A meaningless World Series prediction

The World Series gets started today, at long last.

It's an interesting matchup.

The Royals had the best record (95-67) in a very even American League; they have an outstanding defense, a superlative bullpen even with Greg Holland injured, and a lineup well made for its power-suppressing home grounds. Their flaws: The rotation is below average and they don't hit many homers -- and their best power hitter, designated hitter Kendrys Morales, will probably be out of the lineup in the games at New York.

The Mets' (90-72) strengths: A rotation stacked with power arms. Their lineup, which was awful in the first half, improved sharply in the second half, largely because the on-base percentages increased.They have more power than the Royals, with seven hitters in double-digits for homers. Their flaws: their middle infield is shaky defensively and they're not particularly fast.

I appreciate the point Pedro Martinez made on TBS at the end of the NL series: The Mets have beaten better starting pitchers this month than the Royals have to offer. They've beaten Clayton Kershaw, Zach Greinke, Jon Lester and Jake Arrieta. But I'm still taking the Royals. Three points:

• The Royals feast on fastballs. They hit .284 this year when swinging at fastballs 95 mph or higher. The Cubs were trying to jack everything into the seats against the Mets velocity; the Royals will take their singles and doubles.
• A lot of the Mets offense this month came off the bat of Daniel Murphy. He's not that good, and this will not continue.
• The Mets power will be negated in Kaufmann Stadium.

Royals in six.

Doin' the affiliation shuffle?

The Twins have made no secret this offseason of their concern about their Triple A affiliation with the Rochester Red Wings. They like having their top minor league affiliate there for a variety of reasons, but the Wings are free agents after the 2012 season, and the Twins have not provided them with sufficient talent to win in recent years.

Which is why the Twins imported Gene Glynn (Waseca and MSU hero) to manage in Rochester, and why they've signed umpteen minor league free agents. It isn't just about winning here, it's about winning there too.

The Double A affilation, it appears, may also be in jeopardy. The Twins have been affiliated since 1995 with the New Britain (Conn.) RockCats in the Eastern League. That's where Chris Parmelee and Joe Benson played last season before their September call-ups and where Liam Hendriks spent most of 2011 as well.

Follow these complexities: The New York Mets' longtime Eastern League affiliate, the Binghamton Mets, are reportedly about to be sold and the franchise moved to Ottawa, Canada. Once in Ottawa, the idea is that they will affiliate with the Toronto Blue Jays, the major league team of choice in the Canadian capital. That makes sense.

The Mets would be without a Double A affiliate. Both ESPN New York and Newsday have reported in recent days that they would align with New Britain; Newsday notes that New Britain is actually an hour's drive closer to New York than Binghamton.

The Twins, under this scenario, would wind up connected to the New Hampshire Fisher Cats in Manchester, N.H. I've no idea if that would be seen as a better or worse affiliation for the Twins.

But at least it would keep the Twins affiliated with a Something Cats.

The joy of deferred contracts

Two winters ago, during the run-up to the Joe Mauer contract extension, Jim Pohlad said there would be no deferred money in any contract. You have to pay the money at some point, he said, and it might as well be during the time that the player is providing the services contracted for.

That attitude is not universal around baseball, and this week has given us two examples of teams that have significant deferred money pending -- and are in financial trouble.

$21 million for this? Really?

First, we have the Los Angeles Dodgers, who filed Monday for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The list of unsecured creditors is dominated by current and former players, led by Manny Ramirez. The King of Female Fertility Drugs has $21 million coming. Andruw Jones, now two teams removed from his tenure in L.A., is owed $11 million. Marquis Grissom, who last played for the Dodgers almost a decade ago, is owed $2.7 million.

Then there's the marvelous saga of Bobby Bonilla and the New York Mets. Back in 2000, the Mets brought out the $5.9 million owed for the final season of his contract.

The buyout put off the pay off for 11 years -- but charged the Mets 8 percent interest. As a result, the Mets, beginning on Friday, are to pay Bonilla slightly less than $1.2 million. Every year for the next 25 years. Over the next quarter-century that deferred money will total more than $29 million.

What the linked-to Wall Street Journal story doesn't get into is how the Mets figured they were going to pay for that. They invested the money ... with Bernie Madoff. Yes, the Bonilla deferred money is part of why the trustee in the giant Ponzi scheme is after $1 billion from the Mets owners.

The battle for New York

The New York Yankees are preparing for the postseason. The New York Mets are looking for a new general manager and a new field manager.

The Yankees have had a lot of
clubhouse celebrations in recent
seasons.

The Yankees, for the eighth straight season, led the American League in attendance, drawing 3.7 million fans to their new stadium. The Mets drew 2.5 million to their new stadium.

The Yankees "own" the New York market. The Mets .. don't.

This was not always the case, and the Yankees dominance of the market was not inevitable.

Back to ancient history — back to the time before I was born. New York had three teams for almost 60 years — Yankees, Giants and Dodgers. While the Yankees had their adherents, the two National League teams combined outdrew them. When the Jints and Bums decamped for California after the 1957 season, Yankee attendance barely budged. There were AL fans and NL fans, and  seldom did the twain meet.

Enter the Mets in 1962. They found a ready audience — a hard-core 1.5 million National League adherents. Shea Stadium opened in 1964; the Yankee dynasty crumbed in 1965; the Mets won the World Series in 1969, went to the Series again in 1973.

From 1969-76 — and particularly in the first half of that stretch — New York was a Mets town. The Mets drew about 2 million fans a year during that eight-year stretch, the Yankees 1.25 million. The Mets led the National League in attendance for four straight seasons (1969-72).

Ownership, no matter how
short-sighted, seldom fires itself,
which is why Mets COO Jeff Wilpon
(center) remains while Jerry Manuel
(left) and Omar Minaya (right) are out.

Two things happened in the mid-'70s, or rather, one thing happened to which the two franchises reacted differently: Free agency gave players, especially star players, more leverage. George Steinbrenner catered to those stars and brought the likes of Reggie Jackson, Goose Gossage and Catfish Hunter to the Yankees. The Mets antagonized their star, Tom Seaver, and wound up trading him in midseason 1977.

The Yankees went to the World Series in 1975, won the Series in '76-77. The Mets fell into the bottom half of the National League in attendance with the Seaver trade and didn't emerge until the mid '80s.

Which was the next period for the Mets. Steinbrenner's free-agent addiction by then was beginning to backfire on the Yankees, and the Mets had developed a sharp organization. From 1984-90, the Mets won 95 games a year while drawing more than 2.7 million fans a season. The Yankees, in that period, were declining on the field and drawing 2.2 million a season.

That comparison leaves out the nadir of the Steinbrenner era — in 1991-92, they ranked 11th in American League attendance.

But the Mets became victims of their own success. The young cornerstone stars, Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden, ran aground on their addictions. The organization lost managerial talent (Terry Ryan, Billy Beane, Ron Gardenhire were all part of the Mets system in the Davy Johnson era.) The Doubleday family sold to the Wilpon family.

And the Yankees took advantage of a lengthy suspension of George Steinbrenner to build both a young talent base and a revenue base that dwarfs all others in the sport.

The Wilpons are said to believe that New York teams are not allowed to tear it down and rebuild from the bottom. The history of the Mets and Yankees the past half-century suggests exactly the opposite.

Taking care of their investment

Last year, with a playoff berth possibly at stake for the New York Mets, Johan Santana demanded the ball for the final game of the schedule. On short rest, he threw a three-hit shutout. The Mets missed the postseason anyway — and three days later, he had knee surgery.

Santana was scheduled to pitch today for the Mets. He won't. His elbow hurts.

He's to be examined today, and the Mets are bracing for bad news.

The sidebar to this story shows why. Since he had a 120-pitch outing in his 10th start of the season — you paying attention, Mr. Blyleven? — Santana's fastball has slowed considerably. In his first 10 starts, 73 percent of his fastballs were at least 90 mph; in the 15 starts since, just 53 percent reached 90.

The strikeouts are down, the home runs and ERA up.

Santana, by the way, has had three starts of 120 or more pitches in his two season with the Mets. That doesn't sound like much, but that's two more than he had in his entire tenure with the Twins.

The Mets invested $137.5 million in that talented left arm. Of course, the Mets ownership also invested large sums with Bernie Madoff — the Wilpon family is rumored to have lost $750 million in the notorious scam — and the whispers out of Queens suggest that one reason the general manager and manager are still on the job is that the ownership can't afford to replace them.