MLB Indiscretions, Shohei Ohtani, and NBA Finals Stories

SportsGrid

Watch MLB Indiscretions, Shohei Ohtani, and NBA Finals Stories - SportsGrid on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:03 - We got Matt Lutovsky in the house

00:04 to sort of parse through all of the different stories

00:07 that we've had over the last 24, 48 hours

00:10 as far as some of these indiscretions

00:12 in Major League Baseball,

00:13 see how they potentially affect the future.

00:16 Also, this funny story,

00:18 honestly a funny story in the NBA, I think,

00:20 I don't know, maybe you guys don't think so.

00:21 Let's bring in Matt,

00:22 we'll get his certainly opinion on some of these.

00:25 Matt, let's start with the Shohei Otani story.

00:28 It is now over.

00:30 I got a statement in my email yesterday out of nowhere

00:33 from one of Otani's representatives,

00:35 so I'm assuming that's it.

00:36 Dodgers released a statement too.

00:37 What's crazy to me,

00:40 Matt, we have seen so many other stories

00:43 and so many other investigations take years.

00:46 How in the world did they get this open and shut

00:48 in two months?

00:50 - Yeah, that's a great question.

00:51 I remember when this was originally developing

00:54 and I thought, man, this is gonna be basically

00:56 what you said, this is gonna go on for a while,

00:58 we're gonna get twists, turns.

01:00 He said, he said, and here we are, early June,

01:04 case closed, nothing to see here, moving on,

01:08 stop asking questions, stop looking into this.

01:11 And I mean, it sounds like it is, certainly,

01:14 with him, he pleaded guilty

01:16 and it seems like that's that.

01:18 In Major League Baseball's concluded,

01:20 Shohei had nothing to do with it.

01:22 I still think there might be more we find out

01:25 here and there, some drips and drops,

01:28 but yeah, it's pretty crazy.

01:30 And especially when you look at the sheer amount

01:33 of bets he put into play and his wins

01:35 and his losses are staggering.

01:37 And you just think, well, at some point,

01:40 Shohei Ohtani had to know something was up,

01:43 even if someone else was managing his money

01:46 and this guy was very good at developing his sneaky plan,

01:51 but apparently not.

01:52 And apparently this is what went down.

01:54 And I guess we're all gonna move on

01:57 'cause the Dodgers told us to move on,

01:59 Major League Baseball told us to move on,

02:01 the courts told us to move on.

02:03 And I guess the good news is we have enough other cases

02:06 to move on to, because it seems like

02:08 there's a new one every day,

02:09 at least when it comes to betting indiscretions

02:11 by a professional athlete.

02:14 - Yeah, we sort of see it the same way here.

02:16 And to me, as I've said on the early line this morning,

02:18 and I've said constantly, on any level

02:21 in this day and age of technology,

02:24 and whatever banking app you use to think

02:27 that Ohtani would never log on to his app

02:31 to see that $500,000 was removed from his account.

02:35 And then it happened again.

02:36 (laughs)

02:37 It happened again and I had no idea.

02:40 I don't know.

02:40 - Or get an alert, something.

02:42 (laughs)

02:43 - No alert.

02:45 You know, you set the alert.

02:45 All right, let's set it to over 500, 599,000.

02:49 That's the only thing I'm interested in.

02:51 When that goes, then tell me.

02:52 So I know we're being cynical here,

02:54 but you and I see it the same way.

02:56 Okay, so speaking of cynical,

02:59 the way that a lot of people are viewing this player

03:01 that is now banned for life, Tuca Pitamarcano,

03:06 the cynical comments are this guy won 4% of his bets.

03:09 Like, what is he doing?

03:10 He threw his whole baseball career away

03:13 to be a horrible gambler.

03:16 My gosh, like this is just, I mean, to me,

03:18 that's a bigger story, I think,

03:20 for some of these players out there.

03:21 Like, you even had access to sort of know

03:24 what your team potentially could throw out there

03:26 in terms of a starting lineup every day,

03:28 and pitchers, and maybe who's available, and all that,

03:31 and you still couldn't even win.

03:33 So why do this?

03:34 I don't get why this keeps happening, Matt.

03:37 - Yeah, I know, and it's like,

03:39 you wanna see the bets at that point.

03:40 Was he just betting on crazy things?

03:42 Like, was he going for wild parlays

03:45 and just going for something big,

03:47 trying to strike it rich on one big bet?

03:50 I don't know.

03:51 I am fascinated by it,

03:52 because you originally hear the story,

03:54 you go, okay, guy bet on baseball.

03:56 That's not cool, don't do that.

03:58 But you at least kind of get it.

04:00 You're in the sport, you're not playing,

04:02 you know, he's on the DL, he's gonna make some bets.

04:05 He thinks he has insider knowledge.

04:06 And then you see that winning percentage,

04:08 and you're like, are you kidding me?

04:09 Like, I could do better than that.

04:11 What's going on here?

04:12 So it's a very strange story,

04:14 and I almost feel bad for him,

04:17 'cause he didn't put that much money into play.

04:21 You know, at least comparatively

04:22 to some other stories we've heard.

04:24 And he didn't do well.

04:25 And like you said, he threw away,

04:27 you know, I don't know how much longer his career had,

04:29 at least at the major league level,

04:31 but nonetheless, he was a young guy.

04:33 And to see this is just kind of unfortunate and foolish.

04:37 And yeah, it just leads to more questions, I think.

04:40 I wanna see these bets.

04:41 I wanna know what he was betting on,

04:43 because staggeringly low winning percentage.

04:47 - Yeah, it's not even the word for it, under 10%.

04:50 I mean, you're right.

04:50 He probably was betting like, I don't know,

04:53 25 to one that 20 runs are scored tonight.

04:56 And he did it like every day.

04:57 You know, it was like,

04:58 the only thing I could come up with there.

05:00 All right, so we've seen stuff like this in the movies.

05:03 Guy trying to leave the country,

05:06 get out of town, gotta pay some people back.

05:09 I'm being accused of something.

05:11 I think that this guy who was helping Jonte Porter,

05:14 allegedly, on some of his wagers,

05:17 must have caught wind that they were coming after him.

05:19 There's no other reason, Matt, for this guy to get caught.

05:23 You know, whether or not he was on a list of some kind

05:25 still remains to be seen.

05:26 I don't know if they were trying to find him,

05:27 but you don't go to the airport with a duffel bag of cash

05:31 and a one-way ticket,

05:32 unless you plan on never coming back, correct?

05:35 - Yeah, I would think so.

05:36 You know, three cell phones, that's always a tip off.

05:40 You know, anytime people have a lot of devices.

05:43 It's just a weird story for sure.

05:46 And yeah, it's just one of those things.

05:48 I think you said it before.

05:49 It's like you see in the movies.

05:50 And I think we're at the stage in the movie

05:53 where the investigators are trying to get someone

05:56 to flip on the other person.

05:58 And it just feels like that's where we're at.

06:00 But I was reading a little more into that story

06:02 and in the cell phone messages there, in the text.

06:04 They had, I think it was Jonte Porter who said,

06:06 "Hey, is this gonna be one of those Rico things?"

06:09 And I was like, "Well, that's not what criminals do.

06:11 You don't text each other the actual name of the crime

06:14 and put it out there in print."

06:16 So yeah, this wasn't a great situation

06:18 for everyone involved.

06:20 And that was another situation where you just go,

06:22 "Man, I know Jonte Porter wasn't that good,

06:23 but you just threw away your whole career."

06:26 And at least though, he amassed some pretty sizable debts.

06:30 And you think, "Oh, just ask your brother.

06:32 He just signed a hundred and some million dollar contract."

06:35 But you know, it didn't quite work that way.

06:38 - No, too proud to ask, I guess.

06:40 Oh, we got a minute left.

06:40 Do you think Brandon Aiu gets extended?

06:42 Do you think that ends up happening, Matt?

06:44 He's like sort of in that,

06:45 not the top, not the bottom category.

06:47 - Yeah, I think he wants big money.

06:50 And you know, the 49ers let a bunch of other receivers

06:53 sign for a good amount of money.

06:55 It's a little weird to me that they are re-upping

06:57 a lot of guys before they take care of him.

07:00 But yeah, I think this one's gonna play out for a while

07:02 and we'll see where it's at,

07:04 but you know, closer to the end of summer.

07:06 - All right, Matt, great to see you.

07:07 Thanks for coming on.

07:09 - All right, thank you.

07:10 (upbeat music)

07:12 (bells chiming)

Category

Transcript

Recommended