While your state may differ, here's my experience with the Georgia TRS:
This is a defined benefit pension. Your contributions are recorded, but you have to have some years of service before you are eligible for any particular benefit. If you leave beforehand, you can request that they return your contributions so you can roll them over into a retirement account.
In Georgia, you can retire after 30 years or when you reach age 60 with 10 years of service. You get a monthly pension of 2% of the average of the last two years monthly salary for every year you worked. Put in 30 years, you get 60% per year after you retire. Maximum is 40 years (80%). There is a provision for retiring after 25 years if you are not 60 yet, where they reduce your pension by 7% for each year below the retirement age or each year before 30 years service. So if you were 26, worked for 25 years, and retired at 51, you'd have a 35% reduction in your benefit which was 50% of your monthly salary.
If you plan on ER, you won't see any pension, so you'll just get your contributions returned plus interest.
The "we match 6%" is BS, in my opinion. They pay out according to the law and they pay in according to formulas based on how the assets are doing. In my opinion, they are only listing that so that you feel like you are getting a larger "paycheck" than you really are.
Sometimes states will buy people out so that they can get them off the salary rolls and onto the pension rolls. This is supposed to be a good thing fiscally but I've never understood it. I would say that an ER minded employee would probably jump at the opportunity.