Major/Minor Salary, and Arbitration

[KGrob]

I'm trying to sort this out.

After a player gets drafted, he gets paid the MINOR league salary for three seasons.

After the three seasons of MINOR league pay, if the player doesn't have a MAJOR league contract, he is automatically eligible for arbitration. The team offers an amount, the player offers an amount, and a neutral 3rd party decides which is most fair.

A player may be offered a MAJOR league contract at any time, in any year, although I don't know why a team would offer a recently drafted player a MAJOR league contract if they can simply pay them minimum salary.

What circumstances causes a contract to be "AUTOMATCALLY" renewed? I noticed this term on some of the salary pages.

What else am I missing here?

[Kelric]

Assuming default financials...

After a player gets drafted, he is paid the MINOR league salary for six years (or until you promote him to the big leagues) before he becomes a free agent. In OOTP, this is essentially zero towards your payroll.

Once he is called up to the bigs he is paid the MAJOR league minimum for three years. After that, he is then eligible for arbitration. In OOTP9, we don't exchange numbers, the game just assigns his new arbitration salary automatically. You can avoid this by releasing the player before arbitration day. If you demote the player back to the minor leagues, you may be able to get him to agree to a new minor league deal rather than continuing to pay him the major league minimum. Not always, though.

An automatically renewed contract is going to be for any player in his first six years of major league service - his three minimum salary years and then his three arbitration years. Minor league contracts are also automatically renewed for a player's first six years of minor league service.