Baseball contracts can be difficult to understand. Teams are always manipulating games and service time to get the most team control out of a contract, in an effort to keep a player for an extra year at a cheaper salary. Sometimes these situations blow up publicly like it did for Kris Bryant and the Chicago Cubs all those years ago.
The Milwaukee Brewers have had their own situations with not calling up a player out of spring training to try to get that extra year of club control. One of the most notable situations in recent years was Keston Hiura's big league debut being delayed until mid-May in 2019.