Found out an interesting thing about the inaugural season and the initial contracts that are created for players in historical leagues. We are talking leagues where the full history has been imported.
If you use the default AI Evaluation Settings (50-30-15-5), then that 30% devoted to 'current year stats' is ignored. That is because there are no current year stats. Leagues are generally created with Jan 1st as a start date, and if you check the players for OVERALL stats (meaning current year stats), you'll see there are none.
So I found that in '62, there were some oddball contract levels being handed out, with Mantle and some better players down the line and some not as talented getting better rates. What I did was this for AI Evaluation Settings (note it is just temporary to get the contracts set):
70-0-20-10 (thereby ignoring the current 'null' stats - the 20% is actually the year just concluded).
Now I've done this on a league already created with the default levels. So I went to league setup and reran the player contracts in the 'financial' section of the FUNCTION menu (down at the bottom). Voila! Much better contracts with the higher paid contracts going to the top talent like Mays, Aaron and Mantle.
Having set the initial contracts, I then changed the AI Evaluation settings back to what I wanted to use long-term (which I still struggle with...).
NOTE: if you are playing a historical
recalc league, then if a player's ratings have a truly bad season or two factored in, thus lowering his ratings in a significant manner, then this will affect his annual salary level. I am not sure there is anything to do about that situation, as any changes would affect things league-wide.
Anyhow, works well for me. Others might like to try it.