Could the investigation into the Mets open MLB’s books?

After speaking with a variety of legal experts and those around the baseball world, Ken Rosenthal and Jon Paul Morosi of FOXSports.com warn that the current litigation into the Wilpons’ involvement in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme may result in an exposure of MLB’s financial records.

Here’s what one former club president had to say:

“This is bad news for the Mets and everyone in baseball. Because of revenue sharing, everybody’s a partner of everyone else in a greater way than ever before. The discovery process and document searches aren’t going to be confined only to the Mets. This will get back to MLB.”

Rosenthal and Morosi paint one hypothetical scenario where the Mets may have cut a check from a Madoff-funded account in order to satisfy an obligation to MLB, such as the revenue-sharing system. Irving Picard could then ask MLB to tell him where the money was applied.

You can bet that MLB would do their best to keep this information under wraps, but Rosenthal and Morosi write that it would become public knowledge in the event of a trial. This is one of the reasons why commissioner Bud Selig is reportedly hoping for a settlement.