Highlights From Diamond Mind September 2022

HAPPY LABOR DAY FROM DIAMOND MIND

As the calendar flips from August to September, the days may start getting cooler, but the baseball gets hotter!

GRAND OPEN TOURNAMENT REACHES THE HALFWAY POINT

The four-round Grand Open Tournament is the biggest and longest-running tournament on the Diamond Mind Online calendar. GOT XVI has reached the halfway point, with 72 participants set to advance to the six-league penultimate round.

The tournament got underway with 156 participants contesting 13 leagues. Forty-eight were eliminated after Round 1, with a further 36 missing the cut after Round 2. The four playoff participants in each Round 3 league will advance to the 24-team GOT championship league.

The top team in Round 2 was Matt (MattyC823) Carr’s Story Quarry with 99 wins. (Matt is the son of tournament director Ron (8GoBucs21) Carr.) Two-time past champion Andrew (abywaters) Bywaters was a shock casualty, finishing the season with 14 straight losses to miss the cut by three games.

BI-CYLING!

Rafael Furcal, not a HR hitter by any means, stepped up to the plate for 39 Random Rungs in the bottom of the eighth inning, needing a home run (in his cavernous home park, Colt Stadium) to complete a “natural” cycle (hitting for the cycle in order: single, double, triple, home run) and … he did it!

Only 14 players in major league history have hit for a natural cycle, most recently Gary Matthews Jr for the Texas Rangers in 2006.

Impressive? Yes! But so much more impressive is that, 13 games later, he came up to bat in the bottom of the eighth inning, in exactly the same situation – needing a home run in Colt Stadium to complete the natural cycle – and … he did it AGAIN!

CUSTOM LEAGUES KINGS

If you want to play in a tried-and-true format and create your team right now, standard leagues (Classic and SSG) are open to the public 24/7. But if you want to try something different, Custom Leagues – created by customers – are there in abundance.

There are franchise leagues, progression leagues, captains leagues, high and low salary cap leagues, “rags to riches” leagues, alphabet leagues, place of birth leagues … the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Diamond Mind Online would not be the same if the Community did not include some of the most clever and prolific creators of Custom Leagues. We’ll be featuring one of these in this space each month.

This month we’re visiting with Ron (8GoBucs21) Carr. Besides being a regular participant in and creator of custom leagues, Ron also is the long-serving coordinator of the Grand Open Tournament.

Tell us something about yourself: age, occupation, marital status, where you live, and interests (apart from DMO, of course).

2022 saw me hit the 60-year-old milestone in the middle of June. My wife of 31 years and I decided to celebrate that crowning achievement with a get-together at our house, not only recognizing my birthday, but her retirement from 37 years of teaching high school math. I am a teacher as well; as this is my 22nd year of teaching high school social studies. I grew up in a little town called North Boston, in New York, and currently live in the neighboring town of Orchard Park (I live five minutes away from Highmark Stadium, home of the Buffalo Bills). Aside from DMO, my main hobby is researching old newspapers about Buffalo sport’s history. I’m on the board of directors of the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame and am the chairman for the deceased committee. What this committee does is research, looking for those extraordinary athletes who are lost in time. I took the results of this research and started a Twitter page ThisDateInBuffaloSportsHistory (@BuffSportsHstry)

‘When did you start playing DMO and how did it first come to your attention?

I started playing DMO back in 2000 or so when the coach of my son’s hockey team asked me to help him out with a team at the old Bill James site. This was with Steve Pepi, RJ Proulx, and Dan Ingersoll, who are still active in this game. One small issue with that site was that my buddy and I weren’t aware of transaction fees. That first team was a bit costly. We moved on to ESPN where I hooked up with Charlie Lent and George Kreiner and eventually Jason Masterson, and Greg David. We ran a progression league for years. The World Series winner got to pick the theme of the next league.

What’s involved in running the GOT?

I started running the Grand Open Tournament in 2010, which was the 4th version of it. We are currently in the middle of the 16th version. A post was put out asking for a volunteer to run the tournament and since I’m pretty good at organizing stuff like this and a big fan of contributing to my community, I decided to take on the task. The biggest thing about running a tournament like this is getting the word out for sign ups. When the GOT first started at the old ESPN site, 400 would sign up immediately. That number has dropped significantly for various reasons, but there’s still a good core of between 156 and 180 and that works perfectly. Running the GOT can be a bit time consuming as I try to be meticulous in setting up spreadsheets, sending out a few thousand sitemails trying to recruit, and keeping track of the leagues as the seasons roll on. As much work as it is, I don’t have an issue doing this as the community in general is very thankful and helpful. I rarely have issues finding quality commissioners for the leagues, or getting solid advice. Two of the best pieces of advice I’ve received in running the GOT are firstly, naming the leagues after ballplayers who passed away in the past year and secondly, making all leagues standard only. We have the Masters for creative themes; the GOT was made for standard themes, nothing fancy.

What sorts of Custom Leagues appeal to you?

While the GOT is standard everything, I prefer to play in custom leagues that require a degree of thinking and strategy. SSG offers a perfect opportunity for this and while I prefer the Classic Game, the majority of leagues I’m involved in are SSG. I try to do themes that haven’t been done before. My last one was a Hall of Famer’s last game boxscore league. I listed 72 Hall of Famers, had a six round draft and everyone’s player pool was made up of anyone in those boxscores as well as any season of their hall of famers. The six round draft is actually more fun than playing the season out. To me, putting a team together with strict parameters is more fun than playing the season out. There are some very good creative themes out there and a very good core group of owners who play in those leagues. If you haven’t checked out the Custom league message board and jumped into a league with a bit of a different theme, I highly recommend you do so.

Is there any advice you would give to people who haven’t played in a tournament before, but would like to give it a try?

For those who have never played in the Grand Open Tournament or the Masters Tournament, which Bob Jecmen runs, keep your eyes open for the start of both tournaments and jump right in. The Masters is heading towards the final round while the GOT just finished the halfway point. If you prefer challenging themes, sign up for the Masters. If you prefer basic rules and themes, sign up for the Grand Open Tournament. If you just want to get more involved in the community and have an opportunity to get to know some of the other personalities in this game, sign up for both. This IS community reminds me of a neighborhood. Some people like to stick to themselves and not get involved in the neighborhood, while others like to reach out and interact with others. Sign up for the Masters or GOT and get to know the neighbors. Next thing you know, you’ll be chatting on the message board with some new people, setting up leagues and being a part of your neighborhood. Who knows, maybe you’ll take it a step further and hang out at Jim Konstanty’s fishing cabin with Konstanty’s daughter, Charlie Lent, George Kreiner, and Greg David. Amazing and unexpected things happen when you put yourself out there.

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.

Once again this month, we dip into the Advice message board for a couple of interesting discussions: one concerning whether minimum salary players or “pumpkins” are preferable in SSG, the other concerning the relative value of range and error ratings at 2B and 3B.

Pumpkin vs Scrub?

tarzan61      I understand that once a SSG player pumpkins, his performance drops to that of a replacement level player. But is that still better than a $500,000 player? Are you better off starting a rested pumpkin than a minimum salary pitcher, for example?

TylerEnsor   This is really hard to answer without names. In SSG, some 500K pitchers are definitely better than pumpkins. Their salary reflects a lack of available IP rather than a lack of ability. Others have a lot of innings but are terrible at pitching and are probably around the performance level of a pumpkin.

rsnbk           I generally stay with my pumpkined starters with their VG or Ex defense rather than defer to a 500K sub who might diminish my team defensively and likely won’t hit much better than my pumpkin.

elysianfields      What is a pumpkin?

TylerEnsor   In SSG, players are limited to 10% more of their IP and PA than they had in real life. It’s to prevent a guy with 30 outstanding PAs from becoming the next Babe Ruth. Once they hit their limit, they turn into a pumpkin. You can stop playing them, but if you continue to use them, their offense if they’re a batter and pitching if they’re a pitcher drops to somewhere below replacement level. Their other attributes, like speed and defense, are unaffected by pumpkining.

Fielding pair, 2B/3B

McLauchlin I have to paper over an injury for a bit, so welcome to my starting lineup, Eddie Lake (he said with all the enthusiasm due such an auspicious event).

Jackie Robinson is Ex 67 at 2B; Ex 75 at 3B

Eddie Lake is Fr 133 at 2B; Fr 105 at 3B

So who plays where?

greghack      Interesting quandary. You’re asking for more errors with Lake at 2B (66 percentage point gap) than at 3B (30 percentage points), but having him at 3B will surrender more doubles. For a few games, anyway, I’d put him at 2B.

dvdavins      Using Flood, I get 0.157 runs/ERR point at 2B ad 0.12 at 3B. So that’s 10.4 run difference from errors at 2B and only 4.8 at 3B. So 5.6 runs in favor of putting Lake at 3B.

OTOH, I have 11 runs per band at 3B and only 10 at 2B, which favors putting Lake at 2B by 3 runs. Overall, that’s Lake at 3B by 2.6, which is close enough to not worry much about it. I’d put Lake wherever the manager will handle pinch hitting and/or Defensive Replacement best.

elysianfields Oh wow Flood supports Lake at 3B? For some reason I interpreted it as saying to put more weight on 3B D at all times.

DCRL56        I think the point is that Range is more valuable at 3B, so if the 2 players had identical E rates, you’d put Robinson at 3B. But Lake makes so many more Errors than Robinson at 2B that it overcomes the Range advantage.

TylerEnsor   My numbers show Robinson at 2B as the better play by about 3.8 runs. The disagreement among owners here though demonstrates that we don’t really know the answers when it gets this close. I think Dvd’s point about defensive replacement is a good one. If I had a good defensive 2B on the bench, Robinson would play 3B. If I had a good defensive 3B on the bench, Robinson would go to 2B.

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