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It could be that a lot of factors the AI considers all change right at the end of the season. They suddenly have a new budget. They see new holes in their lineup for the next season as some players are upcoming free agents with no extension in place. Depending on how it is programmed, there may even be a sudden change in the "current year" stats becoming previous year stats. I think that might explain a bit about your first example.
For your 2nd example, what were the starter's stats for the previous years? Having AI evaluations depend 45% on stats seems like it could result in big swings in how players are valued based on 1 year's performance. Maybe this player had a poor season?
I don't think the AI cares too much about its spare salary budget. It seems to value players on whether they are overpaid/underpaid based on their salaries compared to the "typical player salary" numbers in the financial settings of the game. This is a flaw in the AI.
Really, each AI team should value money differently based on their total budget. Rich teams should care less about money and should have a higher acceptable level for what players should earn for a certain level of ability.
As for why the team signed a relatively expensive 5th starter, it's hard to say. I think the AI doesn't really compare free agents to each other to look for value. I think they kind of look at what's available and find one that offers improvement for their team, then if the player's demands are acceptable and they have the money, they bid on him at around that asking price. So they may overpay because they stopped looking once they found someone, and this one happened to have a pretty high asking price, but it was acceptable to the team because they could afford it.
Or multiple teams can pick the same player and enter a bidding war until all but one team drops out from the rising price becoming unacceptable.
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