Shohei Ohtani stands alone in spotlight amid gambling scandal
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Tim Keown, ESPN Senior Writer
SHOHEI OHTANI WALKED from the left-field corner to the right-field corner of Dodger Stadium on Sunday afternoon to have a festive conversation with a group of his old Angels teammates, and the news of it was that he did it alone. Before Ippei Mizuhara was fired last week and accused Monday by Ohtani of stealing $4.5 million from the Dodgers star to pay off Mizuhara’s gambling debt to a sports bookie under federal investigation, the mere idea of Ohtani covering that much ground and spending that much time on a baseball field without Mizuhara would have been incomprehensible.
It’s difficult to imagine Ohtani without Mizuhara. Ohtani appears somehow diminished without his ever-present subordinate: smaller, less imposing, as if he needed Mizuhara’s constant presence to assume his full stature. There was a certain choreography involved in getting it just right. Mizuhara almost always followed about four steps behind Ohtani, almost always wearing Ohtani’s backpack and carrying Ohtani’s water bottle, as if he needed to remain close enough to ward off any intrusion but far enough away to allow the great man’s aura to breathe.
Through six years in the big leagues, through two MVPs with the Angels and the historic two-way greatness, up to the record 10-year, $700 million contract he signed with the Dodgers, Ohtani has always been a man apart, with one exception: Mizuhara. Other players have interpreters, but only Ohtani had an interpreter who worked as a trainer and a coach and a valet and a best friend and a bellman in addition to translating his interactions with the media.
Separateness has always been part of the Ohtani mystique. He has been, in many ways, an independent contractor, allowed to conduct his unique business as a solo act within the broad parameters of a team, wearing his talent as a suit of armor. He was always too busy, too regimented, too locked in, to be subject to the mundane currents of the other 25 men on the roster. He was constantly preparing to do something nobody had ever done, and he, along with Mizuhara, was afforded the time and space to do it on his own terms.
Each was so dependent upon the other that it seems unthinkable that the relationship could have been parasitic. “To summarize how I’m feeling right now, I’m just beyond shock,” Ohtani said during an appearance before the media Monday. “It’s really hard to verbalize how I’m feeling at this point.” By now everyone knows the prevailing narrative: Ohtani alleges that Mizuhara stole $4.5 million to pay off his gambling debts, a story Mizuhara seemed to adopt only after telling ESPN that Ohtani authorized and physically completed the payments that would get his friend out of the hole. Regardless of Ohtani’s level of involvement, the truth is stark, and alarming for the Dodgers and baseball: The name of baseball’s biggest star — the highest-paid athlete in the history of North American sports — is on bank transfers, totaling millions, sent from his account to Mathew Bowyer, a Southern California bookmaker under federal investigation.
Mizuhara was part of the Ohtani mystique; instead of reducing Ohtani’s separateness, he italicized it. Ohtani was so separate, so different, that he had someone constantly at his side, handling his current needs and predicting his next, the one man capable of sensing every subtle change in vibration. In the process, Mizuhara attained a level of celebrity himself: the glory of the adjacent. With Ohtani nearly untouchable and unreachable, this spring the Dodgers fielded multiple interview requests for Mizuhara before the scandal; outlets from Japan and the U.S. were interested in telling the Mizuhara story, no doubt hoping his proximity to Ohtani would lend a greater understanding of baseball’s central character.
Ohtani and Mizuhara spent so much time together that last summer I began several conversations with Angels players by asking them a question that was only partly tongue-in-cheek: Did they think Ohtani and Mizuhara ever got sick of each other? Most laughed, and many answered with some version of, “I’ve often wondered the same thing.” None of them could remember seeing any signs of strain. And last June Phil Nevin, then the Angels manager, told me: “I don’t know what Shohei’s doing every day at the ballpark. I leave that to him.”
That, and everything else, was left to Ohtani and his ever-present confidant. “Interpreter” was never an adequate word to describe Mizuhara, who toted Ohtani’s training tools and to-the-second workout schedule in the backpack. Ohtani’s rhythms were Mizuhara’s rhythms. They occupied the same locker, ate at the same table in the players’ lounge, sat on the same five feet of bench in every dugout. Until Ohtani got his driver’s license last season, Mizuhara drove the two of them to the ballpark every day. Nobody knew if they lived together, but his Angels teammates assumed they did. From the outside, it appeared that Mizuhara cleared away every menial task and potential obstacle; the great one would worry only about his game. Mizuhara’s constant presence was proof of Ohtani’s singular genius, so much so that it is jarring to see him, now, walk alone.
PRIVACY IS A famous person entering a favorite restaurant through the back door. What Ohtani practices feels like something else, something that requires constant vigilance and regular upkeep. He announced his marriage on Instagram during spring training — despite no teammate with the Angels or Dodgers knowing he even had a girlfriend. He adorned the post with a photograph of his dog.
Any expectation that Ohtani would conduct his business more openly as a Dodger was gone before he agreed to his $700 million deal, when his representatives gave the team approximately one minute of advance notice before announcing he was signing. That was one minute more than he gave the Dodgers before the marriage announcement. On Feb. 29, a member of the team’s media relations staff woke up early and saw Ohtani’s Instagram post. The employee immediately sent it out to everyone else in the department. They learned her identity — former Japanese professional basketball player Mamiko Tanaka — along with the rest of us.
There is a heaviness to Ohtani, perhaps from the weight of projecting a nation’s culture and values into the world, the culture and values of a nation that cares deeply about both. Someone who has never watched an inning of baseball would know there is something different about him, just by watching the confidence he exudes walking to the batter’s box. His frame and bearing — 6-foot-5, eternally upright — allow him to walk through a crowd and fix his gaze just over the top of almost everyone’s head. It has served him well as a means of practiced avoidance. Everyone is there; no one is there.
With the help of his agent, Nez Balelo, Ohtani is hypervigilant in walling himself off from a prying public. He is in every Japanese newspaper every day, on nearly every newscast, a man who, especially now, cannot be overcovered anywhere baseball is played. Given that context, his ability to remain not only private but secluded feels unprecedented.
The Dodgers have sent out flares suggesting it would be different. At the beginning of spring training, with Ohtani’s availability as a hitter still in doubt after his offseason Tommy John-ish surgery — his professed ignorance of the actual procedure another example of exceeding the bounds of normal ballplayer privacy — Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was asked if Ohtani’s spring timeline would be strictly his decision.
“No, there’s a group,” Roberts said, no doubt seeing where this was headed. “Coaching staff, hitting staff, training staff, performance staff will all get together and figure out the best day for him to start.”
Ohtani partakes in the outward displays of baseball bro-hood, like wearing the kabuto helmet while coursing through the tunnel of teammates in the dugout after a home run while with the Angels. But for the most part he hung out with Mizuhara, obsessed over his diet, slept as much as possible and worked on his game.
He was, it seemed, the perfect employee, an international icon of whom Nevin says, “He wakes up every morning trying to figure out how he can be the best baseball player on the planet.” Even at $700 million, nearly all of it deferred, he appeared to be a risk-free investment. His status in Japan assures the Dodgers of countless millions in sponsorships, and judging by the scene at spring training, enough No. 17 jerseys have been sold to pay off a good part of his deal.
But now Major League Baseball is investigating Ohtani and Mizuhara over the matter, and Mizuhara’s changing stories only heighten the intrigue. Whichever scenario turns out to be true, an infinite number of questions linger. To this point, the only tangible fallout is Mizuhara’s removal from Ohtani’s orbit, a massive disruption to Ohtani’s cherished routine.
His old Angels teammates say they can’t believe either side of it — that Ohtani would gamble, that Mizuhara would steal — while in the process revealing how little they really knew about Ohtani. He famously kept to a certain asceticism, going from the hotel to the ballpark and back to the hotel. It seemed to be working perfectly, until now.
Angels closer Carlos Estevez was the main target of Ohtani’s cross-field excursion on Sunday afternoon. The two were friends as teammates, and they spent nearly 10 minutes chatting in the right-field corner. Estevez said he texted Ohtani to congratulate him on his new contract but otherwise hasn’t been in touch. Asked about Ohtani’s current predicament, Estevez said, “I’d rather not comment on that. We’ve still got to see. We’ve got to just wait for the truth to come out.”
In the Dodgers’ clubhouse, players politely waved off questions about Ohtani and Mizuhara. Reliever Alex Vesia said, “I feel like it’s none of my business.”
THE ANGELS ALWAYS felt temporary, a sort of practice team for Ohtani to display his powers before moving on. What’s next? was the nagging question for six years, following him around like a roomful of reporters. He signed with the Angels, a surprising choice, to ensure he could pursue his goal of proving himself as a hitter and a starting pitcher. It seemed wild — maybe even irresponsible — at the time, with many in baseball suggesting he would eventually have to choose one or the other. Instead, Ohtani reconfigured our idea of what a baseball player can be. Of his six seasons (he didn’t pitch in 2019 after his first Tommy John surgery), two of them — 2021 and 2023 — are among the best seasons in baseball history.
And so it feels as if his career has been a prolonged prelude to this moment, when he would not only cash in historically but play for a team that promises the opportunity for multiple World Series rings. Not surprisingly, what’s next is 30 miles up the road in Los Angeles, to the team with the most stars — four MVPs! — and the most attention. In terms of psychic distance, those 30 miles feel like thousands.
The Dodgers were swept by the Diamondbacks in the National League Division Series last October, and the front office set out to assure postseason failure like that — and like many seasons around the COVID-shortened 2020 title — not only wouldn’t but couldn’t happen again. Team president Andrew Friedman set out to fail-proof their roster, adding Ohtani and Teoscar Hernandez and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow. Roberts spoke the obvious, but still unexpected, when he said this team should win a championship. The offseason group texts between players tried to keep up with the big-name acquisitions. “I wanted to come back here from the beginning,” says reliever Ryan Brasier, who re-signed just before spring training. “But I was watching these names pop up, one after another, and it was crazy. I don’t think there’s anybody who wouldn’t want to be on this team.”
And yet his new teammates have no stories about Ohtani, no anecdotes about spring training dinners or off-the-field outings. Ohtani is temporarily free of his two-way duties as he rehabilitates from his elbow surgery and focuses exclusively on hitting. He is now, quite abruptly, one of the least busy players in baseball. The pitchers say he hangs out with the hitters now, and they’re sure to have more to report once he can resume pitching. The hitters say he just got here and is so locked into his own routine that it’s difficult to break through. Meanwhile, Yamamoto is standing at Joe Kelly’s locker, springy and smiling, and they’re doing the best they can to re-create the round of golf they played the day before. Kelly tells Yamamoto he was excellent on the front nine but things got away from him after that, and they’re laughing and pantomiming their swings and promising to play another day.
At the spring training complex, Ohtani was given a locker near the main door to the clubhouse, one to the left of Mookie Betts and one to the right of Yamamoto. Nearly $1.4 billion worth of investment occupying roughly 36 square feet of floor space.
This is what everything has been leading toward: this uniform, this corner of the room, these expectations.
THE FIRST DODGER to enter into the Ohtani force field could very well have been relief pitcher J.P. Feyereisen. He’s just a guy trying to work his way back from shoulder surgery that kept him out the entire 2023 season, and early in spring training he was throwing some live batting practice on a back field at Camelback Ranch.
One of the hitters, Ohtani, ran up a 3-2 count before hitting a home run on a soggy get-it-over fastball. Feyereisen thought nothing of it, just getting his work in on a nice spring day, until that day’s workout ended and he went back to his locker.
Feyereisen, who has since been sent to the minors, stopped. “Oh, my god,” he said. There were at least 50 reporters and camera operators waiting for him, crowding his shoes. They wanted to know what pitch he threw, whether he expected it to leave the yard, what it felt like, what he thought of Ohtani’s swing, whether he had ever seen such a thing.
“Ah, just classic,” Feyereisen said later. “Welcome to the new world. The entire media group was clumped around my locker, asking me, ‘What was it like giving up a homer to Ohtani?’ I mean, what could I say? It was the same as it is giving up a homer to anyone else, but I knew that’s not what anybody wanted to hear. He’s hit more than one, you know, and I guarantee you he’s hit better pitches.”
It’s been observed over and over, the number of reporters following Ohtani around in search of the tiniest morsels, but it remains impressive. Japanese photographers stationed themselves at the entrance to the players’ parking lot every morning this spring, waiting to get the same photo — Ohtani driving, Mizuhara in the passenger seat — they got the day before and will get the day after. There was some at least some mystery, however: Ohtani arrived in a different new Porsche — it’s one of his endorsement deals in Japan — every four or five days before settling in with a silver Carrera for the final weeks in Arizona.
“It’s crazy they’re all here every day,” one Dodger said of the Japanese media, asking that he not be identified by name. “Because he never talks to them.”
Mizuhara’s firing and the conflicting stories swelled the crowd. Ohtani is no longer just a baseball story; national news outlets from two countries arrived to cover this most unexpected of stories. Close to 100 reporters — no cameras allowed — stood shoulder to shoulder in the team’s interview room on Monday to listen to Ohtani deliver his statement and leave the room without taking questions.
At the beginning of spring training, Roberts, perhaps jokingly, nominated outfielder Jason Heyward to be the one on whom reporters could rely to contextualize Ohtani’s achievements when Ohtani chooses not to — a designated speaker of sorts. It was a nod to Heyward’s experience and statesmanship, but it also served to emphasize Ohtani’s lack of availability. In Anaheim, the guys speaking for Ohtani were Zach Neto, Taylor Ward and Logan O’Hoppe. When it’s a team filled with All-Stars and three other MVPs, maybe the most accomplished collection of talent in the past several decades, it’s a tougher sell.
He seldom speaks for himself. “I know,” catcher Will Smith said during spring training. Then, perhaps thinking that it sounded harsh, he quickly said, “And I’m fine with it.”
Even before there was a hint of a gambling scandal, Ohtani’s interviews could take the form of a flash mob — surprising, crowded, here and then not. They are often negotiated. The Dodgers held discussions with Balelo, Ohtani’s agent, to arrange for Ohtani to appear at a news conference in South Korea when the team arrived for the weeklong trip culminating in the season-opening miniseries against the Padres. The negotiations for such a simple request began weeks before the trip.
With the Angels, Ohtani normally spoke only after his starts on the mound. Since he won’t be pitching this season, the Dodgers suggested he address reporters once a week, a reasonable request of an employee of his stature. Now, with the questions expected to be more pointed, more likely to prick at his previously impenetrable bubble, it’s unclear when we’ll hear from him again.
THE ANGELS’ CLUBHOUSE early on a Saturday morning in Tempe feels a little like a bus station: a few players sprawled in front of their lockers, no music, a general vibe of inertia. Mike Trout is sitting at his locker, speaking quietly on his phone. The three reporters who now cover the team stand at one end of the room. Six years ago Ohtani’s presence changed everything, immediately, and his absence changed it back just as fast.
For six seasons the players who wore this uniform were constantly asked to contextualize Ohtani’s achievements. They were probed for the smallest tidbits on his personality or work ethic or willingness to engage with his teammates. Given the team’s situation — perennially meh — Ohtani brought attention that otherwise would have stayed away, as it does now.
“It’s going to be different here without him,” Angels starting pitcher Griffin Canning says. “I can’t say easier per se, because of what a great player he is. But when you’re trying to turn a culture around and get the identity we want, I think a little less attention might benefit us.”
No detail is ever too small, and I know because I sought out even the most microscopic hints that might lead to a trail that could possibly illuminate his achievements. (I’ve never covered anyone more and known less.) This spring, it made headlines when Ohtani carried a glove onto the practice field. Ohtani has a fielder’s glove! What does it mean? During a spring training game against the Reds, Ohtani faced Nick Martinez and popped up to short left field. It would be hard to find a more insignificant moment, but several Japanese reporters began debating the type of pitch Martinez threw to induce the popup. It was off-speed, everyone agreed, but what flavor? After several urgent exchanges, they came to an agreement: a changeup.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a relief to not have to face those questions,” Angels pitcher Reid Detmers says. “There was stuff other teams wouldn’t have to worry about. When he’s around, it’s a good thing, obviously, but there is a little bit more distraction. A lot more media around. And obviously, when something happened, like if he got hurt, other people would have to answer and give their opinion on it. We’re professional athletes; we’re used to it. I would say it’s a little bit quieter around here now.”
Detmers speaks carefully, repeatedly interrupting himself to clarify or change course or choose the right word. Detmers wants to be clear that he is speaking about two different things: Ohtani and post-Ohtani. The post-Ohtani world — a united front with a fresh path forward — should not be viewed as a negative reflection on Ohtani. It seems the situation is just as hard to contextualize now as it was before.
OHTANI’S LOCKER AT Dodger Stadium is next to a curtain separating the clubhouse from the bathroom. It’s three hours before the first game of the Freeway Series against the Angels, the first day Ohtani has been in uniform in the United States since the gambling scandal broke in South Korea, and security guards move about the room, posting and reposting, going from one end of the clubhouse to the other, dipping in and out of the curtain, talking to each other through their hands. There is a half-drunk bottle of orange juice in Ohtani’s locker, surrounded by unopened packs of batting gloves and his uniform.
One of the televisions hanging from the ceiling is showing the official results from Aqueduct on “America’s Day at the Races.” That’s Money paid out 7.20, 4.20 and 3.00 in the sixth race. At 12:48 p.m., Ohtani appears, walking quickly to his locker and turning, his back to the room. He looks startled when he asked if he would answer a few questions. He stops, seems to think about it, and then says, “Tomorrow.”
When tomorrow comes, Ohtani walks into the interview room, followed by Roberts and Stan Kasten and nearly every high-ranking member of the Dodgers organization. Kelly is the lone player to stand to Ohtani’s left and listen to him say, “On a personal note, I’m very sad and shocked that someone I trusted has done this.”
Ohtani lays out Mizuhara’s alleged deceit while staring at the camera hanging from the ceiling near the back of the room. He says he didn’t know about Mizuhara’s gambling; he didn’t knowingly pay off his debts; he has never gambled on sports or asked someone to do so on his behalf; he is assisting in whatever investigations are taking place.
“Now I’m looking forward to focusing on the season,” he says. “I’m glad we had this opportunity to talk, and I’m sure there will be continuing investigations going forward.”
With that, he stands up and walks out of the room, followed again by the long tail of Dodgers executives. Fewer than 20 minutes later, he is on the field, playing catch in short left field. It is the first day he is cleared to throw as part of his elbow rehabilitation, and he is eager to start the process of getting back to what defines him. He stands about 60 feet from his throwing partner, alone.
Thirty years ago, the New York Mets and Colorado Rockies opened Coors Field on April 26,1995 in a game that would embody the beauty (if you’re a hitter) and absurdity (if you’re a pitcher) of the ballpark, when they combined for 20 runs and 33 hits in an 11-9, 14-inning Colorado win. It was just the beginning of a baseball experience like no other.
Standing 5,280 feet above sea level in Denver’s LoDo neighborhood, the picturesque ballpark is one of the sport’s gems, constantly ranking near the top of MLB stadium rankings and keeping the Rockies’ attendance among the league’s highest regardless of the home team’s record.
“Since 1995 I’ve been at nearly 95% of the games played at Coors Field,” owner Dick Monfort told ESPN last week. “Of all those thousands of games, my fondest memories are of a sold-out ballpark on an 85-degree day with no humidity, a beautiful sunset, and 50,000 men, women and kids soaking in the timeless magic of iconic Coors Field.”
But for the pitchers who have taken the mound at the stadium over the past three decades, Coors Field is something else: a house of horrors.
‘S—, the whole time there was a horror story, man,” said Marvin Freeman, who started 41 games for the Rockies over the first two years of the ballpark. “We called it arena baseball. It was like a pinball machine up in there sometimes. Balls were flying out of there. And you just had to make sure when you did leave Colorado you maintained some sanity because it could be hard on your mentality.”
To commemorate the anniversary of a launching pad like no other, we asked those who have pitched or taken the field at a place where breaking balls don’t break and a mistake left over the plate can travel 500 feet into the mountain air to share their best (er, worst) Coors Field horror stories.
A big swing haunts you: ‘It’s all part of the Coors experience’
On May 28, 2016, Carlos Estevez was less than a month into his major league career when he entered in the eighth inning against the San Francisco Giants with a daunting task: facing a future Hall of Famer in a one-run game.
Before Buster Posey stepped into the batter’s box, Estevez’s Colorado coaches and teammates gave the reliever some advice on how to approach the situation.
“I remember throwing a fastball away,” Estevez recently recalled to ESPN. “He could crush pitches close to him. ‘Stay safe. Go away. He’s going to single to right field, worst-case scenario.’ I’m new. The new guy was showing up.”
When Posey connected on a 96 mph fastball on the outer half of the plate with a 2-0 count, it momentarily appeared to Estevez that following the advice had paid off.
“I go [points in the air like pitchers do for popups]. It was one of those. The ball goes out. I didn’t even look anywhere else. I just kept my face down,” Estevez said. “Oh my god. That was so bad. After that, never again — unless I knew the ball was right on top of me. Man, that was bad. I felt so bad. The older guys, of course, made so much fun of me with that. Like, bro, you don’t know where you’re pitching.”
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Flashback: Buster Posey cranks his second 3-run HR of the game
On May 28, 2016, Giants catcher Buster Posey takes Carlos Estevez deep for his second three-run homer of the game at Coors Field.
If Estevez can take solace in anything from that day, it is that his experience mirrors that of pitchers throughout the sport — just ask Ubaldo Jiménez, who had a run of stardom for the Rockies until being traded in 2011. “We were like, you can never point up, you can never think it is a fly ball, because it’s probably going to go out.”
Jerry Dipoto, Rockies reliever (1997-2000) and current Mariners general manager: I saw some of the longest home runs that a human can possibly hit. At the height of Mark McGwire, I watched him literally hit one over the scoreboard, which, if you have a chance and you stand at home plate, look at the left-field scoreboard, the Coke bottle that used to run alongside the scoreboard. He hit it over the Coke bottle, into the parking lot, through the windshield of Jerry McMorris, our owner, which was awesome.
Andrés Galarraga and Mike Piazza hit home runs over the center-field fence, over the forest in the rock waterfall up there, and up into the concourse that has like a 20-foot opening, looks like something out of “Star Wars,” and they were both line-drive missiles that probably only stopped because they hit something out in the concourse.
Ryne Nelson, opposing pitcher: I haven’t pitched there a ton, but C.J. Cron hit a ball that felt like it was 10 feet off the ground the whole way and it left the yard. So I’m not sure if it would’ve been a home run everywhere, but it was one of the more impressive home runs that I’ve given up.
Dipoto: I can remember giving up a homer to Henry Rodriguez to left field, one year when he was at the height of hitting homers. It was like a broken-bat, end-of-the-bat, oppo, what I thought was just a floater. It wound up in the wheelchair section out there.
Jeremy Guthrie, Rockies starter (2012): I was facing the Oakland Athletics. And they hit at least two, maybe three, upper-deck home runs. I was not under the impression they weren’t going to go out. Seeing balls go further and further and fans boo louder and louder, though — it’s all part of the Coors experience.
Dipoto: They had a row of seats in the upper deck in right field that was like a ring around the upper-deck seats, and it was a mile above sea level. An absurd distance beyond home plate.
I remember I had a really difficult time through the years with Ray Lankford. And Jeff Reed was catching me one day and I’m trying to get fastballs by Ray Lankford and I can’t get anything past him. It’s foul ball, foul ball, it feels like a 10-pitch AB. And he comes walking out. And every day in spring training, in my catch game, I’d throw a changeup. I didn’t actually have one or throw it in a game. It was just something to try to get some feel. Reeder came to the mound and said, “Hey, what do you think about just throwing that changeup?” I said, “I’ve never done it in a game, Reeder.”
He said, “Yeah, if you’ve never done it in a game, he won’t be expecting it either.” So I threw a changeup, and I actually threw it for a strike, and he hit it above the purple seats. It wound up going a mile. Like literally going a mile.
Tyler Anderson, Rockies starter (2016-19) and current Angels pitcher: My rookie year when I was called up … I remember there was a runner on first and two outs, which usually you feel pretty safe.
[Evan Longoria] hit like a line drive that got past the second baseman, where normally you’re like, “All right, there’s runners on first and third now.” And it just like rolled all the way to the wall. He got a triple and the runner scored from first. And I remember thinking to myself, How the heck is that a triple? Obviously I was pretty young in my pitching career, but I pitched a lot in college and the minor leagues, and that was never a triple. That was crazy. I remembered that. And I always thought pitching in Coors Field, it doesn’t matter if there’s only a runner on first, you’re never safe. Two outs, runner on first sometimes could feel safe, but it’s never safe.
Freeman: I always liked to say that every bad game that I had at Coors Field was because of Coors Field, not me. I usually fall back on that. But I do remember one particular case where I made it into the ninth inning, my son was going to be born the next day, and I was actually on the mound thinking about pitching my first complete game.
I ended up giving up a home run to Hal Morris. He hit an opposite-field home run on me. And Ellis Burks, I thought he was going to jump the fence and bring it back, but he didn’t catch it. And then I end up getting knocked out of the game in the ninth inning, and we subsequently end up losing that game, and my son was born the next day. That’s really the only game that sticks out to me … you gotta try and survive the next one.
ERAs turn into a scary sight: ‘That place is a nightmare’
Late in the 2023 season, then-Minnesota Twins reliever Caleb Thielbar boarded the plane to Colorado with something treasured by pitchers everywhere — an ERA starting with a 2.
With the Twins trailing 6-4 in the series opener, Thielbar was summoned from the bullpen to face Rockies star Charlie Blackmon. Thielbar retired the Colorado outfielder and left the outing with his sub-3.00 ERA still intact.
But the next day, with the Twins ahead 14-0, Thielbar entered the game in the bottom of the seventh inning — and his ERA wasn’t so lucky that time.
“It was my last outing of the year and I gave up back-to-back homers,” Thielbar told ESPN earlier this month. “And it bumped my ERA up over 3.00. And just one of those things that makes you mad and it stuck with me for a little bit.
“I don’t understand how to pitch there. For some reason, the Rockies have always kind of gotten me — no matter home or away — so they really got me there. But that place is a nightmare.”
Even though the back-to-back home runs hit by Colorado’s Elehuris Montero and Sean Bouchard pushed Thielbar’s ERA from 2.67 to a season-ending 3.23 mark, you’ll have to excuse some other pitchers who might not feel too badly for someone whose Coors Field horror story only involves allowing two runs.
Guthrie: I don’t know that I had any good outing at Coors. I know my ERA was 9.50 [at Coors] and 3.67 on the road that year. I really did want to pitch well there. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I went in with high hopes and a positive attitude. There aren’t as many people who go in with a good attitude as you hope. I really felt like the organization treated pitchers, and especially new pitchers, in a way where it’s almost inevitable you’re going to struggle. You need to change the way you prepare. You need to be aware of how your body is going to react at high altitude. Nothing felt different physically. I just pitched a lot worse.
Among the 223 pitchers with at least 40 innings at Coors, Guthrie’s 9.50 ERA is second worst, ahead of only Bryan Rekar, who posted a 10.16.
Walker Buehler, opposing pitcher: If you’re a starting pitcher and you normally go six, seven innings — going five innings there is some sort of accomplishment. I think honestly the toughest part from our side of it is not necessarily the home run, which a lot of people think it is. The field is so big. You give up a lot of hits you normally don’t give up.
On June 27, 2019, Buehler gave up 13 hits over 5⅔ innings at Coors, although the Dodgers won the game 12-8. Buehler gave up seven of the eight runs and his ERA rose from 2.96 to 3.43.
Honestly, it’s probably a top-five ballpark in baseball, but I just don’t think our game should be played at that kind of elevation. It legitimately changes the game. It’s just different. I don’t know if there’s some sort of f—ing dome vacuum technology thing we can get going there or what.
The scoreboard becomes a horror show: ‘Every game there is like a football game’
Sometimes it doesn’t matter who is on the mound at Coors Field, especially in the summer months when the days get warmer and the Rocky Mountain air gets even drier. An entire pitching staff can leave the ballpark with a battered ERA.
In fact, teams have averaged at least five runs per game at Coors Field in every season it has existed. Over that span, there were just three seasons since 1995 when the MLB average was 5.0 runs per game or more (1996, 1999 & 2000).
Even in the ballpark’s long history of scores that look like they belong in a football game, four-hour marathons of runners touching home plate and double-digit rallies, one series stands out from the crowd. Over four days on Father’s Day weekend of 2019, the Rockies and Padres combined to score 92 runs, setting a modern record for runs in a four-game series by surpassing a total set by the Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers … in 1929.
“Every game was like 15 to 14 or something like that. We would take the lead and then they would take the lead and then they would take the lead back,” recalled Trevor Story, the Rockies’ shortstop from 2016 to 2021 and a current Red Sox infielder. “It was just back and forth the whole way. Every game of the series was this way, so it was just mentally exhausting. You felt like whoever hit last was going to win. I think we lost a series and it ended up, it was just kind of deflating because we put up all those runs. That series sticks out to me.”
The teams scored in double digits five times, six runs were the fewest for either team in any game, and the Padres’ team ERA jumped from 4.23 to 4.65 while the Rockies’ rose from 4.97 to 5.29.
“My god, that series against the Padres. PTSD still. Between both teams, we scored 92 runs in a four-game series. It was miserable,” Estevez said. “That series just ran through everyone. Everyone gave up runs. [Fernando] Tatis had an amazing series. I don’t know what he didn’t do. I mean, he didn’t pitch.”
While not every series is quite that extreme, almost anyone who has spent enough time at Coors Field has a similar story to tell.
Ryan Spilborghs, Rockies outfielder, 2005-11: One of my favorite memories of Coors Field was against the Cardinals. We were down 7-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning, and we ended up walking off the Cardinals. The best part of it was Tony La Russa. Threw his hat and broke his glasses. And so the next day, it was a Sunday and they didn’t have time to get his glasses fixed so you could see him. He got them taped. Looked like the Poindexter glasses. So we’re just loving it. We’re like, “Hey, we broke La Russa’s glasses.”
Bruce Bochy, opposing manager: We had a game in which Bob Tewksbury started great, six or seven good innings. I had to take him out when we were ahead 9-2, and Willie Blair went in and we lost 13-12.
Dan O’Dowd, Rockies general manager, 1999-2014: You’d give up five or six runs, and you’d be like — ah, no problem. You never felt like you were out of it.
Clint Hurdle, Colorado Rockies manager, 2002-09, and current hitting coach: It’s almost like when we were playing street basketball. You get your two teams together. Last bucket wins, right? That’s what I realized early on. But it was going to be a blessing and a curse because your position players actually started believing we’re never out of it.
Jack Corrigan, Rockies radio broadcaster: Even with the humidor and everything else, the outfield’s the biggest in baseball, the wind — I think sometimes that’s why it’s a great place to watch a game. The Rockies might be a bad team that particular year or whatever, but it might be a heck of a game.
Trevor Hoffman, opposing pitcher: Every game there is like a football game. The offense always has a chance. I cannot imagine playing 81 games a year like that.
The altitude goes to your head: ‘This is not baseball’
Jim Leyland took the job as Rockies manager in 1999 coming off a sustained run of success in Pittsburgh and Miami — and lasted only a year. Buck Showalter managed the opposing Diamondbacks in one of Leyland’s final games in Colorado, and after the game, Leyland told him he was finished. “He said, ‘I’m out of here. You can’t win here.’ He was done,” Showalter recalled over the weekend. “He said, ‘I love the game, I want to manage baseball. This is not baseball.'”
Near the end of that season, Leyland turned to then-first-year general manager Dan O’Dowd and said, “Do you have any f—ing idea what you’ve gotten yourself into?”
O’Dowd stayed with the organization through the 2014 season and was constantly racking his brain for ways to manage the unusual circumstances in Colorado.
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, he says he would try the model that the Rays use: build around player development, and then, when young players are at their peak trade value, flip them for a big return. “I’d have waves and waves of depth — power arms, strike throwers and athletic guys.”
Showalter was heavily involved in the planning and building of another expansion team of that era, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and wonders how the pitcher-centric approach would work sustainably at Coors Field. If you were running the Rockies, he said, “You’d have to develop your own pitchers. You’d take pitchers in all 20 rounds. You’d have to be three layers deep.”
The longtime manager also noticed during his time competing against the Rockies that there was always some new idea on how to conquer Coors Field.
“It seems like everybody has had some magic potion [to deal with the elevation], but none of them worked,” Showalter said. “It wore on you physically to play games there.
“What they should do is put a 40-foot-high jai alai wall and play it off the fence, and use four outfielders.”
O’Dowd’s attempts to reinvent baseball at altitude were never that extreme, but he did oversee the deployment of the ballpark’s humidor in 2002, and looking back, he “almost wishes I hadn’t.” In some ways, it mitigated the home-field advantage that the Rockies had in the early days of the ballpark — and he believes that in order for the Rockies to have success, they have to thrive at home, because the inherent closer-to-sea-level or at-sea-level conditions in road games will always be a disadvantage for the team.
“We were looking for a way to normalize the game. … In hindsight, it would’ve been better to not have it.”
Bud Black, Rockies manager, 2017-present: Other managers, coaches come to me. I’m sure they came to Baylor. Leyland quit after one year. They say, “How do you do it? How can you hang in there?” I just know that when I was with the Padres and we’d come in, our hitters were like, “Yes!” Our pitchers were like, “Oh, s—.” You can see pitchers visibly rattled.
Freeman: It wasn’t just the Rockies. It was the visitors. Some of them guys that came in, they were coming up with mysterious injuries for three days when they came in for a series with the Rockies, man. I know for a fact some of my Braves buddies used to ask me all the time, “How do you guys survive mentally out here?” We’re like, “We just look forward to going on the road when it’s our time to pitch.”
Bochy: They had one of those smoke shops by the ballpark. I always said they put that there for the managers, to stop there and get something that would get them through the game.
It’s a different game — a totally different game. It’s a beautiful ballpark, with the architecture, the Rockpile, everything they have there. But it changed how you played the game. You had to manage a little bit different, stay with your starting pitchers a little longer because you could really tear up your bullpen over a series.
LaTroy Hawkins, Rockies reliever, 2007, 2014-15: I think because they let the elements intimidate them. They’re mind-f—ed already, before they even get there and before they even take the mound. They’re already mind-f—ed. And that’s not having a positive attitude about the situation. Hey, everybody else pitches in this stadium. Everybody else. I’m going to have to pitch in it too. Let me go in it with a positive mental approach — PMA — a positive mental approach to Coors Field. And that’s how I got through it.
Kyle Freeland, Rockies starter, 2017-present: It is not an easy place to pitch. It comes with its factors with the altitude, the dryness, how hard it is to recover in that environment that guys throughout the rest of the league don’t understand until they come to Coors for a four-game series and they realize their body feels like crap on Day 2, and that’s a big factor.
Shawn Estes, Rockies starter, 2004: You always looked at the calendar when the schedule opened and you knew when you were going to pitch and when you’re not going to pitch. So you know you have three trips into Coors and you have a pretty good idea if you’re going to pitch in any of those series. Put it this way, if you find out you’re not pitching for three games there, it’s probably the best road trip you take of the year.
Dipoto: I remember the first or second year of interleague [games], John Wetteland, who at that time was one of the best closers in the league, comes in and blows a save. He was really fighting himself. And the next day, he comes out and gets ready to walk in from the visitors bullpen and he [knocks] on the cage, and he looks at us all getting ready for the start of the game, and he says, “I have to know, how do you guys do this?” And everybody told him the same thing: “Short memory, man. You just have to move on.”
Ubaldo Jimenez, Rockies starter, 2006-11: Colorado is a different monster than anything else. If you go out there for a couple innings and you start throwing, I don’t know, 20, 25 pitches, you’re probably going to be out of breath right away. If you run to cover first base, when you go back to the mound, you’re going to feel the difference.
I wanted to be out there regardless of how difficult it was. I wanted to be out there for the fans. It made me develop; it made me be a better pitcher because I work hard. I work really hard. I worked so hard, running-wise and conditioning-wise. I remember I used to do the stairs in the stadium, or I used to go to Red Rocks Amphitheatre that’s like 20 minutes away from Denver, like going to the mountains. Rocky is the one who inspired me for sure. Every time I had to run in the mountains, I ran — I just didn’t chase the chicken. Other than that, I did pretty much everything Rocky did just to get ready for Coors Field.
Your stuff disappears in thin air: ‘They tell you to keep it down, don’t listen’
Pitchers are taught to “trust their stuff” from the time they first pick up a baseball, but at Coors Field, they learn quickly that pitches don’t do what’s expected.
During Dipoto’s four seasons in Colorado, Rockies relievers bonded over the shared experience of sitting beyond the outfield walls while waiting to go in and find out how their stuff would fare on a given night.
“There’s a storage room in the back of the bullpen at Coors Field, where during the course of a game — because you’re so far out, I mean, it’s the biggest field in the league — we would sit because we had a small TV at that time that would allow us to see what was happening in the game. … There’s these brick walls, painted brick walls. Every reliever had his own brick, and you got to write a message to all the relievers that came after you. It was related to the ballpark, some of the challenges. It was almost like a yearbook, but it was, in theory, preserved forever because it was on a brick wall.
“The trick was you weren’t allowed to have a brick until you gave up four runs in an inning. And everybody had a brick. So this was going on for like five years, and everybody who had come and gone had their own brick, even guys who were kind of small-time then. And [general manager] Bob Gebhard walked in one day and saw the messages on the wall and got angry with the relievers for writing on the wall and had the grounds crew paint over it. All of a sudden what was really something special that you could pass along from generation to generation, and mostly just laugh it off, like you have to be able to laugh at that, got covered over.
“My brick was something along the lines of, ‘They tell you to keep it down — don’t listen.’
“I went to Colorado. And the first thing — Billy Swift was one of our starters. And I walked into the clubhouse; we shared an agent. Billy shook my hand and he said, ‘Sinkerballer, right?’ And I said ‘yeah.’
“He said ‘Good luck, bro. It doesn’t work.'”
Even when the humidor was added after Dipoto’s time in Colorado, pitchers routinely saw their trusted pitch mixes abandon them at high altitude.
Spilborghs: A couple of years ago, they had to repaint in the bullpen [again], but if you went into the bullpen before, all there, all these great names of pitchers like Huston Street, Tito Fuentes, literally all these great bullpen arms, and they’d have their line — a third of an inning, nine hits, nine runs — written on the wall. Just to prove to you that Coors Field would get everybody.
Estevez: What you’re used to, it doesn’t work up there. If you’re a big sweeper guy, the sweeper doesn’t do anything, it just spins. Guys that are not up there for a long time, they go, like, “Man, my sweeper is off today.”
No, bro, it’s not. It’s just Coors Field. You’re fine. Trust me. That’s the thing. Even your fastball doesn’t ride as much. What plays better over there is changeups. It’s hard to find what truly works over there. For me, you’ve got to find the consistency.
Zack Wheeler, opposing pitcher: I’ve been lucky to miss it a bunch, thankfully. I did get roughed up there early in my career, but you hear about breaking stuff not breaking like it should. The ball flies, of course. When I made the All-Star team in 2021, when the game was there, the bullpen catcher told me to break out my changeup if I had a good one. I didn’t know about that until he told me. So now I tell everyone that I know, “Hey, if you have a good changeup, use it.”
Anderson: The ball flies, your stuff doesn’t move. When you throw two-seams, sometimes they cut. So if you’re a two-seam guy — like you know the seam-shift, right? I think what’s happening with some of these two-seams is they’re a seam-shift to two-seam where the seam catches, then it gets to two-seam. And maybe because the air is thinner it doesn’t have the same catch. So it just cuts instead.
Hoffman: The thing that I remember about pitching in Coors is that you just couldn’t feel the baseball.
The former star reliever tried different methods to get some moisture onto his hands to rub up the ball. Saliva didn’t work, because he would be dried out — it’d be like spitting cotton balls, he said. Remnants from chewing gum could make the surface too tacky.
Hoffman is in the Hall of Fame largely because of the excellence of a straight changeup that he threw — and when he pitched at Coors, it just wasn’t the same changeup.
The velocity was the same, but the pitch just didn’t have the same depth. I threw some good ones, but sometimes the changeup would just sit there, like it was on a tee.
Of course, it was Hoffman’s Padres teammate, Jake Peavy, who took the mound in the most famous game in Coors Field history — Game 163 of the 2007 MLB season.
Late in the regular season, the Padres were fighting to clinch a playoff spot and knew in the last weekend that if they tied the Rockies, necessitating a play-in game, the tiebreaker would be held in Coors Field. Needing just one win to wrap up a berth, the Padres lost on Saturday — and Jake Peavy met with manager Bud Black and general manager Kevin Towers and lobbied hard for them to let him pitch the next day in Milwaukee. Peavy begged Black and Towers to let him pitch Game 162 in Milwaukee on Sunday, and he thought that Towers would back him. But Peavy was overruled: Black and Towers hoped that the Padres would clinch without Peavy, so they could line him up against the Phillies’ Cole Hamels in Game 1 of the playoffs. Instead, the Padres lost Sunday, and Peavy started Game 163 in Colorado.
Peavy: I’ve been part of a lot of great games there, but that place is not baseball. It’s a different game than anywhere else. I was a sinker-slider guy, but I didn’t use the sinker there; I couldn’t. Because half the time the ball would cut and go the opposite way.
That team was hotter than anybody on the planet, and [the elevation] took my sinker away from me — and I didn’t have that against Holliday, Todd Helton and Troy Tulowitzki. That’s a huge weapon taken away.
What happened in Game 163 was classic Coors: Colorado led 3-0, fell behind 5-3, the two sides swapping the lead back and forth. Peavy allowed six runs in 6⅓ innings. The Padres took an 8-6 lead in the top of 13th, and in the bottom of the inning, the Rockies scored three to win 9-8 on Matt Holliday’s famous slide. Peavy has never looked at a replay of the close game-ending play at home plate.
What’s the point?” Once he’s called safe, it doesn’t matter anymore. We didn’t have replay back then.
Slaying the Coors Field monster: ‘My first time pitching at Coors was unbelievable’
Yet despite all of the horror stories, some pitchers have managed to succeed at Coors Field, whether for a single start or a sustained period — and speak of their experience in the same conquering manner a mountain climber would after scaling a hallowed peak.
Shawn Estes was well-versed in pitching at Coors Field when he joined the Rockies for the 2004 season, having spent the first seven seasons of his career with the division-rival San Francisco Giants. Though his 5.84 ERA was the worst of any full season during his 13-year career, he also won 15 games for the Rockies during his lone season in Denver, and he credits a mindset shift for helping him succeed.
“As a [Rockies] player pitching in Coors Field, I could care less what my ERA was. That wasn’t my mentality at all. It was about winning. And fortunately I had enough years of playing against the Rockies in Coors Field where I knew exactly what I was getting into.
“It was really trying to get through five innings, minimize the damage and know that your offense is going to score runs as well. As a visiting player, it was all about survival when you went to Coors Field and just trying to somehow get through the meat of that order with as little the damage as possible.”
But of the 34 starts he made for the Rockies in 2004 (15 of them in Colorado), it was the last time he took the mound at Coors Field in a home uniform that still resonates most for Estes, because he outdueled a Hall of Famer — and even registered a base hit off him.
“I remember beating Randy Johnson there for my 15th win in 2004. And I got a hit off him. Yep, I threw seven innings. That was probably my best game that season when you consider everything.”
Estes is not the only one who looks back with fondness at the times he stood tall at the game’s highest elevation.
Mark Leiter Jr., opposing pitcher: My first time pitching at Coors was unbelievable. I punched out nine in four innings. Second time I pitched at Coors, struck out five in the first two innings and it was early in the season so I got tired. I would say the thing about Coors is it definitely fatigues you a little more. That’s definitely real. And I think you have to be precise — like, you can’t have lazy finishes.
I feel like the second you change how you’re pitching because it’s there, you lose out on your flow. And that’s where I think guys get intimidated, if I had the right way to put it. Just being more selective and careful of your off-speed puts you probably in more of a defensive mode.
Jeremy Hefner, opposing pitcher: The game I pitched well, I think it was a makeup of a snowout earlier in the year. So we were somewhere, had to fly to Colorado for one day, and I end up making the start. I gave up a homer right down the left-field line to Tulo. I think CarGo [Carlos Gonzalez] may have hit a double or a hard hit. I got an RBI groundout — bases-loaded RBI groundout. I remember it being very sunny. The opposite of when we came earlier in the season.
Blake Snell, opposing pitcher: I can’t remember just one [horror story] but I can remember the opposite of one. July 19, 2016. My first game there. I gave up one hit. I was young and naïve. I’ve never pitched well there since.
When asked “What do you think of first when you think of Coors Field?” Snell paused before summing up what’s on the minds of many pitchers as they arrive in Colorado’s thin air.
When we fly out.
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Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — Tyler Glasnow was put on the injured list Monday with what the Los Angeles Dodgers described as shoulder inflammation, joining fellow frontline starter Blake Snell, who has been sidelined by a similar injury.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Glasnow’s right shoulder is structurally sound but is also dealing with what Roberts called “overall body soreness.”
Glasnow gave up back-to-back homers in Sunday’s first inning against the Pittsburgh Pirates, then was removed from the game after experiencing discomfort while warming up for the second. Afterward, Glasnow expressed frustration at his constant string of injuries and speculated that his latest ailment might stem from the mechanical adjustments he made to improve the health of his elbow.
Glasnow sat out the 2½ months of last season — including the playoffs — with what was initially diagnosed as an elbow sprain, a big reason why the Dodgers were relegated to only three starting pitchers in their march toward a World Series title. Now, he is one of eight starting pitchers on the Dodgers’ injured list.
One of those arms, Tony Gonsolin, will be activated Wednesday to make his first major league start in 20 months. But the Dodgers are short enough on pitching that they’ll have to stage a bullpen game the day before.
“Pitching is certainly volatile,” said Roberts, who added journeyman right-hander Noah Davis to the roster in Glasnow’s place. “We experienced it last year and essentially every year. I think the thing that’s probably most disconcerting is the bullpen leading Major League Baseball in innings. When you’re talking about the long season, the starters are built up to go take those innings down. That’s sort of where my head is at as far as trying to make sure we don’t redline these guys in the pen.”
Dodgers relievers entered Monday’s series opener against the Miami Marlins having accumulated 121⅓ innings, 7⅔ more than the Chicago White Sox, who are already on a 122-loss pace.
Glasnow and Snell aren’t expected to be out for a prolonged period, but their timetables are uncertain. Clayton Kershaw could return before the end of May, but Shohei Ohtani might not serve as a two-way player until after the All-Star break. Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki could temporarily assume a traditional five-day schedule, as opposed to the once-a-week routine they’ve been following, but the Dodgers have only four starting pitchers on their active roster.
Glasnow, 31, is in his 10th year in the big leagues but has never compiled more than 134 innings in a season, a mark he set last year. The Dodgers acquired him from the Tampa Bay Rays and subsequently signed him to a five-year, $136.56 million extension in December 2023 with the thought that his injury issues might be behind him.
“Tyler said it — very frustrating,” Roberts said. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of it.”
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