(Originally posted March 21 at realmansports.com):
I’m going to assume you’ve read up on this by now, so I won’t rehash it in too much detail here. Essentially, Ohtani wired $4.5M to a bookie who was under federal investigation already, and when the LA Times got wind of it, an Ohtani spokesman said his interpreter had lost the money, and Ohtani was helping him out by paying the debt. The interpreter apparently did an ESPN interview attesting to this, though to my knowledge that interview has not been released.
But then Ohtani’s lawyers changed the story and alleged the interpreter stole the money from Ohtani without his knowledge of any gambling, and as a result the interpreter, also apparently Ohtani’s good friend, was fired.
Neither story makes much sense. There’s little chance a bookie would take bets of that size from the interpreter without Ohtani himself being on the hook, and it’s farfetched to think Ohtani would knowingly bankroll his interpreter’s massive gambling habit just because they were friends. And that they changed the story is, of course, also suspect.
The most likely explanation, to me, is that Ohtani has a rather serious gambling habit, his interpreter placed the bets on his behalf, and when the LA Times somehow found out, the first tried clumsily to spin it as the interpreter’s debts before the lawyers decided it would be bad for Ohtani to have known at all, per MLB’s rules, and spun it as an outright theft. I’m assuming they paid the interpreter to take the fall, and there will be no criminal charges pursued against him.
I’m also assuming MLB and the Dodgers will move mountains to make this go away, given the size of Ohtani’s contract, his international superstardom and importance to the game. This is the anti-Trevor Bauer — a right-leaning cracker of whom baseball was happy to wash its hands when the accusations surfaced — and whom it continues to blackball to this day despite Bauer serving the largest suspension in history, no charges being filed and the accuser being exposed as a grifting opportunist by her own text messages.
The only way I could see MLB or the Dodgers doing anything — and even in that case they would try to avoid it — is if incontrovertible evidence of Ohtani betting on his own games surfaced. Even then, unlike Pete Rose, he wasn’t managing the team, so his interests in doing well would likely align perfectly, and MLB, concluding it were a victimless crime, would find a way to downplay it the way Congress downplays blatant insider trading, as though people didn’t actually serve hard time for that exact crime. We’re in an era now that what happens is less important than who it helps or hurts, and this news is highly unhelpful to MLB and the Dodgers.
Accordingly, barring the unlikely surfacing of overwhelmingly damning evidence, I would expect Ohtani to remain untouched and untouchable. The biggest risk is the scandal and absence of his friend and interpreter affecting him psychologically, but again, if all he did was gamble, his friend got properly compensated and MLB and the Dodgers pretend it never happened, I don’t think it changes much.