Diamond Mind Highlights July 2021 | Imagine Sports Newsletter

In This Month’s Newsletter

Grand Open Tournament News

The Grand Open Tournament is the biggest and oldest of all Diamond Mind tournaments.

The four-round GOT XV began with 12 leagues and 144 teams in Round 1. Round 2 will see 108 teams advance, with 36 eliminated.

At the time of writing, many Round 1 leagues had reached the postseason, with others in the final week of the regular season. At this point, it looks like it will take at least 76 wins to stave off elimination.

Two of the top teams in Round 1 were led by dominant seasons from Randy Johnson. Defending champion Bob Jecmen’s Parallel Universe team notched 96 regular season wins in Yankee Stadium (1923-37), with Johnson going 27-8 1.78 and Pedro Martinez 24-9 2.42. John (Potatoes) Burbank’s Rheality Bites team did even better, tallying 98 wins in Columbia Park, with Johnson posting a scintillating 31-5 2.40 record (only to be eliminated in five games in the LCS).

Chris (tonzmaniac) Tonzillo, whose American GOThic team (at the time of writing) already has 97 wins (with 12 regular season games remaining), took an opposite tack to Jecmen and Burbank, with a cheap rotation and killer line-up in Baker Bowl, featuring, amongst others (BA/OBP/SLG/HR/RBI): Keith Hernandez (.326/.401/468/6/43), Bobby Grich (.277/.362/.471/24/89), Ron Santo (.307/.389/.566/39/150), Cal Ripken (.277/.355/.474/22/99), Larry Doby (.330/.403/.601/36/124) and Dwight Evans (.274/.363/.491/30/121).

Crowning The Duke

A batting Triple Crown (leading the league in BA, HR and RBI) is one of the rarest feats in baseball. Including the 19th Century and the Negro Leagues, it has been achieved just 27 times, with just one – Miguel Cabrera in 2012 – since 1967.

Graham (budbyron) Scott posted on the Diamond Mind message board that Duke Snider blasted his way to a Triple Crown for Graham’s Airdoggyz-201 team in the Jack Cavin Memorial 6.6 league .

That got us wondering about other recent Triple Crowns. Here are some that were brought to our attention:

• Yogi Berra ‘52 (.347/45/139) accomplished the feat in the World Series Winners XXI league.

• Mike Piazza (.328/46/179) led his team to a World Series championship in the Expansion Era Franchise League.

• Lou Gehrig (.352/39/136) accomplished the feat in the GOT XV rd 1 Jim Owens league.

Unlikely Home Run Heroes

Unlikely Home Run Heroes For all the incredible home run feats by baseball’s greatest all-time sluggers, there have been many noteworthy accomplishments by players with otherwise undistinguished careers.

An entire league dedicated to such players was the One and Done League. In this league, each team selected as its “captain” a player who hit a home run in his first major league at bat, but no more than three in his entire career. The captains selected included such lesser lights as Luke Stuart, Keith McDonald, Bill Roman and Eddy Rodriguez.

Diamond Mind simulates nearly as many games in a week as have been played in the entire history of Major League baseball, so you know that some unusual and noteworthy performances like these are bound to occur. A couple that caught our eye are:

• Matt Batts ‘53 blasting two grand slams in one game, and

• Ted Savage leading off an inning with a pinch hit home run, then coming up again in the same inning and hitting another.

The Tipping Point

Each month we’ll offer a few tips in this space that may come in handy for the beginner as well as the experienced team owner.

A frequently-posed question, when a player is performing poorly, is whether to “cut” and replace that player, or stick with him. See, for example, this recent discussion of the issue.

It’s fair to say broadly that there are two schools of thought on this question:

One view is that “players” are really just a collection of ratings and that results are irrelevant. The player is what he is, and his stats should be ignored. So there’s no point replacing him, changing his role on the team, or doing anything at all in reaction to how he is performing.

The opposing view is to treat players as players, not merely a collection of ratings, and if that means moving them in the batting order, out of the rotation, or even off the roster, then that’s what you do.

It’s true that players in Diamond Mind don’t have their swings get out of kilter, lose their release point, or suffer a loss of confidence. Nevertheless, even in games of pure chance, there are streaks of luck, both good and bad, and it is not unreasonable to ride, or concede to, such streaks.