatisfying answers and being fine with them. We'll get to that, yes.

But it really is stunning, the scale of it. That's $325 million worth of bets. $325 million in 25 months. So he was basically making a bet every hour for that entire period on average. He slept sometimes. He probably was concentrating the bets. I mean you almost wonder like how did he hide it? He must have just been constantly like on his phone checking lines and stuff. Maybe he was sneaky about how he went about it and did it certain times of the day, but it was constant.

And to rack up that kind of bill is just incredible. And it is – I don't know if it's surprising that he didn't bet on baseball given the lack of self-control that he appears to have had here. It almost doesn't matter, I guess, given this, like, he's not going to work in baseball again. Like, he's facing a 30-year prison sentence max. So, you know, whether he's banned from baseball for betting on baseball or not, like, effectively, it's the sale. Yeah. And if Otani's hands are completely clean here, then again, you know, if he's not tied to any betting, maybe it doesn't even matter what the betting would be, but it would still be worse, I think, just if there were any association with baseball here. And you'd have to wonder, like, you know, did, I mean, if Ipe was betting on baseball,

is it because he had inside info about Otani? And, you know, it would get a little more messy. It would get way messier. I mean, given that he appears to have had very little self-control when it came to suppressing this impulse to bet and then to steal from his trusted associate and friend, or at least Otani considered him a friend. and friend, or at least Otani considered him a friend. It is maybe sort of surprising that he did have the self-control to draw the line at baseball because you would think that he might have actually had some insights that might have helped him win baseball bets. And given how deep he was in the hole here, when he got truly desperate, you might think that he would have resorted to that. Apparently not. So I guess

that's good. But yeah, he had accounts, according to the complaint, also at legal sportsbooks, BetMGM, FanDuel, DraftKings. Otani did not, or at least none were found. He was also apparently using the same account to just have a little sideline into collectibles, baseball cards. He was buying stuff on eBay and whatnot, buying stuff on eBay and buying baseball cards and having them sent to him under an alias at the Dodgers clubhouse. Man, it's just – it goes so deep. And yeah, also crypto debts that he alluded to and other issues. Like this complaint, it's almost like if you wanted to scare someone away from gambling.

Like I know that this is not the typical experience for people who bet on sports. But this is like – this is your brain on gambling addiction. Oh, yeah. Scared straight sort of thing. It reads like an after school special. It does. It does. Yeah.

And that's I mean, I'm saying it's a page turner, but kind of in like, you know, rubbernecking can't turn away from the crash. It's quite sad. Can't imagine how much worse it's getting with each successive paragraph. He was betting on UCLA soccer, Ben. Yeah. Like, what in the world? Some of the texts are sort of heartbreaking. Yeah, there's just this random text like when he was just getting into this

where he's like, I just tried betting on UCLA soccer. Soccer's on 24-7. Like, wow, this is great. I can bet constantly. I mean, oh, man. I had sort of secondhand anxiety not just for Otani being plundered like this apparently but for Ipe, which again, like, yeah, your sympathy is somewhat limited or at least colored by the fact that he wasn't just dealing with a disease here, possibly gambling addiction, but also doing some really heinous stuff. Like that's always, you know, when people are struggling with some sort of mental health situation or addiction, whatever it is, like, you know, that can encourage you to do bad things. But it's not necessarily a product of the disease that you're

suffering from. I mean, there's sort of a squishy line there, right? But it doesn't excuse all behavior, you know? It's not just, oh, I have a problem and therefore, right? I mean, when you do this, the number of crimes, the amount of fraud that is alleged here, like this goes beyond the pale where you can just say, oh, poor guy. Right. But also, I still did have that feeling like just the sweaty desperation of this, just being unable to stop himself, getting deeper and deeper into the reds, just having to transfer more and more money. These texts like I just having to transfer more and more money. These texts, like, I just need a little more time. I mean, it's just the classic kind of spiral, but it's painful. It's like stressful to read about, really. Yeah. Well, and it's a tricky thing to talk about. I think, you know, just stepping back from the particulars of this incident, know when you're describing the the set of circumstances and

motivations that get a person to a place where this is what they do you know i want to be sensitive to the fact that like addiction does or at least can lead people to behave in ways that are irrational that are harmful to themselves to others while also making sure that it's clear that we're not saying like there are plenty of people who who struggle with addiction of various kinds who never do anything like this right in much the same way that there are a lot of people who you know this unfortunately comes up every time you know we have some sort of mass shooting where it's like, well, he suffered from, I'm using he just because of sort of how the statistics around that tend to shake out, like he suffered from some sort of mental health disorder. And it's like, well, yeah, that might have been something that colored what happened here.

But we should also say that, like, there are plenty of people who grapple with mental health issues who are never, ever violent, right? So, you want to kind of try to strike the right tone here because you don't want there to be, like, a hidden accusation in the way you talk about it, right? trust behavior of an addict while also saying like that isn't any kind of excuse for this kind of behavior and this violation of trust so you know it's a it's a thorny thing that i hope we're kind of touching on in the right way here but like it it's very sad that isn't an excuse but i think it is an accurate one of the many sort of adjectives that you can hang on this is that it's sad like there is tragedy here you know i feel terrible for the other people like in this guy's orbit you know mizuhara is married and like what is this gonna do to his family and you know it is there are a lot of people who can be collateral damage and in moments like this so it, it is, you know, on the one hand, like, there is a kind of classic,

like, caper element to this that is, like you said, page turning. But, you know, this is ultimately a human tragedy with real people attached to it. You know, you don't want to make it something out of fiction. Like, this really happened. So, it's, you know, it's a hard thing. Like, this really happened. So, it's, you know, it's a hard thing. Yeah. And some of the texts, like, it is almost kind of comical where he sends these texts that are just like, gosh, I'm sure bad at this. You know, like, November 2022.

Yeah. LOL. It's like, dude. Right. I'm terrible at this sports betting thing, huh? LOL. Any chance you can bump me again? As you know, you don't have to worry about me not paying. Un unstated because i'm stealing money from shoya tani the entire time and then but there's so many

sad ones too you know can you bump me last 200k i swear on my mom this will be the last ask before i pay it off once i get back to the states. Sorry to keep on asking. Then there's the sign at one point where he tries to kind of limit himself. He asks, can you put in 100K instead of 300K? And the bookie says, you mean lower credit to 100? And Ipe says, yes, I'll get too reckless with 300, right? So he was aware that he had a problem and he couldn't trust himself to handle this money that he was evidently stealing responsibly, but he just couldn't stop, you know? So he tried to lower the limit. He's swearing on his mom and then no.

And the bookie, of course, is enabling all of this, you know, while sending some threatening texts at times vaguely, but is still like, you know, knows that they have him on the hook here, right? And, you know, Ipe's like, I got my ass kicked again, LOL. Any chance I can get one last bump? This will be my last one for a while if I lose it. And, you know, the bookmaker is saying, I know you've been on a bad run. I don't mind bumping you.

I just want to verify that you can send at least $2 million on June 1st. Like, at some point, they get to the stage where ePay is basically sending $500K payments weekly, you know, just sort of like on a regular schedule. And the bookmaker is like, hey, as long as that money keeps coming, we'll give you infinite credit, basically. Just keep those half mil payments coming. Every now and then, he's like, okay, we got to straighten this out. My associates, my partners want to make sure that you're good for this. And Ipe is just like this bumbling just I'm the worst lol can't catch a break can I get one last bump I swear this is gonna be my last until I get the balance down significantly uh man just couldn't extricate himself from this situation and I don't know how hard he tried but

like you know it's it's clear that he's aware that, like, this is not a good situation to be in and yet kept digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper. Yeah, it just continued, right? It just went on and on. Should we talk now about the rest of the people involved in this kerfuffle? Yeah, I mean, okay. So that is an important part of this. I think another very important part of this is the evidence that Otani is not involved, right? Because no matter what, yeah, I mean, that's a big deal here, at least from a baseball perspective.

Oh, yeah. believe that no matter what evidence they are confronted with. But I think that's why it is important to go over how thoroughly this seems to establish that Otani really is not implicated here whatsoever. So the way that this worked seemingly is that Otani had an account set up March 2018. So that's when his his Angels career started, where he was getting his MLB salary, his payroll, his MLB earnings as a player deposited. And Ipe appears to have just been using that account as his personal piggy bank without Otani's knowledge. Now, Otani had other accounts, which were used for other things and other income and endorsements and such, but this was for his earnings as an MLB player specifically, or at least that was part of this. And so, Ipe and Otani opened this account together,

like they went to the bank, they opened this account. But it appears that as of November 2021, that is when Ipe started raiding this account regularly with unauthorized wire transfers. Right. And the burden of proof for some people might be high when it comes to establishing that Otani had no knowledge of this, but there is a whole lot of evidence to that effect. First of all, there's something like,

what was it, 10,000 texts or something? Yeah, 9,700, I think, is the number that they put forth. Yeah, hundreds and hundreds of pages of text between Ipe and Otani, no mention whatsoever of betting, of this account, to the bookmaker when this news starts breaking. And Ipe texts the bookmaker to say, have you seen the reports? And the bookie says, yes, but that's all bullshit. Obviously, you didn't steal from him. I understand it's a cover job. I totally get it. And then Ipe says, technically, I did steal from him.

It's all over for me. Not something that you as a criminal ever want to say. It's all over for me. The jig is up. They got me. But the way that he kept rating this account is that he posed as Otani. He pretended to be Otani. And there are recordings of the calls where Ipe is calling the bank to set up these transfers or get these transfers greenlit. And he is pretending to be Otani. He's not saying, I'm Otani's interpreter.

He's right here. I'm speaking for him. Right. He's pretending to be Otani. To be Otani. Yes. And he set up a Gmail account that had similar numbering and lettering to Otani's actual email account. So like the,

you know, Ken Rosentie Twitter account where people share fake trades and stuff. He sort of had the same thing going with his email. Like they have Otani's phone too. Like there's no record of him ever accessing this account or of any going to gambling websites or you know just any mention of this whatsoever he's not he's not found to have been like talking about sports betting or wagering like it's it doesn't seem to have been especially given this was one of the the pieces of it that I found to be most persuasive. I mean, I think the whole thing is pretty persuasive. But for him to – the idea that someone would be placing this many bets, right, this often, and then there be no mention of anything even adjacent to sports betting anywhere just strikes me as pretty unlikely, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. By the way, it wasn't 9,700 texts. It was 9,700 pages of texts. Okay. Wow. Issuing a correction on my previous tweet. It says a special agent who is a fluent and native speaker of the Japanese language reviewed approximately – that poor person. Yeah.

How long did that take 9700 pages of text and most of them were probably like let's order food or something you know like all right time to go to the ballpark or whatever gosh that do you think any of them were pictures of the dog do you think any of them were just like him being like what about this a lot of them yeah what about this other dog do you think this dog is a good dog? Yeah. Or are they all good dogs? I'm sure. I'm sure. Sorry, I got distracted.

Seemingly, all of them were innocent, I guess, or not connected to this sports betting stuff. So, yeah, probably lots of cute puppy photos mixed in there. But falsely identified himself as Otani over and over and just, you know, because some of these wires were flagged by the bank, not enough of them seemingly. And the bar to get them cleared after they were flagged was seemingly not high enough either because all it took is Ipe calling and being like, yes, this is Shoya Ohtani. Yeah. I mean, generally, on the one hand, wow, bank, what's going on here? But the callback procedure for this kind of stuff

tends to be you call the number that is listed as sort of authorized on the account. You get verbal confirmation from the account holder that the transaction is authorized. And then you send the wire. You know, like, that's what you do generally. And we were all wondering, you know, and here I was, I concocted a much more onerous process where like ePay is added as an authorized signer on the account.

And so they knew it was ePay because he was allowed. No, he was just doing a fraud. He was just doing an impersonation fraud. Like, you know, I gave him too much credit in some respects. This is just straight up theft. Yeah, just doing a fraud. Yeah, pretty much. And there's all kinds of like other forensic – you know, Ipe himself had an account at the same bank where his winnings were going.

So, you know, it wasn't like every bet he placed there was activity on Otani's account. It was going through Ipe's account and then Otani's account was the one that was used to pay off some of his debts, though clearly not all of them. And they could see that, you know, Ipe's phone was accessing Ipe's account and also Otani's account and Otani's account was not accessing either, right? So they have pretty thorough records here that certainly seems to exonerate Otani.

There's just a long and sordid trail here of many kinds, right? So that is, I mean, gosh, you can imagine like, all right, you know, you take one step. Oh, I, you know, oh, he won't notice, you know, he's got all the money in the world. Like you could somehow talk yourself into this and then just a little bit more and a little bit more.

And oh, it's just, it's temporary and I'll pay him back. And, you know, if I asked him, he'd probably help me out, right? And you could justify it to yourself for a while, but it got to the point where like, this is really some severe stuff that he was up to. So that's how it worked, the mechanics of it. And then of course, you might wonder, well, how did no one else notice that this was happening?

Yeah. One might wonder that. That's the thing I'm wondering, you know, especially because it would be one thing if this account were completely unknown to anyone else in Otani's orbit, right? But this complaint makes clear that that is not the case and that the account in addition to being known to otani's agent to his financial advisor to his accountant to the person preparing his taxes because you know as the complaint makes clear like depending on the disposition of that account, if it's one that

generates interest, that would have tax implications for Ohtani, particularly since it was holding his salary, which while not nearly what he was worth, we know to have been significant, right? Especially as he went through the later stages of the arbitration process. So, a lot of money in that account, if it were generating interest, certainly it would be in amounts that he would be required to report on his taxes. And also there are all kinds of rules about how much money you as a private individual

can gift to another individual before there are tax reporting requirements around that also. And so this account was known to a variety of people in Otani's circle. Yeah, he had accountant, bookmaker, not bookmaker, but bookkeeper. Bookkeeper. Important distinction. Important distinction.

Goodness. Goodness. Those words are too similar for comfort. They are too similar. Yeah, and I had that thought while I was reading it because, and I don't say this like I'm some sort of financial wizard, but I was like, they should have picked a different word because a lot of people are going to read this felt like they had an obligation to ask questions about it so that they could do their job well. And on the one hand, if you don't have any reason to believe that Mizuhara is a criminal mastermind, you might take at face value what he tells you about that account, that Otani wanted it to be private and that

don't worry about it it's not an interest-bearing account he's not making gifts out of it on the other hand like the portrait that is painted of sort of mizuhara's relationship to otani and to the rest of the people in otani's camp is that like there was no direct communication yeah from otani's other folks that didn't go through mizuhara that like no one at no other point was another person who speaks japanese fluently sort of present for any of that communication that often his agent and his financial advisor and all of these folks were just communicating with Mizuhara. They weren't even necessarily communicating with Otani through Mizuhara, like in the same room. It makes it sound like his agent, yeah, like Nez Balelo, his agent,

I mean, it makes it sound like they had very little contact. Yes. So, like, no contact, like, a lot of this communication is just going through Ipe without Otani even being on a call, in an office, anywhere. It's amazing. And that there were times when I think it was, I can't remember now if it was his accountant or his financial advisor who wanted a meeting and Mizuhara just went to the meeting on his own and claimed that Otani was sick. And like that person was just like, okay, you know, I don't know what the right answer is here. Like, I don't know how much this would deviate from sort of standard operating procedure

with a client who you don't speak the language of and who isn't fluent in English. And I don't know if they just assumed that because Mizuhara had been with Otani and employed by a club in NPB that there was at some point proper vetting of this individual, that there had been some sort of, you know, background check performed. I don't know. I don't know if this is just the most glaring and horrific oversight you've ever seen or if there was actual malfeasance here. But if it were me and I were Otani, I'd clean house. I would be done with all of these people.

Yeah, me too. And I appreciate that that's, I would be done with all of these people. Yeah, me too. And I appreciate that that's, like, maybe easier said than done because, you know, like, Pahala, like, negotiated all of these endorsement deals. Like, he's still going to get paid. It must be super complicated. Yeah. With the deferrals and, yeah. The degree to which Otani is entrenched with these people, or they are entrenched with him is probably the right way to sort of point that causal arrow, is profound. discretion in your communication with your most important client and one of the most important and potentially profitable pro athletes in the entire world. And you never were like, hey, what do we know about this guy? And maybe they did. Maybe they did, but it sure doesn't seem like that. I don't know. At some point, doesn't the fact that there's like this insistence that this account, he wants it to be private.

Well, he's not here. He's sickly. At some point, don't you say, like, this is a little weird, right? Like, especially because the amounts of money that were being deposited in that account, if it's where his like, you know, Angel's payroll is going, like, they're not small amounts, you know? Like, he was making big money with the angels by the end. So, I just, I would feel like I had not been properly guarded. You know, I don't want to sound infantilizing to Otani when I say that. And I think I said this when we ended up doing our unintended bonus pod. When you're sort of swimming in these waters from

an earnings perspective, I do think that a lot of these folks, whether it's a really successful professional athlete or really, you know, high-profile Hollywood celebrity, I guess in Otani's case, that's now a distinction with an ever-diminishing difference. But you're really not in the day-to-day of your money very much. Yeah. Because you just don't need to be. No, it's not a pressing concern. You're not paycheck to paycheck. Yeah. It's like you signed for paycheck to paycheck. It's like

you signed for that much money. It's like, yeah. You're not checking your bank balance every day because you really just don't need to. And so, you know, it's not like he was just like, yeah, and he does my taxes too. Like he had the accoutrement of the entourage of a person who, you know, is a going concern, right? In addition to him being, like, a hyper-talented baseball player, is also, like, a business entity. I don't want to sound callous when I say that, but, like, that's the reality of these guys, right? It's pretty wild, you know? It's a relationship that comes with profound trust. And if you view his agent as sort of heading up that team, right, he didn't, Nas didn't hire Mizuhara, but like brought all of these other people in. have a lot of different eyes on one of the most valuable endorsement athletes in pro sports. It's just wild. It's a wild thing. I would feel like I had to move on. We thought the biggest news of

the day in the agent space would be Jordan Montgomery moving on from Scott Boris and going to Wasserman. I know. Yeah. No, this is really like it's sort of a perfect storm of circumstances, I guess. Like you can see how it happened at each step along the way, you know, how Ipe was able to pull this off with this nefarious scheme as the intermediary where he was telling Otani one thing, he was telling Otani's people another thing. But yeah, you step back and you take the big picture view and it's still sort of shocking. I can kind of understand how they got there, but I would still feel let down, betrayed, not served well. And, you know, for all we know, Otani was the one sort

of saying, like, trust him with everything or who knows even, because like, how would he say it except through Ipe? But like, you know, at the beginning, maybe legitimately Otani said through Ipe, like, hey, yeah, I trust him. Like he can do all this stuff. And so they deferred to his wishes initially, right? It's possible that Otani himself is, you know, I trust him. Like, he can do all this stuff. And so they deferred to his wishes initially, right? It's possible that Otani himself is, you know, I'm sure he is kind of kicking himself, not just blaming others, but also saying, how did I not see this? How did I enable this? Absolutely. Right, unwittingly.

Yeah. This complaint is quite clarifying. It has brought a lot of the answers to murky questions and to specific relief here. I think that I don't want to overstate, like, when in the timeline they should have known this was happening. Because obviously, like, he, Mizuhara, was in very deep and was behaving in a way that was, you know, criminal, allegedly. But here's where I think we can say, hey, what the though? Which is like, once they got to the point

that Mizuhara is talking to ESPN, you don't go, isn't it weird that we never found out what's going on with that account? Right? Like, I'm sorry. It's just like, aren't you paid to see the angles? This is what agents

are supposed to do. This is why we tolerate them being such operators, right? Or at least part of it is this, like, work that they do on behalf of their folks

to get them the most money and guard their interests and, like, at some point in the process of there being press inquiries, don't you go,

hmm? Yeah. The fact that Otani's first inkling of this when he first caught wind of it was when Ipe talked in the Dodgers clubhouse after the game. And Otani, despite not being fluent, you know, knows enough English to be like, wait, what? What's going on? Yeah.

Can we talk about that? So by that point, like MLB was aware that something was going on here that reporters were digging around. The Dodgers were obviously aware of this. Like, Bilello, the agent, they had hired, like, you know, crisis communications person, and Otani had no knowledge of this. Like, at that point, I mean – At that point, what are you doing? You know, this is – you got to get the guy on the horn here. Yeah.

Like, even if you're ultimately still speaking through Ipe, even if Ipe is telling you, like, he can't come to the phone right now. I mean, come on. Yeah, absolutely not. Like, this is an existential threat to your reputation and your future in baseball, potentially. Like, you have to, you know, get on a call with the man himself. Yeah, get on the blower at that point. Yeah, this is ridiculous.

I don't know. Yeah. So that I think is just beyond where you can say, okay, I sort of see how this happened. But at that point when it all comes to an end. And it also, the complaint notes that Blylo's agency, Creative Artists, CAA, which is huge, right? Huge. Does not employ any individuals who speak Japanese, which surprised me. But agent one will occasionally hire Japanese language interpreters to communicate with his clients. Okay, I guess I understand why he didn't hire a separate interpreter when Otani already had one.

He liked and trusted and had worked with for years, but it is surprising to me that there's not a single person who speaks Japanese at CAA and just no contact whatsoever. And you've got this team of people and accountants and financial people, and they're all like, what's going on with this somewhat sizable account? Oh, don't worry about it. It's just private. So, yeah, I think I would want to make some major changes if I were Otani. And it would be hard to trust whoever you bring on board next because how can you not know that you're not being taken advantage of again? And, you know, I would be furious with them if it were me for there not being more direct communication. And again, I am making some assumptions here because, you know, we know through how he has sort of interacted with the media and his secrecy around the dog and his wife and that this is, know he is a private person and so it could be that he just didn't want to deal with any of that stuff and was like ipe go deal with it yep and i am you know i'm being unfair to his representation we'll allow that as a possibility but if i were him

i would be quite upset with how the the media piece of it was handled in terms of both it not registering as a red flag to the crisis communicator, his agent, whoever, that they should probably try to engage with Otani directly on these questions. And then the way that, you know, their inability to like conceive of Ipe as a potential bad actor led to this confusion, you know, because I don't think that it was, you know, I've seen some Dodgers fans who I imagine are quite relieved that they get to like Otani, you know, and that he is not that he was it appears to have not placed any bets at all, let alone on baseball, that he was the victim of fraud. You know that there was a really profound betrayal here. Right. I understand being relieved at that. I have seen some of them be like, I can't believe that the media would ask questions about this.

And it's like, well, that's not the media's fault. His camp behaved in a really weird way and they proved to be vindicated in that he does appear to have been the victim of a pretty sizable fraud but you can understand why we were all like what's going on here when the story changed and part of why that happened was because no one associated with him was like i don't know maybe we need someone other than this Ipe guy to talk to. I know. Yeah, the New York Times reported some aspects of this on Wednesday. And their initial report, I was kind of aghast at the way that it seemed like Otani had been completely cut out of the process. And it said rather than inform Otani personally, the superstar's agent and Mizuhara tried to manage the crisis themselves.

Mizuhara tried to manage the crisis themselves. That report now has a correction appended to it that says an earlier version of this article misstated what happened after reporters began asking about the wire transfers from Shohei Otani's bank account. His interpreter, Ipe Mizuhara, told Otani's agent, Nez Bolelo, that he had discussed the matter with Otani, though Otani later said he had not. It is not the case that Bolelo tried to manage the situation with Mizuhara without informing Otani. So it's a small distinction, though. It's like, OK, Balelo didn't try to exclude Otani from the situation, I guess. Probably there was pushback from Balelo on the way that this was worded. But he still didn't insist that he see Otani, that he hear it from Otani, or at least that

Otani be present while he was hearing it from Ipe. So, okay, he was not trying to do it without telling Otani, but he still didn't 100% ensure that Otani was actually informed. So, it still seems like a little bit of dereliction of duty here. So, it still seems like a little bit of dereliction of duty here. So, yeah. And it says that Otani was likewise, you know, under the impression that his money people were managing that account. Right. And that Ipe told him that.

So, that when Otani would ask Ipe, like, you know, how's my money doing? Basically, like, Ipe would be like, yeah, fine. Like, everything's taken care of. They're all looking over this. So, it went both ways. And ePay was just constantly, imagine living like that for years, just like deceiving everyone around you and like constantly losing, being unable to stop betting, knowing that you're getting deeper and deeper into debt. Like, that must have been just a miserable situation, I would think, which, again, does not excuse the way that he tried to get himself out of it. But, man, like, that must have been kind of a nightmare to be on the receiving end, be the victim of this.

But also to be the perpetrator of it can't have been fun either. It's very sad. It's a very sad portrait of a human existence. And I think that we can have compassion for that piece of it while still acknowledging that he has to face consequences for his actions. I don't view those things as being at odds with one another. I think they're pretty compatible. While we are recording here, Bob Nightingale has tweeted a statement from Major League Baseball, which I will read now. MLB statement. This came in a text. I've got a screenshot of the text.

We are aware of the charges filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office against Mr. Mizuhara, they spelled his name right this time, for bank fraud after a thorough federal investigation. According to that investigation, Shohei Otani is considered a victim of fraud and there is no evidence that he authorized betting with an illegal bookmaker. Further, the investigation did not find any betting on baseball by Mr. Mizuhara. Given the information disclosed today and other information we have already collected, we will wait until resolution of the criminal proceeding to determine whether further investigation is warranted. So I imagine that barring further revelations that dramatically alter the conclusions that the criminal complaint seems to have taken, that we are seeing sort of the conclusion of this as far as Major League Baseball is concerned, at least with regard to Otani. But I'm going to say this, Ben. They brushed up against a ghost here, right?

They very narrowly averted disaster. They leapt from the car after the brakes had been cut and managed to not do much more than tumble around on the ground a little bit. And I am not actually optimistic that this will alter the behavior of anyone when they are assessing sort of the suitability of sports betting partnerships. I think that they will look at this and say that, you know, the wrongdoer was identified. He behaved in a way that was obviously in violation of the policy. The player involved didn't do anything wrong. We can move on here. But I think that baseball should take a deep, hard look in the mirror about this stuff. Because to your point, this was basically like a, you know, it reads like a scared straight story.

This is an after-school special of a criminal complaint. straight story this is a after-school special of a criminal complaint yeah and despite the fact that this was at least as far as like the integrity of baseball is concerned in terms of preserving the viability of otani as the face of the game as someone who can continue to play this is probably their preferred outcome even though it is going to have devastating consequences for a lot of the people involved. A guy in a very intimate and close association with the biggest star in the game stole $16 million to facilitate what appears to be a gambling addiction. And he did that betting on sports, not baseball, but on sports. And so, like, what are we wanting to be in bed with here, you know? And, like, we don't want them to be in bed with that stuff

because we find it boring and destructive and a weird way to engage with baseball. But, like, I worry that the conclusion that will be reached here is, well, the process worked. You know, the feds did their thing. We found out that this was a fraud. Ohtani's clean. Let's move on. You know, bet.

You text bet Ohtani to MGM. Right. You know, get your parlay bet in here. Like, that shouldn't be the conclusion that we reach. I think it will be the conclusion that the league reaches, but I don't think that that should be the conclusion. Like this was a glancing blow. This is you feeling a presence in the house. Just a flesh wound. Yeah. Right. But who knows what the next one will be and who it will involve. And it might be people who are much more directly in control of the outcome of stuff on the field. Mizuhara got in very deep, but I don't think that you have to be in that deep. I don't think your incentives have to be quite this for it to be potentially destabilizing to the sport. Yeah. No, I agree. And to be totally fair, I guess, you know, we should acknowledge that this was an illegal bookmaking operation. It could have happened in prior years, right? I mean, the fact that gambling was legalized did not directly enable this. Although, you know, for all we know, it seems like possibly Ipe kind of got sucked in via legal gambling before he moved to the truly dark side.

But, you know, this could have happened at any point. The fact that Major League Baseball is in bed with a bunch of sportsbooks, I guess, is not like the direct inciting incident here, right? But the fact that we are inundated with these ads and that MLB is playing a part in that is only going to make it more likely that there will be other betting scandals, that there will be other people with betting problems, and that there will be other things like this. Now, you know, maybe Ipe would not have been able to get away with this volume of betting for this long with a legal sportsbook, possibly, you know, maybe this would have been more likely to be flagged. But still, even if it were a lower-grade gambling problem, this is going on. And there's got to be someone somewhere in baseball's orbit, if not an actual baseball player, someone connected to a baseball player who right now is probably dealing with something along the lines of what Ipe was dealing with, if not the same magnitude and degree. So it's kind of only a matter of time.

And, you know, we've seen in other sports a number of scandals that have popped up. So, yeah, again, you know, it's kind of like a Pandora's box situation and it's open now. But, you know, there probably needs to be regulation and you'll never be able to stop any sort of gambling going on in these establishments. It's kind of a constant in the human experience probably, but you are kind of pouring gasoline on the fire with it being omnipresent and so easily accessible. The week after all of this initially broke, the Yankees official twitter account was posting lines in game on their own starter yeah like it is everywhere and i think you're right that you know people have been gambling since there have been people and there will always be a market for shady stuff. And if I were MGM or DraftKings or

FanDuel, I would say, hey, Meg, this was an illegal bookmaker. This wasn't done on our watch. We didn't fail to report transactions of a league employee. We don't have any say in this. Our hands are clean, right? And I get that. But I don't think that the league can claim that they aren't, you know, creating an environment in which they want people's first instinct when they see something happen on the field to be, can I bet on that? When you got, you know, the accounts of the freaking teams tweeting this stuff, it's on every broadcast. It's every other commercial on MLB TV. It's every other commercial when you're watching March Madness. As an aside, wow, what a tournament we got to watch. That was so great. Those women are incredible. The men were fine, too too, but the women's stuff was way more exciting. It's everywhere. And it's everywhere for a lot of the media that covers this stuff. Once again, you go to ESPN and you open a story about this and you might be served Jamie Foxx telling you to bet on it. Not on the story, but on it, the general it, the pervasive it. Get excited. Bet 365.

As an aside, like Breaking Bad didn't pay that guy enough that we don't have to have him in those freaking commercials. So like it's everywhere. And it is the thing they want you to think to do. And here we were. We were like the win probability stuff on the ESPN broadcast. That's not about gambling. And I don't think it's about it in that they're gaming win probability added. But have you noticed that the bet ESPN moniker is appearing under the score bug now? Yeah. Yeah. So like they want you

when you're watching sports to think, can I bet on that? Is there a parlay? Can I do it right now? Can I open my phone and get in on the action, make it more exciting? I'm like, so I don't want to be on my high horse and I don't want to say I was right, but I am and I was. So there you go. Yeah, I was thinking like, gosh, does it, is it improbable that Otani would be at the center of a scandal like this? You know, the guy who is the most famous player, the best player, the face of the sport. Like, what are the odds that when some scandal like this broke that it would be him that it was tied to? But I guess really reading this, it actually makes sense that it would be him.

But I guess really reading this, it actually makes sense that it would be him because, A, how many players have the money to not notice if this amount of money was removed from their accounts? I mean, frankly, a lot of them have a lot of money. But he also had many different kinds of accounts and probably in different countries and different sources. Right. lots of aspects of his life, that's not going to be the case with a lot of players. And also just like, you know, the amount of fame and Otani being a private person just in response to the paparazzi and people just constantly following him around. And also the fact that he is seemingly just so dedicated to baseball and just kind of does have almost tunnel vision about the sport based on everything that's ever been said about him that maybe he was less likely to inquire than some players would have been about where exactly is this going, right? Well, it's not as if Otani is the only player in Major League Baseball where there's some sort of language barrier between him and his representatives. But if he were Dominican, I'm sure there's someone at CAA who speaks Spanish.

Yeah, right. So, you know, some of this is that and some of it is when you combine the existing language barrier with his seeming disposition as a person to sort of be single-minded about the game but also private. Like, I think it created an opportunity for malfeasance that would be maybe harder to pull off were he someone who either spoke English fluently or spoke Spanish where you have just a lot more folks in the game who speak the language and I to be clear I'm not saying that to in any way blame him but it is a particular set of circumstances but I think that there are a couple of different vectors where you have vulnerability to malfeasance related to gambling in baseball. One of them is someone in sort of Mizuhara's situation where it seems like there is gambling addiction and you have actual fraud to further that addiction. I think the other one that I continue to have concern around isn't necessarily in the game's biggest stars. It's in people who make less money but are still in the game's orbit, right?

And I want to be clear. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but I would be worried about umpires. I'd be worried about guys who are up-down guys who aren't even really making league minimum for an entire season. And I'm not trying to cast aspersions on anyone, but like there is a an avenue through which you're vulnerable there. And that will probably manifest less as I have incurred massive debt to an illegal bookmaker and more. to an illegal bookmaker and more, well, you know, you can bet like pitch by pitch and maybe I got to swing some bets here. You know, that's, and that's a, I think much more serious threat to the game. Like that is an existential threat, right? Once it leaks onto the field and is potentially influencing the outcome of stuff, um, that's where you get into really dangerous territory. And I, you know, I, I hope that that's not something that we have experienced and just don't know it yet. But there are a lot of ways that this can go south for baseball. And it's not just, hey, your biggest star was defrauded out of $16 million by a guy who had an obvious gambling problem. It's, hey, umpires I think at the big league level actually do make a pretty good living.

But they get to call the balls and strikes. It is a threat. It's a potential threat. So, yeah. Yeah. There's precedent in the NBA. Yeah. Sure.

Sure. Man. June 24th, 2023. Mizuhara message bookmaker one. I have a problem, LOL. Can I get one last, last, last bump? I know. This one is for real. Last one for real.

And then, yeah, the bookmaker says, done. I have the same problem, smiley face. To be honest with you, Ipe, as long as you can guarantee the 500 every Monday, I'll give you as much as you want because I know you're good for it. Oh, man. Yeah. At one point where Ipe, I guess, had not been prompt about his payment or returning the calls, the bookmaker says, I'm here in Newport Beach and I see victim A, Otani, walking his dog. Oh, yeah. I'm just going to go up and talk to him and ask how I can get in touch with you since

you're not responding. Please call me back immediately. So a threat there. I mean, I don't know whether that was he actually saw Otani walking his dog or he just was making that up or not. But yeah, man, gosh, this is really something. So, I guess the good news, the silver lining in this sad story is that it certainly does appear that Otani is going to be cleared and not only cleared but pretty convincingly cleared. And there will be people who persist in thinking that, you know, this was swept under the rug, that Ipe was the fall guy voluntarily or not. But anyone who thinks that, like, assuming this all holds up, anyone who thinks that has left reality based.

I mean, like, you know, conspiracy theorists are not known for changing their minds when you present them with competing evidence. Oh, you're right. I will adjust my beliefs on this matter. That often doesn't help, right? So, at some point, there's just nothing you can do to change someone's mind. But anyone who is like in a space where they are willing to update their priors based on information that comes to light, I think will and should be fairly convinced by what has been gathered here. Yeah. And I think the fact that, you know, that we are reaching those conclusions,

not because of any major league baseball investigation, but because of an investigation that was conducted by several federal agencies. And look, I do not want to suggest that it's like all fair and above board about who gets prosecuted and who doesn't in the American criminal justice system. That's an entirely different podcast, but a worthwhile one. But like, here's the thing. I feel pretty confident that if the feds had any inkling that Ohtani had done any shady nonsense here, I don't think they'd be like, no, but we really like watching him play baseball, though. So I guess we're going to let it go. and play baseball though. So I guess we're going to let it go. Like that tends to not be the way that federal agencies with enforcement power interact with the idea of being able to like

net a really big prosecution. So I feel very comfortable if I were to be confronted by someone who's like, no, he's taking the fall for it, being like, that's ridiculous and doesn't appear to be in touch with reality. Now, we must always update our priors if we are presented with new information. But this complaint, at least, is pretty unequivocal that they do not believe that Otani engaged in any illegal or inappropriate behavior. So, yeah. For them to come out and talk to the media and announce all of this, I think they're pretty confident in the case that they have here as they would be because it seems like EPA is going along with it all. And Homeland Security is involved with this as well in

addition to IRS. So as you said, multiple federal agencies are on the case here. Okay. Well, are on the case here. Okay, well, that's a lot to digest. And again, I will link to it. I would say it's eye-opening, even if you've heard it, discuss it in depth and detail here just to read it yourself.

Just a couple, I guess, things that I was planning to bring up before this bombshell dropped. You mentioned Jordan Montgomery switching from Scott Boris to Wasserman. And I wish we had said an over-under. I wish we had said how many of the Boris four, you know, do you think will change representation before their next bite at the apple? And I wonder even now Montgomery has. Of the other three major ones,

do you think Montgomery is the last? Because it's not what we're talking about with Otani and CAA here. It's a different kind of being perhaps dissatisfied with your representation, but I do wonder whether, you know, Snell and Bellinger and Chapman and others are feeling the same things that Montgomery's feeling. And perhaps the fact that Montgomery changed again, I don't know if these guys were in communication and commiserating as they were going through that experience. I imagine they, they might've been, but is this just the first domino that falls? You know, like how many of the four do you think Scott Wurst will end up representing the next time they're up for free agency when they opt out or whatever next year? Gosh, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised by either outcome to be totally candid with you.

Like I wouldn't be surprised if all of them end up switching and I wouldn't be surprised if the remainder are like, you know, it was a bad market, and Scott misjudged this, but he'll adapt, and I at least got a, you know, a reasonable sort of pillow contract in the meantime, and I'm gonna write again, you know. I wouldn't, I really wouldn't be surprised in either direction, because guys change agents agents. Like they don't do it super often because it is disruptive to have to do. As we just talked about, you get involved in a lot of other stuff besides just your, you know, negotiation with the team when you reach for agency. So, you know, it can be a pretty, you know, disruptive thing to switch agencies. But guys change. They change to Boris.

They change away from Boris. but guys change. They change to Boris. They change away from Boris. You know, I think a lot of guys when they do that, sometimes it's frustration that they're not getting attention from Boris himself. Cause obviously he's not,

there's only one of him. There's a whole agency. You have a kind of, you know, a more intermediary guy. Like, I think that there are probably other players who might be, be a more indicative,

um, illustrative canary in a coal mine. If we hear that Juan Soto has changed agencies, then I'm going to be like, what's going on at Boris Corp? But absent that, I don't know. It doesn't strike me as that surprising, and I wouldn't be surprised any one way. I don't know. I'm not trying to give Boris a pass. He misjudged the market for sure. But I also think that if I were Jordan Montgomery, I'd be like, yeah, I'm going to try it again with a different guy, see if Wasserman can do better. Yeah.

Speaking of Juan Soto, got another update on Soto pandering to Yankees fans. Oh, yeah. He wore custom Soto Loves New York spikes for the Yankees home opener. Good for him. It says Soto Loves New York and it's got pictures. It says like 101st Street, Yankee Stadium, like with the B and the four subways. It's got like subway art.

It's got New York landmarks. It's got pinstripes on it. He went out and greeted the bleacher creatures with a deep bow. He's all over this. He's following the script. Again, it may very well be sincere. Maybe he's extremely happy to be a Yankee and clearly Yankees fans are extremely happy that he is a Yankee, but he's going about this the right way, I guess, when it comes to endearing yourself to a fan base. Of course, a large part of that is not what spikes you wear, what your walk-up song is, but how well you play.

Yes. That does tend to drive a lot of the reaction, you know? Yes. So having a 197 WRC plus through his first – Probably doing a lot of the work, yeah. That helps. Yeah. Also, so we got a big call-up.

Jackson Holiday is in the major leagues oh yeah that would have been the big news that we probably led with speak for yourself I would have been all about the pants and all of the kissing lately Ben there's been so many affectionate little pecs lately yeah a lot of

I'm so happy that people send those to me it's so much better than speculation that someone shits themselves that is one of your beats now. Yeah, the Braves like Ozzy Albies and Orlando Arcia, right? They've been pecking and smooching since last season at least. That's been going on for a while now. But there was a Twins example, right?

Just before we recorded today, I believe. So, yeah, it's getting a little more prevalent. Just some, you know, tender, only if they want to, but clearly they want to. More of them are wanting to. We support tender bros who show their tender bros love and affection. I think that's good. Yeah.

So, Jackson Holliday, he has not kissed any other Orioles to my knowledge, but he could because he's now in the major leagues. And he was what, like the Norfolk Tides go like five or six players deep who were hitting as well as Jackson Holiday. And lots of other excellent prospects on that squad still, but Holiday, the ultimate prospect. And so he was called up. He made his debut on Wednesday. It was not a Sterling debut in particular, but still, he's here. And I guess the timing is interesting, right? Because we talked about the decision not to have him break camp with the team.

not to have him break camp with the team. And so the way that they called him up, if they had called him up like even a few days later, it might have made a difference service time-wise because you're credited with a full service year if you're on a roster or the MLB injured list for at least 172 days. And so because they called him up now, he should surpass that total if he's in the majors to stay. And so the fact that they called him up just before that cutoff, that probably wouldn't have happened in the past.

I think you could say that's probably a prospect promotion incentive change maybe. Probably a prospect promotion incentive change, maybe. You know, you would have seen the team that was trying to manipulate the service time hold them back a little longer to get that extra year. As it is, the Orioles could potentially get a draft pick because if he does get a full year of service, even though he wasn't on the opening day roster, he could still do that. He would earn them an extra pick after the first round if he wins the Rookie of the Year award, or he finishes in the top three in MVP voting during his pre-arb seasons. I think we have that right? Yes, that's correct. That's my understanding as well. Right. And if they had waited, then they would have given up that chance at getting those perks. And also, if they had kept, then they would have given up that chance at getting those perks. And also, if they had kept him in AAA for another few days, it might not have even prevented him from getting the full service year. It would have the traditional way, but if he had finished top two in rookie of the year voting—

He still would have received a full year, much like Richmond. voting. He still would have received a full year, much like Richmond. Then he could have gotten the full year and the Orioles wouldn't have gotten anything out of the bargain, except for a good partial season from Jackson Holliday. Yeah, right. So, you know, they could have just started the season with him and not gone through the little dance there, but at least he's up when he is. And they kind of needed him or someone because their third baseman had been like the worst in baseball offensively. And Westberg, he got a big hit on the day that Holiday was called up, but he hadn't been hitting particularly well.

But you can put Holiday at second and you can move Westberg to third and now you're stacked. And now it's just like, how do we also find room for everyone else who's still at Norfolk, which is just crushing. So you got to figure out where do we put Colby Mayo and Connor Norby and what do we do with all these guys and do we trade them and is there a space for them? But it's the proverbial good problem to have. But it's not currently a problem that Jackson Holiday is stuck in the minors because he no longer is. I was pretty sassy about the Orioles and Holiday. And I do wonder if – here's a potential explanation, which is that, yeah, like the production they were getting out of second and third just was so bad,

and that division is so tight that they were like, well, I guess we got to call him up because we can't keep rolling with this. I will allow for the possibility that they were like, we want to see what the defense looks like for a little bit longer, and we want to see if the strikeouts are an issue because, as we discussed at the time, despite a very strong spring line, he was striking out quite a bit, like 30% of the time. So if we want to allow for that possibility, I think we can. That's undermined somewhat by the fact that, like, my sense from people who've watched his defense in the early going at Norfolk was that it was still, like, kind of shaky. We saw a little bit of confusion in that

regard yesterday, although I don't want to lay all of that at Holiday's feet. So because they had that one play, you know, where it was like, who's going to take it? And then no one did. Yeah. We called it, right? And then it dropped. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I do wonder if the poor performance that they were getting at second and third was such that they were like, well, you know, let's see what Holiday can do. Let's call him up now so that we have the option of getting a draft pick if he does win. If that is the line of thinking that they intended to keep him down to sort of play some games, but then responded to new information in a way that was rational like i don't love the initial decision but i am glad that they weren't stubborn about it i guess um and if they learned something about him as a player in that a little stretch and felt satisfied i guess

that's good too and it's very exciting are people like actually confused which of him of them is jackson holiday and which of them is Gunner? Like I know we've joked about how they all kind of have the same face. But like they are obviously different. Yes. Boys. You know, like it's not. This is not a.

This is if we're putting him on a spectrum of like people who are obviously very different to, you know, Dan B. Swanson and Charlie Culberson. They are like closer to that Swanson CulCulberson end than the obviously very different, but they aren't all the way to that end of the spectrum. Like they're obviously different boys, you know? Gunnar, you don't have to grow a mustache. Did you hear that he grew the mustache and then he shaved it and then he broke out and he grew it back? I want to thank Melanie Newman for sussing that out because that's a fun little tip.

It really humanized Gunnar Henderson to me who is like so good at baseball. But, you know, he's got to deal with his skin just like the rest of us, you know? You don't know what it's going to do when you shave stuff. Sometimes your skin is like, hate you, going to make you mad. Yep, I've had that experience. Yeah, people have been sharing. I know what Buster only tweeted when Holiday was 10 that he would be a future all-star. And people have been sharing footage of the younger Holiday when he was three, just kind of like messing around on the field when his dad was with the Rockies, I think it was.

And gosh, he looks pretty darn good for a three-year-old as far as the baseball skills. I mean, my daughter's two and a half, and she was hitting a ball the other day, and I was like, oh, okay, she can make contact. But here's Jackson Holiday, three, taking just a pretty sweet swing and also throwing a ball in a way that I'm not accustomed to seeing a three-year-old throw a ball. So, you know, it's, these people are different. These major leaguers, you know, they're not wired the way most of us are. And who knows how much of that is just genetic and how much of that is the fact that he was getting like personal instruction from his major league baseball playing dad.

It's always a bit of nurture and nature. But yeah, you see him at three and it's like, well, no wonder there are so many sons of Major Leaguers in the Major Leagues because they have every advantage, genetic and teaching and economically and

being known so that people see them. But yeah, not nepotism when you are the number one prospect in baseball, except in the sense that you certainly get every advantage. But yeah, clearly a very, very talented guy. So look forward to seeing his work. We'll follow his career with great interest. Also, now Tyler Glass now had a fantastic start.

Yeah, he sure did. He struck out 14 twins in 88 pitches, which was the fewest pitches anyone had ever thrown with that many strikeouts. And I wondered, like, okay, it's early in the season and it's Glassnow and you want to be careful and you're the Dodgers and you don't want to push anything. If he had had a realistic shot at 21 strikeouts – now, he had 14 through 7, so he was only going to get maximum of 20, and we've seen 20, though it's pretty darn cool and we haven't seen it in a long time. But I wonder if he had a shot at 21, would they have kept him in or do you think – no, because we've seen guys throwing no hitters. That's not enough anymore. You're out of there. It's all pitch count and load management and everything and it makes some sense. But 21 would be really special if that happened. And so I wonder, even early season, even a guy with an injury history, do you still pull him if he, you know, if you're through seven and he has 15 strikeouts

instead of 14? Do you give it? Because it's not even like that many pitches that he was on pace to throw, really. Even in this day and age, 88 through seven, I mean, that's, you know, 13 pitches per inning. So he would have thrown, let's say, another 25-ish on top of the 88. He was on pace, let's say, for 113 pitches,

which is certainly not that much, even today, that still happens. But it's April, and it's glass now, and it's the Dodgers who don't need to go all out every game. I wonder, though. It's not like every now and then you still see it happened last year where you see like Cobb and Lorenzen, like they had some 120 something, 130 something

that still happens. So, so I, I hope, I kind of hope that if he had been, at least if it had been possible for him to 21, that they would have let him go back out there for the eighth. I'm skeptical that they would have just because, you know, of all the things you noted, but I would like to think so because it does feel pretty special. Man, how relieved are the Dodgers today? Geez. Yeah. Yeah. You would think. Oh, man. Yeah. And on the injury subject, following up on our in-depth discussion last time, a friend of the show, Lindsay Adler, wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal about pitcher injuries. Everyone under the sun has written their pitcher injury piece over the last week or so. But hers had a quote from Chris Langan, who's the director of pitching for Driveline.

from Chris Langan, who's the director of pitching for Driveline. And he said, I'm quoting Lindsay here, says that players are prepared to blow out their bodies in the pursuit of a few more ticks on their fastball or spin on their breaking ball. Well, we know that. Some players have said that. Langan said, quote, the ways that you would lower the injury risk are also the ways you'd be lowering the player's value. At the end of the day, that's not the business we're in, which sounds sort of icky on some level, I guess. But on the other hand, you know, they're upfront about it. Like, that's why you go to driveline, I guess, to gain velocity. Like, you know, you know coming in, that's the tradeoff you're making.

So in that sense, I guess I'm kind of glad that they're being so upfront about, hey, we can make you better in the short term, but you might break. But isn't there, I mean, lowering the player's value, okay, but doesn't long-term value matter a little bit? Sure. I guess it's hard to do the risk assessment model because it's not like we can precisely calculate and say you throw X miles per hour harder. Precisely calculate and say you throw X miles per hour harder, that means you're X percent more likely to get hurt and you're X percent less likely to have a long career and make this amount of money. But if you're just someone on the fringes, okay, fine. You're just trying to get there by any means necessary and just having a single season of major league service, that could be life-changing in some ways. a single season of major league service, that could be life-changing in some ways.

But it's not only that class of player who goes to driveline or other facilities to try to get some speed up. And if you're a more established player, isn't there some risk-cost-benefit analysis here that can still factor in your future? The fact that, yeah, it will help you if you gain a couple ticks, but what if that means that you then lose a season or two and are potentially compromised beyond that? Can we have zero long-term thinking at all? I mean, it'd be nice if that could be factored in in some way. I get the incentives, but still. I'm debating if the comp i'm gonna make here is just so strained that it doesn't have any value am i introducing a sideburn to our conversation such that people

will be distracted in a way that means that they can't take in the broader point i'm about to make she debates she wonders she thinks to herself can i remember the name of that character yeah i can um i'm reminded of a scene from sex in the city ben where charlotte and uh her at this point in the the story's progression now ex-husband trey are contemplating the question of having children and if i remember the episode correctly, they encounter some annoying kids, you know, some kids who, they kind of suck because some kids kind of do sometimes. I'm not saying that we should like,

you know, send them to an orphanage or put them through trials, but we can acknowledge that some of them are better than others, you know. And at the end of the episode, they, at least through the narration of Carrie, turn to each other and say, but our kids will be different.

And I wonder if the same psychological phenomena is at play here where these guys know that there are risks. I'm sure that all of these facilities are up front about those risks. They can look around Big League Clubhouse and see guys with the scar on their elbow and they know what those risks are. But on some level, some of them just say to themselves, but I'll be fine. You know, I wonder if some of it is just as simple as that, that you think I'm built right, I'm strong, my delivery is repeatable, my mechanics are good. It won't happen to me. You know, I'll hold out long enough to sign the big contract and it'll be worth it. And I wonder how much of it is just that, you know?

I think it's very legible as like a human thing to me that you just feel like I'm going to bet on myself because why wouldn't I? It's worked before, you know? Yeah. Young men on the whole are probably not known for like sober risk assessment. I've never alleged that even one time. Not allowed on this podcast. Why would you say that? Why would you? This is the first I'm ever hearing of it.

It's like when you told me pitching is bad for you and I was like, oh, blow my mind. Yeah, I know. The strog suits perhaps of of uh yes young males young people you know so your brains are still maturing yeah maturing you know it's all squishy and weird in there for a long time cortex still developing god i love my prefrontal cortex what a good little leg that is yeah where would we be without that i wouldn't go back to my early 20s for any amount of money in the world. And I didn't even make, like, a ton of bad decisions. I made, like, a, you know, a normal amount that I emerged from financially and physically intact.

But, yeesh. What a bad time. And lastly, I missed this last week just in the avalanche of negative news about the A's. But the A's are doing a giveaway for their final home game in Oakland, September 26th. Replica Coliseum Stadium giveaway. So they are giving away a replica of the Coliseum, which they are abandoning. And also, the giveaway says that it's for the first 25,000 fans. Now, how many of those replicas –

How many do they actually make? How many do you think they will make? Because I don't know if this is like legally binding if you say first 25,000 fans and then somehow 25,000 fans show up and you run out because you made 5,000 because it's – I want that to be true so bad. I want that to be true so, so bad. I would love that to be true. Oh, my God. I want them to get slapped with a lawsuit because of that so badly.

Oh, my God. That would be the best way for their time in Oakland to end. If it is binding, if legal experts could tell us you buy a ticket after the giveaway is announced, that's like a binding contract. I'm sure it's not. Probably not. But if it were... I'm sure it's in the terms and conditions that it's all contingent on, yeah. Unless we run out. Oh, but surely there's a plaintiff's

lawyer in California who can answer this question for us. Oh, please, please, please, please, please. That would be so great. The season should end with the opposite of a boycott in that case. And that last, maybe it'll be like an Irish wake or something like that last game. Maybe people will actually show up as a farewell or maybe not. But I don't know whether people will show up for the replica Coliseum Stadium giveaway.

But I want them to because I want the A's to like make only as many as they would need to cover the typical attendance at a home A's game this year. It gets blown out. need to cover the typical attendance at a home ace game this year. Yeah, and then it gets blown out. And then it's a sellout, and they're like, you know, 20,000 replica stadiums in debt here, and they have to somehow make good on this, or there's like a class action suit or something. That would be the most fitting, sweet way for this to end. Get Aaron Kravich on the case!

And if that's not how the law works, I guess I want to know, but I almost don't want to know. I don't know that I want to know. I mean, I do, but because, like, I've asked the question, and I do want to know, but I don't, because I feel confident that the answer is that this is not

something where you would have, like, costs for a legal action. It would be great, though. It would be great though. It would be great. Yeah. And relatedly, there is a good ESPN deep dive on how that final divorce between Oakland and the A's ended and they ended up going to Sacramento. And it seems like the A's were kind of like, we'll wait until the last second and then we'll spring this on Oakland and they'll just go along with it. And true to form, Oakland did not and actually asked for money and things that would be good for the city. And the A's were like, oh, too rich for our blood. And now they're going to Sacramento and it seems like there's sort of this Sacramento delusion where people in Sacramento think the A's are actually going to end up staying there and that that will be a permanent major league city. And I certainly buy that the A's won't end up

going to Las Vegas, but I don't know that I buy that they will end up staying in Sacramento. And I certainly wouldn't place my trust in this organization in any form or fashion. But Ken Rosenthal wrote a story about how the A's or A's surrogates are saying that they're going to raise payroll, which of course they're saying that, right? But A's president Dave Cavill said we're budgeting numbers we think are in the higher side of the league once they get to Las Vegas. He said we plan to grow our payroll ahead of our move to Las Vegas. And once we are in our new ballpark, we plan to have a top tier payroll is what the A's team president said to Ken Rosenthal. And Rosenthal wrote,

a person briefed on the A's plans in January said the team intended to carry payrolls in the 130 to $150 million range during the ramp up period before they relocate to Las Vegas. Then 170 million plus once they move into their new fixed-roof stadium. Can you conceive of any way that that could possibly happen?

I mean, that's more than double the team's current payroll and the payrolls they've been running recently. Not hard to increase those numbers, but I would not trust these in any way. I will smash the under on this so hard because there's just no way that they will actually live up to this promise. But also, even if they tried to, could they? Who would want to play there? who would want to play there? You know, and Rosenthal goes around to some players and says like, would you sign to play for the Sacramento A's

or whatever they're calling themselves? And people were sort of diplomatic and didn't really rule it out, but they were all like, you know, that place needs a lot of work and it certainly wouldn't be top destination for me. Like even if the A's were suddenly signing a bunch of checks, and I don't know what would convince them to, because it's not like their revenue is suddenly going to spike when they move

into this minor league stadium, I wouldn't think. So if they don't want to afford that now, and I guess according to Rob Maines and his analysis of Ford's numbers, they probably did have like an operating loss last year maybe. But they're banking so much just in terms of revenue sharing and broadcast revenue and they're putting so little into the team. And even though they're driving the thing into the ground, it's probably appreciating relative to when they bought it because it always does even if that's slowed down somewhat with the uncertainty about the cable bundle bursting and bubble bursting. But do you think they could even convince enough people to take their money to get into that payroll tier if they legitimately tried to?

No. I don't know that they could either. Who would want to? You'd have to pay way above market rates. Way above market. Yeah. Yeah. You would very quickly get to a point where it would be too great a payroll for them to stomach.

I do think that there are guys who, I don't know, maybe at the tail end of their career, they like want one more payday. But I don't know. No. The end point will be like the real, you know, we're all looking for the guy who did this where it'd be like, we tried to spend all that money, but strangely, no one wanted to come play for us in this minor league park in Sacramento. You know, we'll have like next offseason, it'll be the, oh, we tried, we bid on this guy, we submitted an offer. And yeah, they would need to outbid everyone to get anyone because of the way they've mismanaged this whole situation. And they're not going to do that. They're not going to pay a premium.

They're not even going to pay market rate. But that will be their out probably when they're like, oh, yeah, we really tried. And oddly, I don't know why, but no one would want to sign with us for some reason. So it's not our fault. We were just flashing our money around and for some reason no one would take it. I am very confident that that will be the outcome when their payroll continues to sit in a below average range wherever they play in the foreseeable future. But I am confident and optimistic. I think I'm somewhere between optimistic and confident that when they trot out that line, everyone will be like, we know you're full of it.

Yeah, they got no credibility now whatsoever. Okay, just been here. After we recorded, it was announced that Ipe Mizuhara agreed to surrender to federal authorities on Friday. According to a U.S. attorney spokesman, he is scheduled to have his bond hearing in the afternoon Pacific time. He won't enter a plea, and an arraignment will probably be scheduled on Friday for a future date.

Few final follow-ups for you. Last time, we talked about relievers who were converting to starting this season and how they're doing so far. Jordan Hicks, Garrett Crochet, Reynaldo Lopez, A.J. Puck, three out of four, we noted, were doing quite well. That has continued to be the case even since we recorded that episode.

Lopez and Hicks had another successful outing apiece. AJ Puck struggled once again. Got an email from listener Patreon supporter Bobby who said, this Orioles fan would note that in the vein of converted relievers, I think it's probably worth putting D.L. Hall in that bucket. I know he did a lot of starting in the minors, but his experience in the show has been pretty much relief work. He's a tricky one as a nose fan because you hate to lose pitching depth, especially potential starter types. But the first couple of starts have not been amazing for

him. No, they have not. And as I said to Bobby, yeah, there were other pitchers we could have thrown in that category. Thought about including Hall or Bowden Francis with the Blue Jays or Cody Bradford with the Rangers. Ultimately kind of lumped those into a different category from the ones we were talking about because they mostly started in the minors last year. So I'm not sure I would quite call it a conversion. It's pretty common for minor league starters to break in as relievers in the majors and then shift back to the rotation, Spencer Strider style. But Hall would come closest to qualifying. He did mostly start in the minors last year, but he's been almost exclusively a starter in the majors until this season. So yeah, if you count him, not the greatest start. We also talked about comps for

Eli De La Cruz if he never completely puts it together, if he remains a power-speed monster, but the plate discipline, the contact never really rounds into shape, and he never becomes a great player, even though he is a spectacular player. We were trying to think of anyone who would fit that description, and a few people suggested Bo Jackson. Andy, for instance, wrote in to say it's not a perfect comp, but in terms of another player who was the fastest and the strongest, but had a terrible approach at the plate, I submit Bo Jackson. He had more emphasis on power and Ellie has more speed, but nobody combined them better than Bo. And his career 32% strikeout rate is comparable to Ellie's 34%, especially when adjusting for era. And yes, that is true, though in Bo's case, it sort of made sense that he never became

a very polished player. What with his lack of baseball experience, missed his senior year of college, barely played in the minors, and then the demands of being a multi-sport player and eventually his hip injury, et cetera. So if Ellie never puts it all together as a dedicated baseball player who came up through the minors and started young, et cetera., I think it would be weirder. But hey, he probably will. We're rooting for him.

Finally, we have a very important update about chicken tenders in Toronto. Some of you may remember early last year, it became a bit of a recurring subject on Effectively Wild that the chicken tenders at the Toronto Ritz-Carlton were supposedly superlative. Brandon Belt had praised them and said they were the best chicken tenders he'd ever had. And we were joking and speculating that he'd signed with the Blue Jays because of the incredible Toronto tendies. And then he went on to have a fine season with the Blue Jays,

though he is still unsigned. Well, we have another source, another tribute, another testimonial to the tenders. This was brought to our attention by listener, Patreon supporter, Tyler, who directed us to a clip from the top of the fourth inning of the Mariners Blue Jays game on Wednesday, Cal Raleigh at the plate,

take it away. Mariners radio broadcaster, Aaron Goldsmith. Cal with seven career home runs against the Blue Jays, the most of any opponent, which is remarkable given how few games he's played against the Blue Jays relative to teams in the division. So I asked Cal when we

were in Milwaukee if he has any reason for all the home runs that he hits at Rogers Center. And at first he said, no, there's nothing. And then he said, wait. And you can say this. He actually said that to me. You can say this. Cal calls time. He said, the chicken fingers

at the hotel. They're the best in the league. And then he said, but we're at the hotel. They're the best in the league. And then he said, but we're changing hotels this year. And we did. The pitch. Swing and it's popped up. On the infield, Biggio gives way to Bichette, who now gives way to Turner at first base to make the catch.

So, yeah, new hotel, different chicken fingers, not as elite as the other ones, but still a home run. Worked the other day. In game one, yeah. It's not just the chicken fingers. And maybe he's okay. Maybe he's a pretty good hitter. Now, Raleigh made an out in that plate appearance, but he ended up hitting the game-winning homer in the 10th inning. So he's now slugging 833 lifetime in Toronto, 204 WRC plus and 32 plate appearances at Rogers Center. Among the 91 hitters who have made at least 30 plate appearances at Rogers Center since 2021 when Raleigh's career started. He is third in WRC Plus after Corey Seeger and Aaron Judge. Pretty good company.

So Big Dumper loves the tenders too. I assume these are the same Ritz Carlton Toronto tenders, though Goldsmith did not specify. If we still use non-listener submitted songs for Effectively Wild, this would probably be a place to use Love Me Tender as the outro theme. Clearly Belt and Raleigh love them some tenders, though Raleigh is still hitting homers there even without them. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Jordan, Cole Ratliff, Brian Dirty Gertie, Marcus, and Amy Mantis, thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only. Monthly bonus episodes. As you can imagine, Shohei and Ipe, much discussed, as is all of baseball in the great group for our listeners and Patreon supporters. You also get access to monthly bonus episodes, 29 of which we have already released. You can go listen to them right now. Plus you get access to playoff live streams and prioritized email answers and discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon

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Wild MLB ballpark meetups throughout the country this season. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. It's the zombie runner Bobby Shantz Bobby Shantz, Bobby Shantz Effectively wild It's the zombie runner Bobby Shantz Bobby Shantz, Bobby Shantz Effectively wild