So after about 35 seasons playing this game obsessively I like to think I'm so smart. Well with horribly budget planning on my part I find that I'm actually an idiot and not sure what's going to happen. Can someone help answer this?

So someone with more knowledge and experience help me out. I have $1.2 million in payroll left on arbitration day. One of my best young players wants about $7 million. The arbitrations finish happening at 11 pm ET. Will he get released at 11 pm? I have two trades processing at 11 pm also which I am shedding about $8 million in payroll but taking on about $6 million. Does anybody know what will happen? Will the trades not process? Will he be released at that time? Does it matter if a trade is agreed upon before that time? I'm an idiot. Is there anything I can do? (My prospect budget is at $6 million so I can't transfer that. It will take too long to waive someone.)

Thanks.

I've read your question 3 times, I've played for 110 seasons and I can't answer your question. It will likely come down to what happens first, arbitration or trade processing but I couldn't tell you the order of operations.

At this point I don't think there is anything you can do other than wait. Hopefully someone else can answer. Either way could you put as I'm interested in the outcome for future reference.

In the past, I've seen the game take money from other places or just push you over budget to auto arb your guy. If it does push you over budget, you won't be able to make any other moves until you get back under budget. I'm not sure on the order of how it processes stuff, but if I had to guess, I think you'll keep your arb player, get pushed over budget and your other trades will be nullified. But as jahu43 said, the best thing you can do now is wait.

So the results were pretty much all positive. No trades were nullified, the player got arbitrated what he was asking for. The SIM took the budget like $1-2 million pretty much from every category, coaching, prospect, training, medical, scouting.

Thanks for the update

I'm guessing it's done this way in case an owner goes AWOL during the pre-season. If an Arb player (or several) were to be auto released, it would probably gut a team short and long term.

Yeah I figured this was done for newbies that didn't know how to set their budget or prepare for arbitration. But it also bails out the occasional "veteran"