[Pelican]

Same house rule. In fact, I will sometimes just pull the players from waivers, as Commissioner. You learn there are some “inflection points” (e.g. end of Spring Training, trimming rosters; midseason trade deadline) where you need to check the MLB transactions log and be ready to correct nonsensical decisions. I regard it as occasional cleanup, to keep things real.

Since the head-scratchers seem to be about money, contracts, arbitration, one way to “cheese” this aspect (saving the AI from itself) is to alter your financial setup, to basically give teams more money and ability to spend it. I know, I know. This will not please those doing historically-accurate season replays, or those who want to sim under the same constraints as IRL. But it does enable teams to keep players, and, done right, it promotes something like parity.