No. 16: San Francisco Giants

There’s not much of a Shohei Ohtani update yet—Ohtani said yesterday that he will address the media this afternoon—but, and this can’t be too surprising, the story of interpreter Ippei Mizuhara as lifelong con artist has been coming into sharper focus. NBC Los Angeles reports that the University of California, Riverside—Mizuhara’s college, according to the Angels’ media guide—has no record of him being a student there, and the Boston Red Sox released a statement to say that, despite various media reports, Mizuhara never worked for them. There also seem to be various problems with the media guide claim that Mizuhara worked for the Yankees during spring training in 2012. The years before Mizuhara met Ohtani get foggier and blurrier and more George Santos-like all the time.

In other words, a cogent case seems to building around the idea that Mizuhara scammed Ohtani in truly insidious and troubling ways—emerging from a shady past, befriending the star when he was only 19 and acting the big brother in a “Truman Show” way in order to have access to Ohtani’s wealth and fame.

I’m not saying that this story is true or not true. I have no idea. I’m saying that the easiest thing in the world was to predict that the stories would start going this way.

See, this emerging story would obviously be terrible for Mizuhara, but it would be a best-case scenario for Shohei Ohtani and Major League Baseball and the game itself. Ohtani as naive dupe is the cleanest way out of this mess. Sure, there may be questions to answer about how Ohtani could fall for such a scam and how, in his carefully ordered life, he could put so much of his trust, and, indeed, love in someone stealing millions from him… but such things do happen in big ways and small, so it’s relatable—perhaps we’ve all been duped on some level—and it would clear Ohtani both legally and, in a large sense, morally.

Sure, some people would never buy it, and Ohtani’s sparkling reputation would, at least in some circles, get dinged. But that’s about the best that anyone around the game can hope for now. So, yes, I imagine this version of the story will really gain momentum over the next few days.

And now, back to our regularly-scheduled program…

Will the Giants ever again have a 30-home run hitter (and does it matter?)

San Francisco’s Pac Bell Park opened on April 11, 2000, fittingly, with a game matching the Giants and Dodgers. There were six home runs hit that day—three of them by 35-year-old Dodgers’ shortstop Kevin Elster—and the Giants lost, 6-5. Two days later, four Giants hit home runs, but they still lost, 11-7. For the season, the Giants hit 110 home runs in their home ballpark, third in the National League, and with special attention being paid to splashballs that landed in McCovey Cove, the park seemed a pretty good place to hit some longballs.

In 2001, of course, Barry Bonds set the all-time record with 73 home runs. He hit 37 of them at home, again suggesting that the park was friendly enough to sluggers. Heck, Rich Aurilia hit a career-smashing 37 home runs that year. The Giants led the league in home runs.

In 2002, Jeff Kent set his career high with 37 home runs, though he hit only 11 of them at home. The place was definitely beginning to establish itself as more of a pitcher’s park. Still, Bonds bashed another 46 that year, then 45 the next year, then 45 more in 2004, and as long as he was hitting splashballs, Pac Bell (which would later become SBC Park, then AT&T Park, then Oracle Park) was viewed as a viable home run venue.

But Bonds missed almost all of the 2005 season. That year, Pedro Feliz led the Giants in home runs with 20, and the team finished 14th in the league in homers. Bonds was back for the next two seasons, and he led the team with 26 home runs in 2006 and 28 home runs in 2007. The Giants were bottom-five in home runs both years.

Here then are the Giants home run leaders since Bonds’ retirement (and, in parentheses, the Giants home run rank in the National League; I left out the COVID season):