Tim Donaghy added MLB was ‘smart to sweep this under the rug as quickly as possible’

As Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter of Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, is dealing with the legal matters of his gambling scandal, many still question how much the two-way baseball player knew about it before everything blew up in the public eye.

Before the 2024 regular season began, Ohtani held a press conference, during which no media was allowed to ask questions and he said he has “never” bet on sports and Mizuhara’s claim that Ohtani was voluntarily paying off his massive gambling debt was a “complete lie.”

However, disgraced former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who went to prison after admitting he bet on games he officiated in many seasons in the early 2000s, isn’t buying that Ohtani had no clue about Mizuhara’s gambling addiction.

Donaghy made an appearance on OutKick’s “Hot Mic,” when he was asked if there’s any way Ohtani didn’t know.

“Heck no,” he responded. “I think Major League Baseball was smart to sweep this under the rug as quickly as possible. You look at that guy and what he’s done for baseball globally and the fans he’s attracted around the world, the last thing they want is for him to be somebody who’s involved in betting on his own games and maybe doing things that he wasn’t supposed to do.

“I think they were very smart to get that under the rug as quickly as possible and say that he had nothing to do with it, and basically have this other guy take the fall for everything.”

SHOHEI OHTANI SAYS HE HAS ‘NEVER’ BET ON SPORTS, CALLS EX-INTERPRETER’S STORY ‘COMPLETE LIE’

Donaghy also doesn’t believe Mizuhara never bet on baseball, considering investigators found he placed about 19,000 bets between December 2021 and January 2024, which comes out to about 25 per day.

Mizuhara bet an average $12,800 per bet, with ranges between $10 and $160,000.

“I think absolutely,” Donaghy said when asked if he believed Mizuhara bet on baseball. “When you look at the amount of bets he was placing, obviously he had some type of addiction. It’s not like he could just turn it off when he had baseball seasons. There’s no doubt in my mind that he not only bet on baseball, he bet on Ohtani’s game, and I think Ohtani was right there with him knowing what he was doing.”

MLB and Ohtani’s agent, Nez Balelo, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Donaghy’s statement.

Donaghy isn’t the only one who believes Ohtani played a part in this. Pete Rose, MLB’s all-time hits leader who also has an infamous gambling past, made an eye-popping comment when the scandal first came to light.

“Well, back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I wish I’d have had an interpreter. I’d be scot-free,” Rose said in a video posted to social media just days after things broke.

Mizuhara is expected to plead guilty to one count of bank fraud and one count of subscribing to a false tax return per the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. He’s likely to enter the plea at some point in the next few weeks.