Major League Baseball Closes Investigation Involving Shohei Ohtani, Ippei Mizuhara

@joe
Again, you are using confirmation bias to help yourself understand something. Confirmation bias is an unreliable way to gather information, though, because it puts on blinders to people who do not fit within the purview of your life. It is also a strange hill to die on because it can provide false positives. For example, I could probably find you a stoner that lives with his parents and doesn’t care to look at his bank account. Would that exonerate Shohei for you?

But for a more practical example, for Shohei to not check his account requires putting yourself in his shoes. It’s not like he needs to run credit checks like you or I. He doesn’t really need to check his account if he wants to travel or buy a car or house, like you or I. And if he trusted Mizuhara as much as he seems to, if he was curious about his bank account, he could just ask Mizuhara. He doesn’t need to log into his bank account because, unlike you or I, he had a right-hand man that he trusted. And if that right-hand man WASN’T a criminal and doing his job, why would Ohtani even need to check his bank account?

At this point, I feel like your pride is getting in the way of admitting that maybe you weren’t right about this one. There is mounds of evidence viewed by lawyers, some of whom wanted nothing more than to prove Shohei was guilty, that not only proved his innocence, but in a pretty open and shut manner. Followed by the fact all of your questions and hypotheticals have been easily debunked. And yet, you still feel “98%” confident that Shohei was involved.

And the conversation should end right there. But even when faced with information that disproves your logic, you still double down on it. But here, let me try again, one more time.

Shohei’s relationship with money is different than yours:
1. You are grossly underestimating his net worth, since he makes most of his money via sponsorships. So $16mm might still be a lot even to him, but not by as much as you think. Certainly not “half of [his] life savings”
2. Just like how some people say, “Siri, tell me the weather” without opening the weather app, Shohei could say “Mizuhara, how do my bank accounts look?” without opening his bank account. And remember, just because YOU would check your accounts in spite of having a trusted assistant, that doesn’t mean everybody else would. Shohei trusted Mizuhara, so had no reason to check for himself, especially when shooting his buddy a text was way easier
3. He’s accepting less than 3% of his salary per year (~4.3% if you want to base it on the actual value). If a company you really like offered you a 10 year, $10mm contract (so, $1mm/yr) that you’d make even if you got hurt or under performed, would you take it? Or would you say “nah, pay me $50k/yr now and the rest in increments, starting in 10 years”? If you said “no”, then you might realize how much more valuable money is to you than Shohei, and maybe even reconsider your skepticism. And if you said “yes” to the restructure, you are lying

Your hypothetical trial doesn’t even make any sense:
– Whether or not he viewed his bank account is irrelevant. The case would hinge on whether or not he could prove an alibi for why the paper trail for the $50M was in his account had nothing to do with him (a bank error, for example). Not, “well, shucks guys, he didn’t look at his account! How can we prove him guilty now?!” So I am genuinely not actually sure what you even thought you were proving with this hypothetical, or what this has anything to do with Shohei (other than not checking an account, I guess?)

You say you aren’t dying on the hill of whether or not somebody checked their accounts for the past 26 months, and yet, you doubled down on that point. You even said, “I will drop this point” if somebody can prove they haven’t checked their account. But again:
1. Statistically, there ere probably a handful of people on this site who haven’t checked their bank accounts in years, even if the vast majority of us check regularly
2. You’d probably want somebody who had a similar situation to Shohei, not just anybody
3. I already pointed out that it wouldn’t be that surprising if a stoner who lacks motivation and still lives at home wouldn’t check his accounts. What about a 16 year-old with affluent parents who made him a bank account, and still pay for everything? Or a housewife who says “my husband handles our finances”? There are a number of situations that could involve a party not looking at their bank accounts, even if those situations differ from your own. But even their existence doesn’t prove Shohei innocent or guilty, anyway