Releasing player with vesting option
 

If you release a player with a vesting option, are you on the hook for that year of the contract. I am trying to release a player midway through the season who has a salary of $12.1 million and only one year left on his contract which is a vesting option $11.6 million. When I go to release the player it tells me that I will be responsible for $19.4 million. Is this correct or is the game just counting the second year even though it will be voided.

IRL most contracts with options automatically vest upon a release. This is to stop teams from releasing players with expensive options in order to avoid paying those options (basically, not playing fair - giving a player an option, then taking it away by releasing him). If they're gonna do that, it's gonna cost them.

So yeah, I would say the game is working exactly right.

What you need to do is bench the player so the option doesn't vest. It'll still cost you $7 mill but it's cheaper than $19 mill.

Thanks, that is exactly what I wanted to know.

I searched every contract in Cot's Baseball Contracts and I finally found two where a players had a vesting option and were released or were DFA'd. Players who have vesting options who get released are apparently very rare.

Chris Leroux signed with the Pirates in 2013 where it included a vesting option for 2014. No indication they paid the 2014 option when they DFA'd him and he became a FA to sign with the Yakult Swallows. (Leroux wasn't released because he didn't have enough service time to refuse assignment to the minors. However, if you are DFA'd a second time in your career, you do have the option to become a free agent instead of reporting to the minors. And for the Pirates that's good because if he elects to not report and become an FA, they don't have to pay the remainder of the contract they owe him - he forfeits it.)
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2013/...is-leroux.html

The other was Brandon League, who fits exactly into the scenario we're discussing. He had a 3 year deal (2012-2015) with a vesting option for 2016. He was a disaster, and they released him in early 2015. They didn't pay that option because (surprise!) the whole point of a vesting option is that you actually have to do something on the field to get it to vest. In this case, League needed to pitch 55 games. The Dodgers paid him the remainder of his 2015 salary which was guaranteed.
https://www.truebluela.com/2015/7/10...leased-dodgers
https://www.si.com/mlb/2015/07/11/lo...-league-injury