Major League Baseball opens investigation into Shohei Ohtani, former interpreter،
Major League Baseball has opened a formal investigation into the matter surrounding Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani and his former handler, Ippei Mizuhara, the league announced Friday.
MLB is expected to request interviews from all parties, including Ohtani and Mizuhara, a source told ESPN, although officials have no way of forcing Mizuhara to cooperate since he no longer works in baseball.
Ohtani also has the right to refuse to cooperate as a member of the MLB Players Association. Ohtani could invoke his right, under one interpretation of arbitration precedent, to refuse to cooperate because of a criminal investigation already underway. Traditionally, MLB maintains that a player can invoke such an exception if he is the target of the investigation, which is not the case with Ohtani.
Major League Baseball said in a statement that it began gathering information about the allegations involving Ohtani and Mizuhara after reports emerged this week. Its investigative department officially began investigating the matter Friday, the league said.
The announcement came two days after the Dodgers fired Mizuhara, as reporters pressed to ask questions about at least $4.5 million in wire transfers sent from Ohtani's bank account to a bookmaking operation which is the subject of a federal investigation.
Within two days, Ohtani's officials stopped saying the slugger had paid Mizuhara's gambling debts and his lawyers announced that Ohtani had been the victim of a “massive theft.”
It remains unclear whether authorities are investigating the alleged theft. Ohtani's representatives said Thursday that they had formally submitted the allegation to law enforcement, but did not specify to which authorities. Multiple sources told ESPN that neither the California Bureau of Investigation nor the FBI were working on the case.
Spokespeople for the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles and Orange county district attorneys' offices all said they were not investigating and indicated it was most likely a case. federal. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California declined to comment.
Ohtani is expected to remain on the Dodgers' active roster while the league's investigation unfolds.
MLB's administrative leave, under which players receive their salaries but are deemed ineligible to play while investigations are ongoing, applies only to matters relating to the joint policy on domestic violence, sexual assault and of child abuse. Since Ohtani has not been accused of dealing directly with the bookmaker and there is no evidence that the bets were made on baseball, the league sees no need to remove him from the ground at the moment.
ESPN's Alden Gonzalez contributed to this report.
