Every question Shohei Ohtani still needs to answer after avoiding media in press conference copout

All eyes remained on Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, baseball's biggest star, who is caught in the middle of one of the biggest betting scandals in recent memory.

Multiple stories came out surrounding Ohtani and his involvement in this scandal, but we had yet to hear from Ohtani himself. Monday was supposed to be the time for Ohtani to finally speak to the media after dodging it entirely in Seoul, but Ohtani refused to answer questions.

Instead of a traditional press conference, Ohtani delivered a statement that was over 11 minutes long with the assistance of his new interpreter. As expected, most of what Ohtani had to say were things we either knew he'd say or have seen reported. We didn't really learn anything new from this statement. There are still so many questions that remain unanswered with these four the biggest ones that we were robbed of by having no media allowed.

Why did Shohei Ohtani refuse to answer questions from the media?

When asked questions on Sunday, Ohtani said he was going to talk on Monday. That gave everyone the assumption that he was going to answer questions from the media. Early on Monday, we came to find out that Ohtani was not going to answer any questions, and to take it a step further, no cameras were allowed into the room. Why?

Ohtani's statement suggested that he was completely innocent and Mizuhara was responsible for everything. If that's the case, why are you avoiding questions and hiding from the media? It's not like you can incriminate yourself if you didn't do anything wrong. It's very strange behavior from someone who claims to be completely innocent.

How did he not notice there was $4.5 million missing from his bank account?

Mizuhara was accused of stealing $4.5 million (potentially more) directly from Ohtani's bank account. Look, I get that Ohtani is incredibly wealthy and $4.5 million doesn't mean much to him in the grand scheme of things, but that's a ton of money. How in the world did you not notice that amount of money went missing?

How did Ohtani's bank not alert Shohei that this was happening? How did large sums of money get wired without Ohtani approving the transactions? How did nobody from Ohtani's camp notice that this was happening? It's pretty insane that substantial amounts of money just vanished from his account without Ohtani having the slightest possible clue.

How did Ippei Mizuhara have access to Shohei Ohtani's bank account?

If Ohtani didn't send money to Mizuhara, he had to have accessed Ohtani's account himself, right? If that happened, how did Mizuhara have access in the first place? I know they're best friends and all, but who gives someone access to your bank account? Especially when you're Shohei Ohtani.

Did Ohtani tell him the password? Did Mizuhara just guess? Did he not have two-factor authentication turned on? Once Mizuhara gained access, how was Ohtani not notified? It just feels weird, and again, Ohtani refusing to answer questions makes it that much weirder.

Why did the story change?

Originally, the story from an Ohtani spokesperson was that Ohtani agreed to pay off Mizuhara's massive gambling debt. Then, the story shifted drastically to Mizuhara stole the money from Ohtani to cover for his debt. Ohtani never agreed to pay anything and wasn't aware of any gambling addiction Mizuhara had.

How did Mizuhara get away with this for as long as he did? How did Mizuhara fool everyone to the point where one version of what happened was published before soon after another version refuting that was published? It'd be nice to get Ohtani's viewpoint of what happened to cause conflicting reports to emerge.