These links are brought to you by Fred Wilpon.  Sick of Frank McCourt getting all of the headlines, Fred Wilpon decides to add his own brand of crazy to steal a few for himself…

Tales from around the Yankee Blogosphere:

• It’s About the Money, Stupid – This week at IIATMS:  Larry provides a rational guide to bunting; Brien thinks it’s time to hold a blogger ethics panel; Hippeaux explores “Super Two” arbitration and this season’s potential call-ups; Mark weighs in on the discussion on home plate collisions; Tamar provides a detailed prospect profile of Adam Warren; and I try to debunk the “Too Many Home Runs” meme.
• Yankee Analysts – Larry explores Nick Swisher’s season long slump.
• Pinstriped Bible – Steven Goldman explains how the Mets trash is another team’s treasure.
• River Avenue Blues – Joe Pawlikowski explains the Yankees problems with runners in scoring position.
• Replacement Level Yankee Weblog – RLYW shares baseball’s leader in outs.  Derek Jeter is prominently listed at number ten.  For what it’s worth, Albert Pujols is number three—scary.
• Pinstripe Alley – Franky Camp appreciates David Robertson.  You should too.

Tales from around the Red Sox Blogosphere:

• Fire Brand of the American League – This week at Fire Brand:  Mike discusses Stolmy Pimental’s maturation process; Troy shares his thoughts on Papelbon’s future with the Sox; Charlie explains Ultimate Base Running and identifies his ideal trade target; and I react to the news of Dice-K’s injury and share my thoughts on the Red Sox 50 games into the season.
• Red Sox Beacon – Matt Kory explains what might have been with Jayson Werth.
• Over the Monster – Matt Sullivan wonders if Salty’s star is rising.
• Surviving Grady – Denton says the Red Sox are done playing Mr. Nice Guy.
• Red Sox Thoughts – Carl Crawford is on fire!  Matt Collins provides an excellent analysis.
• Joy of Sox – Allan explores the Red Sox most recent feat: scoring 14+ runs in consecutive games.
• The House that Dewey Built – Jimmy analyzes Clay Buchholz’s last start and Daniel Bard’s subsequent break down.

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It’s good to be rich, and even a measly $200 million can buy you one heck of a deal:

David Einhorn, who has been selected to join the New York Mets ownership group as a minority partner, has a path to majority ownership, a source familiar with the still-not-finalized terms told ESPNNewYork.com.

Einhorn has agreed in principal to purchase roughly 33 percent of the team for $200 million, which will infuse cash and keep the organization solvent in the immediate future. In three years, according to the source, Einhorn has an option to up his stake to 60 percent, although principal owner Fred Wilpon and his family have an opportunity to block Einhorn from gaining that majority stake.

The source said the Wilpons can stop Einhorn from gaining the majority share essentially by returning Einhorn’s initial $200 million investment yet allowing him to keep the 33 percent share of the team.

In other words, in exchange for buying the minority stake and infusing cash into the organization now, in three years Einhorn will either have his initial investment returned to him while still retaining his minority share, or he’ll get to become the majority owner of his favorite baseball team as a kid, which just happens to be one of the most valuable franchises in the business. It doesn’t get much better than that in the scope of good buys. What does it mean for the rest of baseball though?

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Well, the Yankees lost again last night and this is getting a little…what’s that…they won? They won? They won! Oh hallelujah they won! Our long universal nightmare is over, the losing streak has ended. Now we can get back to complaining about the batting order and the bunting, the way Mo intended. Some notes for your Wednesday morning.

• Prior to yesterday’s game, as anticipated, Rafael Soriano was placed on the 15 day DL and Chris Dickerson was called up to replace him. I admit, I totally forgot Dickerson was in the organization when I speculated Justin Maxwell or Ramiro Pena would replace Soriano if and when he went to the DL.
• In his first game back in the starting lineup since the Po-saga, Jorge Posada (batting 7th, I might add) went 2-3 with a double. Good for Jorge. And don’t look now, but for the month of May Jorge is hitting .243/.364/.297.
• Just hours after I suggested reducing his playing time to help him rest up a back injury, Alex Rodriguez went out and hit 2 home runs to lead the Yankees to victory. Yeah, I’m going to go ahead and take all the credit for that one. You’re welcome, universe.
• On the other hand, Curtis Granderson went 0-5, so now he sucks. Fantastic. (kidding)
• Ivan Nova pitched pretty well too, allowing 4 hits, 1 run, and walking 2 through 5.1 innings pitched.

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Blogger Murray Chass smells a hypocrite:

But now that [Bud Selig] has taken the first step toward forcing McCourt to sell the Dodgers, Selig has created the need to deal with Wilpon. Selig certainly considered the Wilpon issue before he initiated serious action against McCourt so you know he is prepared to defend doing nothing with Wilpon. But he also knows that he will face pressure to exhibit fair and equal treatment.

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Last week we took a long look at baseball’s Opening Day player payrolls. In Part One of this series, I examined the growth of player payrolls, and noted with surprise that the fastest growing payrolls belong to teams in the Midwest, like the Brewers, Tigers and Twins. In Part Two I commented on the shrinking gap between the Yankees’ payroll and that of other well-heeled baseball teams, like the Red Sox and Phillies.

Here in Part Three, I’ll begin to ask the critical question: why do we care about the size of baseball payrolls? The obvious answer is set forth in the title of our blog site. Most baseball fans believe that money buys the best baseball players, so teams with big payrolls will dominate teams forced to operate (relatively speaking) on a shoestring. I’ve had occasion to visit this topic many times: see for example here and here. I’ll need to revisit this question one more time before this series is through.

But before I get to the question of whether money matters, I’ll look here at how payroll money is distributed. We know (because it gets a lot of attention) that there’s a payroll imbalance in the American League East — the Yankees and Red Sox spend a lot more on payroll than the Blue Jays, Orioles and Rays. The imbalance in the American League East is so severe that some pundits (like Ken Rosenthal) propose that the leagues be realigned so that no team has to compete every year against the two bullies on the eastern seaboard.

But is it just the American League East that suffers from payroll imbalance? Let’s find out.

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