Oh, internet, you’re crazy
On Saturday, Shohei Ohtani, the best player in baseball, signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers for ten years, $700 million. It is the largest contract in baseball history by more than a quarter billion dollars. In the 24 hours or so leading up to the announcement, speculation ran wild as to where Ohtani would end up, leading to craziness at sportsbooks.
Ohtani was silent about his possible free agency destination, something that had baseball reporters furious. After all, the less talk, the less content they can pump out. Some journalists and media personalities even said the secrecy of his meetings with teams was bad for baseball. Ok.
But then, on Friday afternoon, Dodgers media outlet reported that, according to multiple sources, the modern-day Babe Ruth was signing with the Toronto Blue Jays. Other respected outlets ran with it.
On top of that, people were tracking the route of a private jet from California to Toronto, a jet that was supposedly transporting Shohei Ohtani.
With rumors now heavy that Ohtani was going to be on the Blue Jays, sportsbooks shifted Toronto’s odds to win the 2024 World Series from 15-1 to as short as 8-1. According to ESPN, there was an avalanche of bets on the Blue Jays – almost 85% of money on World Series bets at BetMGM were on Toronto on Friday.
“There were some pretty respected players that were betting the Blue Jays,” Eric Biggio, Caesars’ lead baseball trader, told ESPN. “Then, the soap opera took a different path.”
As it turned out, the person who stepped off that private jet was entrepreneur Robert Herjavec from the show “Shark Tank.” And on Saturday, Ohtani himself made the announcement of his signing with L.A. on social media.
Things have settled down
The Blue Jays are now at about 15-1 to 16-1 at sportsbooks and the Dodgers are now the World Series favorites at around 6-1 (there are some outliers for both teams).
“These [reports] were from legitimate baseball guys, not random people on Twitter throwing things out there. … We had to respect it,” Blum added. “When it turned out not to be true, we cleaned it up.”
Patrick Eichner, senior director of communications for PointsBet Canada, told ESPN that the bets being placed on Toronto were not people trying to beat the news before the odds shifted. The odds had already shifted with the Ohtani rumor – it was just bettors excited to put money on the Jays.
In addition to the odds changing with the Toronto rumblings, it is also rumored that the initial report caused the Los Angeles to increase its offer by as much as $100 million. And what’s crazy still is that the $700 million contract easily could have been more if Ohtani was healthy. He missed the final month of the season because of an elbow injury that will keep him from pitching in 2024.
But when a guy can hit 44 homers and run up a 1.066 OPS in fewer than 500 at-bats (in addition to his previous other-worldly seasons), he’s worth a lot of money, even if he will have to wait a year to get back on the mound.
Image credit: Flickr.com / Mogami Kariya