The salaries of players who were on draft lists will be their draft salaries. Salaries for players released by BBM teams will be the salary at the time of their release. All other players will have a minimum salary of $100k.
Players who have not appeared previously in BBM, including MLB rookies and first year foreign players, are added as free agents once they appear in MLB.
The longer a player remains in free agency the lower his salary will become (with a minimum of $100k). A player in the pool for 16 consecutive days will have his minimum salary cut in half. Thereafter, every 15 days it will be cut in half again.
Reclaiming a Player
Special rules apply when a team wants to reclaim a player it previously released. If the team that released the player successfully reclaims him, the player's original salary when released will be reinstated. For any other team that claims the player, the salary will be the amount of the winning bid.
Example part 1. The Hungry Hippos released Jones (whose draft salary was $2,000k) a couple of weeks ago. His salary now is $1,000k. The Hippos decide they want Jones back so they should bid $2,000k. Their Remaining Payroll will NOT go down because the game knows that the Hippos were the last team to have him on their roster.
Example part 2. What if the Hippos had bid $1,000k? If they won the bid, Jones would appear on their roster with a salary of $2,000k. Again, their Remaining Payroll would NOT have gone down. Even though they only bid $1,000k, Jones' original salary was $2,000k and the Hippos have been paying him.
Example part 3. What if the Hippos had bid $1,000k but another team made a bid of $1,500k? The other team would get Jones and his salary on their team would be $1,500k. The Hippos Remaining Payroll would increase by $1,500k since someone else is paying that salary.
In general if a team wants to get a player back they should bid at least the salary the player had when released, since they are already paying it. That information is listed at the bottom right of the Promote/Demote page on the Manage menu.
Note: When reclaiming a Free Agent, the team does not need to have enough payroll to cover the salary (since technically they are already paying it). For example, a team can reclaim a player listed at $4,000k even if they have only $1,000k in remaining payroll. This is true even if a player's salary has been lowered due to halving. The game knows who had the player last and makes adjustments internally to allow a bid of the original salary.