QUIET GAME
Ohtani would be better off if he opened up more to public
LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers are understandably thrilled to have superstar Shohei Ohtani — the most versatile player since at least Babe Ruth, and possibly the best, too. And one ecstatic Dodgers higher-up told me he believes Ohtani would have come six years earlier if the National League had the DH back then. (I think he’s probably right.)
The deep-pocketed Dodgers view the record deal, $700 million with 97 percent deferred, as a bargain. And I think they may be right about that, too.
Ohtani is a talent none of us has ever seen before, or will see again, and he’s already killing it here. He leads MLB in OPS (1.129), batting average (.371), slugging percentage (.695), hits (37), total bases (73), RBIs (29), and extra-base hits (21).
It’s a match made in blue heaven — the marquee franchise that does things right and an impossibly talented player who looks on his way to possibly becoming the first DH-only MVP (he won twice while also pitching impossibly well.) But after three days in Dodgerland, I do have one little quibble.
Things could be even better if Ohtani wasn’t such a mystery.
Could it be that the only person he’ll ever trust is the former translator and ex-bestie Ippei Mizuhara, who allegedly stole $16 million from him? Unlike apparently Mizuhara, others credentialed for the clubhouse don’t seek his bank password.
Ohtani’s the biggest and most covered player ever. Yet we still don’t know a thing about him beyond his stat line and love of baseball (and now, perhaps, a lack of knowledge or interest in finances and bad taste in besties). No joke, the most observed baseball player ever was married before even teammates knew he was dating.
We don’t need to learn about his love life, but it would be better for baseball, and certainly for the scores of reporters who’ve come from Japan to document his greatness — and even for him, too — if he wasn’t almost exclusively limiting interviews to after games and about games. He was merely a victim in the gambling scandal. (For the record: Folks at least a little closer to him say he has zero interest in games beyond the video variety.) But maybe if he trusted and talked to more folks, he wouldn’t have been burned by his ex-bestie.
And now, by maintaining secrecy about the scandal beyond the statement he read, some skeptical folks still wonder how he let an alleged thief get so close to get his account info or how he didn’t notice his constant companion was paying extraordinarily inexplicable attention to obscure sporting events?
His lack of trust is all time, especially considering the one guy he trusted turned out to be the very one to avoid. Not everyone is going to be quite as open as the wonderful Hideki Matsui. But players suggest Ohtani’s a great and engaging teammate (even moreso in meetings since the Dodgers hired new interpreter Will Ireton), and it would be nice to see this side. Or some side.
(Fairly, this isn’t a Dodgers thing. Remember this winter how he was going to punish any team that revealed anything, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was the one guy who dared speak?)
Word is, he’ll talk more after Mizuhara takes his plea as early as May 9, and maybe MLB completes what figures to be a perfunctory investigation. We’ll see. This odd strategy of silence started well before the Dodgers or the scandal.