The MLB Thread

Yeah, but people are acting like attendance has only been a problem in recent years.

A thought occurred to me regarding the A's impending move to Vegas. There's already a AAA team playing there, the Aviators (formerly the Stars and 51s) — in fact, it's the A's current AAA affiliate. Once the A's make the move there's pretty much no way the Aviators can continue playing there, right? Would it be possible to move the Aviators to Oakland, maybe as part of a deal? I mean, sure, it won't be the top-level team, but...

Edited by megarockman on Feb 8th 2024 at 2:41:38 PM

The Coliseum is in such disrepair that a) I'm not sure even a Triple-A team would care to play there, and b) Oakland might prefer to demolish it and develop something on the site for non-baseball purposes. But who knows?

I had been thinking about a new stadium as well for such a AAA team as part of such an agreement.

The Mall of America was built on the former site of the Twins' original home.

Looks like we've got our first baseball scandal of 2024, and it's a big one. Apparently there were a number of wire transfers sent from Shohei Ohtani's account to an illegal California bookie, totaling 4.5 million dollars. Multiple different, mutually contradictory stories have come out from the people involved, so we'll see how everything plays out.

The first story to come out, told by Ohtani's interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, and initially confirmed by Ohtani's publicist is as follows: Mizuhara ran up substantial gambling debts betting mostly on international soccer (and never on baseball). Ohtani, who considers Mizuhara a close personal friend agreed to cover the debts. The reason Ohtani transferred the money directly to the bookie rather than to Mizuhara is that he didn't trust Mizuhara not to gamble it away. Ohtani's publicist later retracted this story which, if true, would mean that Ohtani, while well-intentioned, would still be guilty of breaking federal laws and MLB rules.

The second story, which is the story that Ohtani's publicist and lawyers are currently backing is that Mizuhara instead stole the money from Ohtani to cover his gambling debts, and that Ohtani had no knowledge of any of it until the news reports came out. In combination with this, Ohtani's representatives have supposedly contacted law enforcement about the theft although no one has specified which law enforcement agency they've contacted.

I obviously have no way of knowing which, if any, of these stories are true, but it will certainly be interesting to see how this plays out.