Let us speak their names no more: Mizuhara pled guilty and other gambling news

On Tuesday, former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara pled guilty as charged to the counts of bank fraud and tax fraud. Mizuhara’s charges have a maximum criminal exposure of 33 years, but based on the plea deal, he is likely to receive 87 to 108 months in federal prison.

Mizuhara is set to be sentenced on October 25, which will be the final chapter of a sad, cautionary affair.

After court concluded, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada gave a press conference regarding the status of the Mizuhara case.

Around the same time, MLB announced that its internal investigation was closed, and formally exonerated Ohtani of wrongdoing. The Dodgers and Ohtani expressed separate statements that they were looking forward and moving on from the affair.

In a vacuum, Eric’s report would be the penultimate chapter of this saga. And as to Ohtani and the Dodgers, that sentence would be correct. However, two ongoing developments make the entire Mizuhara scandal a precursor for something far, far worse.

The creep of gambling into baseball is a metastasizing cancer

Also on June 4, MLB announced suspensions for five players, ranging from one year to permanent. MLB banned Padres infielder Tucupita Marcano for life for betting 387 times on baseball totaling more than $150,000, including betting on Pirates games while he was on the Pirates.

MLB also handed out suspensions of one year to the following players:

• A’s pitcher Michael Kelly (betting on baseball while in the minors)
• Padres minor league pitcher Jay Groome
• Diamondbacks minor league pitcher Andrew Saalfrank
• Phillies minor league infielder José Rodríguez

All four players wagered less than $1,000 and Saalfrank and Rodriquez both had previously appeared in the majors. Commissioner Rob Manfred had the following to say about the suspensions:

“The strict enforcement of Major League Baseball’s rules and policies governing gambling conduct is a critical component of upholding our most important priority: protecting the integrity of our games for the fans,” baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “The longstanding prohibition against betting on Major League Baseball games by those in the sport has been a bedrock principle for over a century. We have been clear that the privilege of playing in baseball comes with a responsibility to refrain from engaging in certain types of behavior that are legal for other people.”

[emphasis added.]

The Commissioner’s words would have had a lot more impact if he had not presided over the creeping expansion of sports betting into baseball. That statement is not to say the Commissioner is sanctioning betting on baseball.

But in my limited travels so far this year and even going back to last year in New York, I was struck by how pervasive sports book betting, and its corresponding sponsorships, were at the ballpark. It’s hard to take declarations of careful stewardship seriously when ballparks are literally opening sportsbooks on stadium grounds!

Photo by G Fiume/Getty Images

You likely saw ads for DraftKings on this very page to access this article. Baseball has let the horse out of the proverbial barn and it would be naive to expect that this problem will not get worse before it gets better. Baseball saw the advent of sportsbooks nationwide coming when the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (“PASPA”) in Murphy v. NCAA, et al.

Once the prohibition against states other than Nevada having sportsbooks, a Pandora’s box was unleashed upon a culture that likely did not anticipate the proliferation of gambling that is seemingly omnipresent in telecasts, stadiums to name a few places.

FanDuel is coming

The regional sports network model is dying for most of baseball’s clubs. True Blue LA has covered this implosion from time to time.

On June 3, Bloomberg reported that gambling site Fanduel is reportedly nearing an agreement to purchase the naming rights of the 18 regional sports networks owned by Diamond Sports Group, which filed for bankruptcy protection in March 2023.

FanDuel is an American gambling company that offers sportsbooks, daily fantasy sports, horse racing, and an online casino. The company boasts more than 12 million users and currently operates sportsbooks in multiple states. It is still currently illegal to use a sportsbook in California, as we all know from the Mizuhara scandal.

The naming rights deal would allow FanDuel-related programming to be shown on the channels, potentially exposing millions more fans to the online betting company’s platform.

MLB has discussed launching its own streaming service using rights from Diamond Sports Group if the company was unable to reorganize while in bankruptcy. Currently, the Padres and the Diamondbacks have had their games produced and transmitted by the league,

Considering the gargantuan amount of money that is pouring into the sportsbook industry in a post-PASPA world, issues with gambling, fan sites, and betting in baseball are likely going to get worse before they get better. We will continue to provide updates as they become available.