Senga was signed fairly cheaply imho....but, by the Mets.

So, there are two possibilities here:

I. Cohen really wants to have a World Series winner and doesn't care that he's going to pay $100M in "tax" to MLB.

II. Cohen knows how salaries can be written off under a 21st Century "tax change" and he's planning on profiting from somehow transferring some of that to other businesses and so, the "tax" he's paying MLB doesn't really hurt as much, or, perhaps, he's even saving more than the tax.

It could be a combination of the two as well of course. The law in question requires the team to have changed ownership structure to allow the write-off. I'm sure Cohen can figure out how to do that without actually giving up the team.

II. Cohen knows how salaries can be written off under a 21st Century "tax change" and he's planning on profiting from somehow transferring some of that to other businesses and so, the "tax" he's paying MLB doesn't really hurt as much, or, perhaps, he's even saving more than the tax.

There's no way you can ever use a deduction to save more than the cost. At most a $100M loss on the Mets can off-set a $100M gain elsewhere, and all you can save is the marginal tax rate. Given a Federal corporate tax rate of 21% and NY's 7%, I don't think he could really recover more than $28M of the $100M luxury tax.