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.

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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Love it or hate it, Major League Baseball is about to have 10 playoff teams in 2012. The deal to add the fifth seeds from each league into the playoff mix this season, as opposed to next, was something that was collectively bargained for as part of the new CBA. The question was only whether it would happen this season or next. The owners wanted it. Selig wanted it. The players were concerned about the schedule and travel, which was valid given that the 2012 schedule had already been finalized. The issue had been how to deal with any potential regular season tie-breaker games, squeeze in the new Wild Card games the day after the regular season ends, and still allow time for rainouts during the League Division Series and League Championship Series while fitting it all into a three-week window from Oct 3 to the start of the World Series on Oct. 24. Those concerns by the players were addressed as part of the discussions, although the risk is still there if Mother Nature (read: rain) wrecks the party.

There are (and will continue to be) debates about whether adding in the extra Wild Cards will be good or bad for the game. Certainly, Game 163—those potential tiebreakers in the regular season—may be diminished. But this much is certain: there will be millions of dollars reaped from the additional playoff teams being added. And, if stars align, the haul could amount to hundreds of millions. Here’s why.

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Let’s just cut to the chase and say, “We don’t know.” Of course, we’re talking about Ryan Braun’s PED case, which saw his 50-game suspension overturned this past week. There are just too many questions still unanswered, many of which may never be fully known.  What we do know is there are two issues in the Braun case that are in direct conflict with each other: Braun tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone, and the manner in which Braun’s test specimen was handled was deemed to break the chain of custody protocol within baseball’s drug agreement. You can argue that Braun’s comments come into play as well, but at the heart of it, the matter is about a positive PED test and the manner in which the specimen that showed that Braun’s testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio was over the threshold for a positive test was handled improperly. That’s it.

The following breaks down aspects of the most recently available Joint Drug Agreement (JDA) as it relates directly to the Braun case (a new JDA that is part of the recently reached CBA has not yet been released to the public).

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Salary arbitration is a funny thing. In an era when club owners and COOs are more honed in on cost certainty with contracts than ever, few clubs fully know what player payroll for the upcoming season will be until approximately a month and a half before the season begins. Until each player has reached a contract or gone to hearing in the salary arbitration process, you don’t know what each player will ultimately be paid.

This year, I went diving deeper than ever before in salary arbitration, and for the time, I am making all my data for the 2012 salary arbitration season available for download. Here’s the details, plus an explanation as to why the increases, while large, shouldn’t be too surprising on a certain level.

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With Sandy Alderson’s foray into Twitter the exception, these are dark times for the Mets. Besieged by Irving Picard (the trustee in the Bernie Madoff case), declines in attendance, and (as a result) a decline in cash flow, the Wilpons and Saul Katz (aka Sterling Equities) are throwing everything but the kitchen sink in front of the door to block a takeover.

Most Mets fans are at the point where they’d like nothing more than to see new ownership take over the club. Such is sports. While Sterling strikes one as part of the “1%” for ownership, they view the Mets in much the same manner that homeowners across the country feel about their home that’s teetering on the edge of repossession. Anything and everything is being done to try and protect it, which means moving around assets, restructuring loans, and bringing in what little fresh money can be found through minority investments.

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I’ve been informed (more than once, mind you), that “readers are not interested in salary arbitration.” Which I find stupefying; I can’t believe those watching the game closely aren’t paying (close) attention. Saying that there is no interest in salary arbitration in MLB is kind of like saying there is no interest in free agency. After all, Marvin Miller has said that salary arbitration, not free agency, has likely had a larger impact on the game.

Maybe it’s because the majority of the players involved are rank-and-file. Or, unlike free agency, salaries are (mostly) constrained within certain confines of “comping” to other players and their salaries. Maybe, it’s just that salary arbitration isn’t “sexy.” Whatever. That seems bogus. Readers should care for the same reason that owners, GMs, and MLB organizations care: it influences roster outcomes.

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I know this is “Baseball” Prospectus, but sports business is a funny thing. There are such a myriad of intersecting factors—sponsorships, television rights, stadium development, digital platforms, and such—that, in a way, it’s like looking at art—you have to stand back from it to get the full picture.

So, while this piece is about baseball, it’s really about something larger. And, if matters land a particular way, it can change the face of not only one market but create a synergy between two sports leagues.

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I touched on this briefly in my first piece back with BP (See “How Television Money and International Sponsorships Allowed the Rangers to Win the Yu Darvish Posting Fee Derby”), but while you weren’t looking, it happened: the AL West became the AL East. No, this has nothing to do with realignment or some West Coast tectonic shift resulting in the “The Big One.” No, this is about an arms race, and we ain’t talkin’ pitchers. It’s what I’ve coined “behavioral spending”—the impact of revenues increasing or decreasing quickly for a club and how it impacts roster construction.

It started, oddly enough, with a bankruptcy—the Texas Rangers’ bankruptcy, to be exact. Back when Tom Hicks owned the club and was floundering in red ink with his holding company Hicks Sports Group, he tried (just as Frank McCourt tried with the Dodgers) to get the league to let him use the media rights for the Rangers as a way to pay down debt. Selig said then (as he said again with McCourt), that the league doesn’t work that way. You can do media deals to advance a club, not to dig it out of a hole you foolishly made.

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Late last week, Bud Selig, that consensus builder of The Lodge and players union, was voted by the league’s owners to receive an extension through the 2014 season. The league’s Executive Council placed the two-year extension in nomination after requesting of Selig that he remain in the position past the expiration of his contract on December 31, 2012. In other words, his employers (read, the owners) love him, and there’s really no one out there at the moment that they seems in a hurry to put in his place (see “Why Selig Isn’t Retiring”).

Selig has been at the head of the league since September 9, 1992, first as interim commissioner and then as the ninth commissioner in the history of Major League Baseball, a position to which he was elected on July 9, 1998.  This marks the fourth extension for Selig, who agreed to new three-year contracts in 2001, 2004 and 2008.  Only the first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis—who served from January 12, 1921 until his passing on November 25, 1944—accumulated more experience as the leader of the sport than Selig. Since taking over in 1992, the league’s gross revenues have grown from $1.2 billion to over $7 billion in 2010.

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