Let's say (hypothetically of course) in my game inexperience I signed a useless player to a long-term contract. If the player is on a 3 year contract for $3MM a year and I released him, would he count $3MM against my payroll for the next 3 years or $9MM against my current year payroll?

$3M/year. I wouldn't release him, assuming you haven't yet. Waive him if you don't want him on your MLB roster and hopefully someone will either claim him or you can find a trade partner. If you're going to have to pay him anyways, you might as well get some use out of him at some level.

Someone could claim him before clearing waivers and you wouldn't owe anything. If he clears waivers, you will be on the hook for the whole salary for each season. If someone signs him after clearing waivers, they would only have to pay the league minimum for each season.

Trading is better.

If you really really want to get rid of it money you can always could always package him with a prospect. There's always someone willing to make that trade. Especially if they only have to suck up $3 million per year

Yeah, that's kind of an awkward spot because nobody is going to claim Pablo but at the same time it's not really that much money to give up a future ML player for. If you're not sure who to sign to a long term contract ask around on here or a few gets in the league you're in. Signing the wrong LT deal can handicap a team for a while. This one isn't bad at all, but I've taken over teams that were paying $60M+ to more than one AAAA level players

The only guys I sign to long year deals typically are all star caliber players or guys that I think will put me over the top to win a championship.

The first thing you want to do is avoid ending up having a dead money contract in the first place. But it happens. And it's not impossible to dump it. I've seen guys dump Max contracts with 2 years left on them. I'm talking about players that are completely useless. 40 year olds. True story.

There's a few things there's a few things to understand.

If you haven't noticed, a great many owners don't know what they are doing with managing budgets. There's always left over money just sitting out there. One season I calculated there was $116 million dollars left over in unspent money between the other between the other teams.

If you are staying on top of your drafts or picking up IFAs then you'll have some prospects. You prob have some DITRs too. Those are assets that you can add to a deal with some dead money so you open up budget.

For those teams that have a lot of extra budget late in the season you'll find willing trade partners. Because let's face it, you either use your budget in season or you lose it. And if someone's miss-managing their budget, it's likely that their prospect depth isn't that deep if you know what I mean.

Note I'm not saying you need to deal a $30 million IFA to do it. But if you got useable future ML depth and ur desperate to clear bad contracts, there are deals to be made.