As far as I can tell from watching content creators and comments about the subject, nobody understands how budgets work in this game. Pretty sure the developers don't either. It would be nice if after all this time, they had a manual that explained how everything worked in the game, like in the olden days. 90% of the time it's just people guessing at it.

Dellin Betances makes over $10 million in the game and is not on the 40-man roster. He was the guy that I thought if I traded it would reduce my salaries but it didn’t.

Dellin Betances makes over $10 million in the game and is not on the 40-man roster. He was the guy that I thought if I traded it would reduce my salaries but it didn’t.

I am using the Dodgers and whenever I make a trade the delta never matches the pre-trade analysis. For example, If I trade a player that has a salary of $5 million for a player that has a salary of $1 million I would expect my budget to increase by $4 million, but it would only increase by a few thousand dollars and if I do another trade my budget would not increase at all and my overall player salaries would remain the same even if I trade for a player that makes millions less.