It’s not exactly the beginning of the season, but we’re not yet approaching the All-Star break either. It’s that time of year when the league and its clubs are beginning to settle in on the business of matters. There are times when one topic per week simply won’t do, and this is one of those times.  Here are capsules on a number of things going on in baseball outside the lines.

The Latest CBA Will Be Going Public… Really
While the NFL and NBA went into lockouts last year, MLB and the MLB Players Association announced that a new labor agreement had been reached on November 22, three weeks before the 2006-2011 Basic Agreement was set to expire. While general details for the 2012-2016 agreement were released at the time, it’s been nearly five months now and it has yet to be released in its entirety.

"Professional baseball is on the wane. Salaries must come down or the interest of the public must be increased in some way. If one or the other does not happen, bankruptcy stares every team in the face." – Albert Spalding, 1881

How long have we been hearing that baseball players are paid too much? By my count, it’s been since it was decided that they should be paid. Babe Ruth was the first to hit the $50,000 mark in 1922, and Hank Greenburg hit the $100,000 mark 25 years later.

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It took a day longer than expected, but shortly after 10 AM PT on May 1, the sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers from Frank McCourt to Guggenheim Baseball Management LLC (“GBM”)  for $2 billion took place. The Dodgers’ new ownership includes Mark Walter as control person, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, and Stan Kasten as CEO of the organization.

The Los Angeles Dodgers stated, “The Dodgers emerge from the Chapter 11 reorganization process having achieved its objective of maximizing the value of the Dodgers through a successful Plan of Reorganization, under which all claims will be paid. The Dodgers move forward with confidence - in a strong financial position; as a premier Major League Baseball franchise; and as an integral part of and representative of the Los Angeles community.”

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You’re reading Baseball Prospectus, and I write for them. So, maybe not everyone will understand when I say that numbers are flat. They don’t tell the whole story. They can only get you close. What you have to have with numbers is “context.” I don’t care what the application of numbers is; if you don’t explain them, you’re only telling part of a story and, possibly, the wrong one.

Major League Baseball attendance is no different. The variables underneath what drives attendance figures are often overlooked. Each year I look at the numbers, and each year there seems to be something else to throw in to try and determine the underlying facets of them.

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Before Howard Lincoln, Chuck Armstrong, and fans from the Pacific Northwest begin calling, the Seattle Mariners are not for sale. I’m not saying they are. I haven’t even heard a mere rumor to indicate as much. So if the Mariners do issue some kind of statement saying they are “unequivocally, absolutely not on the market” and that “Maury Brown is engaging in the worst kind of journalism,” everyone can point to the 90 words in the first paragraph of this article where I made sure to say they aren’t.

If you were to profile a club that was a prime candidate to be sold, however, the Mariners would be right there at the top of the list, very much looking the part of a club for sale. They are perfectly positioned. They have owners that seem to be in need of selling. And they’re sitting within a near-perfect atmosphere to be unloaded in the wake of the Dodgers sale. The Mariners may not be on the market at this time, but you’d be hard pressed to find a team more suited for it.

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I’m not saying this in a Chicken Little way. I’m saying it as a reality that some fans may not fully be grasping: MLB is hitting the mother lode, and that’s translating into player contracts that see greater average annual values (AAV), lengths, and total dollar amounts.

Case in point: USA Today recently released their annual Opening Day salary numbers, and the league will see a 5.55 percent increase in total dollars allocated to 25-man rosters from last year—a jump from $2,786,163,302 on Opening Day in 2011 to $2,940,659,204 this year. This represents the largest year-to-year increase since 2007.

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I’ve been saying since coming back in January that writing for Baseball Prospectus was like falling in love again. I never really knew how much.

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If you haven’t gotten on the social media train, it’s left the station and then some. Facebook, Twitter, and other outlets for social media have become key communication platforms not only for fans, but for players, clubs, and leagues alike.

With that, you get a “good thing/bad thing” proposition. The good thing: players can now reach fans directly. The bad thing, well… players can now reach fans directly.

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It wasn’t the most cash in the deal that won the day, but rather a whopping total, and maybe—just maybe—some goodwill for Frank McCourt.

Late Tuesday night, the Dodgers and Frank McCourt announced they had reached an agreement under which Guggenheim Baseball Management LLC (“GBM”) will acquire the Dodgers for $2 billion upon completion of the closing process.  The purchasing group includes Mark R. Walter, who is the CEO of Guggenheim  Partners, a privately held global financial services firm with more than $125 billion in assets under management , as its controlling partner. However, it’s former Los Angeles Laker great Earvin “Magic” Johnson who will likely be the face of the Dodgers. The group also includes Peter Guber (the Golden State Warriors co-owner who is also the chairman and chief executive of Mandalay Entertainment, which is invested in the successful Dayton Dragons minor-league team); Stan Kasten (former Washington Nationals and Atlanta Braves president), Bobby Patton (oil and gas investor), and Todd Boehly (president of  Guggenheim  Partners ) as other key investors.

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Full disclosure before I get started: on top of doing my thing here at Baseball Prospectus, I’m a contributor to Forbes SportsMoney. For a guy like me, writing about stuff like this (the business of sports) is, well… it’s a privilege to write for Forbes, one of, if not the, most established business outlets around.

For years, I have been tracking the annual valuations of Major League Baseball clubs that Mike Ozanian started with Financial World, which Kurt Badenhausen now co-authors at Forbes. They’re great as a “trending” measurement, but they have fallen short in terms of real accuracy.

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That which does not kill us makes us stronger. – Friedrich Nietzsche

Who knows how many fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers prescribe to Nietzsche’s well-worn quote, but it’s a fervent prayer for baseball and certainly for many who are watching the bankruptcy sale of the club. The Dodgers are more than just some random club; they are a cornerstone of the league’s history.

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For Jeff Moorad, he has the option of looking at the glass half-empty or half-full. As the man that entered into an agreement with John Moores to purchase the San Diego Padres, getting the sale completed has been a perfect example of most matters in baseball’s “lodge” of owners move: glacially slow. In a case somewhat reminiscent of the Dodgers, Moores’s divorce from his wife precipitated the sale of the Padres. Since Moorad’s group didn’t have funding lined up 100 percent, the deal (in-principle) was to allow five years to get it all completed with $100 million for a 35 percent interest provided in 2009 and additional funds to push it to 49 percent in 2010.

But, there’s been a problem—one that money alone can’t seem to solve. Last week, the former super-agent, Diamondbacks owner, and current Vice Chairman and CEO of the Padres backed out of seeking controlling interest in the club to complete the $1.5 billion television rights deal for the Padres with FOX Sports.

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