NEW YORK — The saga of a California bookmaker has led Major League Baseball to open two investigations: The first into Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, and the second into a former teammate of Ohtani’s, David Fletcher. But virtually everything that is publicly known about those situations is owed to two other sources: The news media, with a particular nod to ESPN, and federal authorities. MLB, meanwhile, has appeared to be reactive, moving only when pushed.
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Per commissioner Rob Manfred, MLB has little choice but to be deferential.
Though MLB’s department of investigations is led by former Justice Department lawyers, Manfred said on Tuesday that the group is often going to be “chasing” the investigative work of others when it comes to illegal-gambling cases. Bookies operate outside of channels that MLB can typically monitor, and federal authorities have greater investigative capabilities in any situation.
“I love our DOI people, I think they do a hell of a job with what they’ve got to work with,” Manfred said. “The feds have a lot more tools than we do. It’s just that simple.”
Inquiries into legal gambling are sometimes keyed by alerts baseball’s central office receives following strange or anomalous activity. A regulator in Colorado, for example, helped flag a former minor league player’s bets on baseball. Peter Bayer has been barred from the game since 2021.
However, in cases of illegal bookmaking, Manfred said the league’s capabilities are more limited.
“Some investigations begin as a result of monitoring activities that are not public, and depending on the outcome of those investigations, you may never hear about those,” Manfred said generally.
Mizuhara placed sports bets (but, per federal prosecutors, not on baseball) with bookie Mathew Bowyer. ESPN reported Fletcher, currently a minor leaguer with the Atlanta Braves, placed non-baseball sports wagers with Bowyer as well.
“The bets were not being placed in a legal betting operation,” Manfred said. “So there is no monitoring, right? We have no way to know what an illegal bookmaker is doing. … And by definition, in most cases we’re going to be chasing, usually a press report or a criminal investigation.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office charged Mizuhara with illegally transferring nearly $17 million from Ohtani, and he is expected to plead guilty as part of a plea deal.
“With respect to the situation involving the interpreter, you have to make a judgment,” Manfred said of MLB’s investigative approach. “The federal investigation was so far down the road. There was such a potential for us to interfere in an unproductive way in that investigation, that we have gone slowly and deferred to, hopefully, what will be the outcome of that in fairly short order.”
(Photo of Mizuhara: Kirby Lee / USA Today)