Understanding end-of-season financials

[changewand]

i am currently participating in an online league that has simmed to the day after the end of the World Series in which my team did not participate. I attempted to release all the potential free agents that I was not planning to extend as well as those arb-eligible players I did not want to retain and noticed that my projected budget decreased by $3M or so after I made those moves. This tells me that the contracts must not be paid out yet or else there should not have been any financial effect from releasing those players as they would be out of contract.

I have always assumed that contracts would be up by the end of the season and that the end of the season would start right after the WS. Am I incorrect in this assumption, and if so when is the TRUE end of the season? There must be a period between the end of the playoffs and when the season file is "flipped" over in which such moves may be made without penalty (outside of contractual), right?

Help!

[changewand]

nvm - I figured out what the issue was.