Shohei Ohtani's agent slams Jon Morosi with clear shade about 2024 free agency

It's likely that some Blue Jays fans remember exactly where they were when Jon Morosi tweeted that Shohei Ohtani was on a plane to Toronto. The post, which Morosi hasn't actually shame-deleted and now includes a community note debunking it, has 13,000 likes. That pales in comparison to the 21,000 people who liked his separate apology tweet when the rumor was quickly debunked by a number of other insiders (except for JP Hoornstra, who backed up Morosi's claim and took it a step further by saying Ohtani had signed with the Blue Jays and was subsequently roasted accordingly).

That was on Dec. 8 of last year, and a day later, Ohtani took things into his own hands. He made a post on Instagram — a blurry screenshot of the Dodgers' logo — to break the news himself that he would be taking his talents to Los Angeles.

The incident became an instant meme and probably (definitely) damaged Morosi's credibility in a way that he may never fully recover from.

And Ohtani's agent Nez Balelo is still fielding questions about it, almost exactly a year removed from that Morosi gaffe and his client's ultimate decision. He didn't name names, but he could only be talking about Morosi when he said, "I didn't want what happened to create a frenzy in the country of Canada. These are good people, quality people, and for the journalist to do what he did was so reckless. It hurt the organization, the fans of the organization, and the country of Canada."

Nez Balelo took aim at Jon Morosi near the anniversary of the Shohei Ohtani plane incident

Okay, that might've been a little hyperbolic (we're sure the country of Canada was always going to be fine, no matter where Ohtani ended up), but it's still a biting criticism of Morosi, who probably had good enough reason to believe his source was credible but also definitely shouldn't have tweeted that. The online chaos that followed was maybe one of the most entertaining days of the offseason last year, with fans going as far as to track a flight from Anaheim to Toronto that ended up belonging to Shark Tank billionaire Robert Herjavec.

Blue Jays fans are probably still sore about this (they booed Ohtani during his walk-ups when the Dodgers visited Toronto this year), and that's honestly not too hard to begrudge. Morosi didn't have Jeff Passan levels of credibility when he tweeted that, but he was still a generally okay source to trust, and he completely biffed it.

Toronto fans will probably keep booing Ohtani, but that's fine. He homered in his first at-bat at Rogers Centre, and all that's left for the boo'ers is pity.