Angels star Ohtani to miss Friday pitching start, mound season up in air

AFP

Los Angeles Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani will miss his scheduled pitching start on Friday after feeling arm soreness, and manager Joe Maddon said he’s not sure he will start again this season.

Maddon said the Angels weren’t shutting down Ohtani yet, and hope he’s only experiencing late-season fatigue.

“If he feels great, adamantly, I see nothing wrong with (his pitching again),” Maddon said.

“But if there’s any kind of lingering soreness, you may not see him pitch. I just don’t know that answer yet.”

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Maddon said he had asked Ohtani about potentially shutting down for the rest of the season, either as a pitcher or a hitter, where he has slumped with a .147 batting average over the last 20 games.

“He felt he’s still good and he still wants to get after it,” Maddon said. “But I did broach the subject with him.”

Ohtani underwent Tommy John elbow ligament replacement surgery in 2018 after making 10 pitching starts in his first Major League Baseball season.

He didn’t pitch at all in 2019, his season as a hitter ending early because of knee surgery.

He returned to the mound in 2020 but was eventually shut down because of a right forearm injury.

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This season Ohtani emerged as the best pitcher in the Angels’ starting rotation, with a dominant fastball and a stellar command of an array of breaking pitches.

In 21 starts, he has a 3.36 ERA, 136 strikeouts and a 9-2 record.

In August he had thrust himself into the American League Most Valuable Player conversation, notching his 40th home run of the season on August 18.

The 27-year-old former Nippon Ham Fighters star became the first left-handed batter in Angels history to reach 40 homers, surpassing Reggie Jackson’s previous lefty high total of 39 from 1982.

He has added four more homers to his tally since then.

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FBI Most Wanted Fugitive Arrested in Mexico and Deported to U.S.

Authorities in Mexico announced Thursday that Samuel Ramírez Jr., a U.S. citizen accused of murdering two women and listed among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, was arrested in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Ramírez Jr., 33, was detained Tuesday in Culiacán just 1 hour and 13 minutes after being added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Ten Most Wanted list, the agency said in a statement.

The suspect, who was born in California, has already been deported to the U.S. state of Washington, where he faces charges related to the fatal shooting of two women at a bar in Federal Way in May 2023.

A court issued an arrest warrant for Ramírez in November last year, and the FBI initially offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to his capture, later increasing the amount to up to $1 million.

“To protect individuals’ privacy and ensure continued cooperation from the public, the FBI does not confirm the identity of those who provide information,” the agency said in its statement.

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Sin categoría

UN experts warn Nicaragua runs vast transnational network to monitor exiled dissidents

Nicaragua maintains an “extensive” transnational network to monitor and intimidate opposition figures living in exile, affecting “hundreds of thousands” of people, the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua warned on Tuesday.

In a statement, the experts said their report “details an extensive transnational architecture of surveillance and intelligence used to monitor, intimidate and attack the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans living abroad.”

The report, which will be presented on March 16 to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, states that the structure maintained by the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo includes the army, the police, migration authorities and diplomatic missions.

According to the statement, “the government has arbitrarily stripped 452 Nicaraguans of their nationality, left thousands more exiled in a situation of de facto statelessness, and prevented many from returning to Nicaragua.”

Sin categoría

Trump: ‘We Think It’s True’ Amid Claims Iran’s Supreme Leader Was Killed

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he believes multiple reports claiming the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the U.S. and Israeli offensive against the Islamic Republic are likely true, though he stopped short of confirming the news.

“We have a feeling that the information is correct,” he said, according to NBC News. “I don’t want to say anything definitive until I see it, but we think that’s the case. And many of their leaders have disappeared,” he added.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there were “many indications” that Khamenei had died in an attack on his residential compound.