If a Full Pay player was ever added to an MLB roster, and then dropped, whether he was first demoted to Triple A and then dropped, or just straight dropped off of the MLB team, you are required to pay either 50% of his salary or Time-Served, which ever costs more money. The reason for this is because there needed to be a way to prevent people doing a merry-go-round in free agency. If you made players added during the season as �Time-Served� you could play a match-up for just one day, and then release the player and only pay about one cent for his services; this obviously would mean you could make 100 moves via free agency and still only add a dollar to your team salary. And so, players added during Free Agency, no matter when, are paid in full, and cost 50% of their salary or time served, which ever is greater.
APPENDIX (added 06.19.07): FULL PAY PLAYERS AND DL TIME
From this point forward, a manager that adds a Full Pay player to the DL can be compensated for the time that that player was on the DL if that player spends greater than 92 days on an MLB roster. Therefore, if a Full Pay player spends any time on the DL, that time CAN count towards their Time-Served once that player has crossed the 92 day threshold. For example:
If Player A was added after 22 days and immediately went on the DL for 30 days, this time does not count towards the 92 days required to qualify as a Time-Served player. However, after the player comes off the DL he spends the rest of the season on that teams roster. And so, when all the money is added up, the manager will be compensated for those 30 days that his player spent on the DL. However, if the player is dropped before the 92 day threshold, regardless of the fact that that player spend 30 days on the DL, this time will not be compensated and the manager will still have to pay the standard 50% of that players salary.