2018 September Updates

There are a number of developments we have in the works for Diamond Mind Online. Below is a sampling of what’s coming. We will provide further details on timing as we get closer to release.

Managerial Decision-making. One of the most frequent complaints against MLB managers is how they handle in-game decisions, so it’s no surprise that the Computer Manager also gets its fair share of complaints.  It’s also one the most sophisticated and complex parts of the sim engine, so we have been cautious about tampering with it.  Thanks to some help from Tom Tippett, the original designer of Diamond Mind, we’re working on some adjustments:

Changes to bullpen management.  One of the most frequent complaints against MLB managers is how they handle pitching changes and bullpen management, so it’s no surprise that the Computer Manager also gets its fair share of complaints.  We are now taking a shot at making it better, particularly the decisions around lefty/righty match-ups and the use of “LOOGYs”, a fairly recent thing as baseball history goes.

Pitch count limits.  Over the years, we have received a number of requests for you all to be able to set pitch-count limits as part of your management of pitching usage and fatigue and now for managing playing time limits (PTL) in the single seasons (SSG).  This will be included in the changes to bullpen management, though it’s not as simple as it sounds.  There are issues such as what to do if your pitcher hits the pitch count limit but your pen is fatigued or situations where your pitcher is just one out away from finishing the game, to name a couple of examples.

Pinch-runner settings.  We are exploring whether this is practical, given the sim engine structure.  No promises, but we will try.

Manager settings.  Like a real MLB manager in the dugout, the Computer Manager weighs a wide variety of factors when making in-game decisions.  One of those is your settings, which are sort of like Billy Beane telling Bob Melvin how he’d like the team to be managed during a game – but Bob is the one in the dugout.  You’re the Billy Beane here, in case you couldn’t tell.  We are planning to increase the relative weight the Computer Manager puts on your settings.

Keepers for manual drafts.  We recently added the ability to reserve players for auto drafts, preventing the issue where someone takes one of your “keepers” in an ongoing league.  Next, we will add this to manual drafts.

Message board upgrades.  We still have the basic message board system we’ve had since opening the doors, so it’s time for an upgrade.  In the short run, we will fix little things like apostrophes showing up a question marks, while we are also planning other enhancements.

Hall of Fame.  MLB’s Hall of Fame honors great general managers, and we think it’s time we do the same.  We are designing a section of the site to honor great team owners, celebrate tournament winners, and remember those in our community who have passed on.

League pages.  We will be adding “mini-sites” for your keeper leagues that will be a home page for such leagues.  These pages will allow you to track league history of stats, players, records, etc.

Tiebreakers.  MLB breaks ties with a one-game playoff, of course.  Given the automation in our systems, however, that was difficult to do.  But settling ties via formula seems rather inadequate, so we’ve decided it’s time to implement something like that in DMO.  Given the limited time between the end of a regular season (Saturday afternoon/evening) and the first game of the playoffs (Monday morning), there is not a lot of time for setting lineups and pitchers, but we’re thinking a Sunday morning sim run.  We may still need to use formulas if there are multi-team ties.

Masters  Tournament

The ninth edition of the DMO Masters Tournament has reached its 3 quarters mark with the completion of round 3. The Masters Tournament is a year-long 4 round cumulative scoring tournament with 72 of the top IS owners competing. The 2018 MT posed unique themes for each round designed to test the adaptive skills of the participants. The themes for 2018 included both the classic and SSG games and used restrictive player pools and financial variations to challenge the participants to design strategies to adapt to the individual themes.

Round 3 used a classic game theme where each owner had to maintain 2 players from each decade from the 1880s through the 2000’s. A manual snake draft was used progressing from the 1880s through 2000s and then back again to the 1880s. All transactions had to maintain the 2 player per decade constraint. 20% interest on cash and loans added a strategic twist and forced owners to decide whether to spend or save cash to manage the large interest involved. We saw a variety of strategies employed without any one dominating successful approach.

With the completion of round 3, we have a new tournament leader. Scott Matranga won his 3.1 league championship and has a 4 point lead over 2nd place David Hochstein who won his 3.4 league championship. We have a 3-way tie for 3rd place overall between, Matt Muncie, Jack Rudack, and Dan Geary all sitting 19 points behind Matranga. Bob Jecmen, the leader at the midpoint of round 3 dropped to 6th place when his team faded down the stretch and failed to make the playoffs.

The 6 round 3 league champions include some of the most famous IS participants. In addition to Scott Matranga and multiple major tournament winner David Hochstein, we have Terry Swift, Mike Knippel, Dayne Myers and Ron Carr who won their 3.2. 3.3, 3.5, and 3.6 league championships respectively.

Congratulations to the round 3 champions. There is a cut from 72 owners to 24 for the final round 4 which will be a single 24 team league with the theme TBD. If this concludes your 2018 Masters Tournament, we would like to thank you for your participation and hope you enjoyed the themes and competition.

You can find the overall 2018 MT leaderboard via the link below. The finals theme involves a single-season league where each team can only have one player per franchise – yikes!

http://imaginesports.com/bball/manage/board/view?postID=564565&curTeam=YSCPKUXGDCYC3L4LBCYZ

The GRAND OPEN TOURNAMENT XII

The DMO Grand Open Tournament is in its 12th go and has just reached its finals. Congratulations to the following team owners who will compete for the title:

Tim Schere {scherti}
Brian Mueller {Brian31}
Christopher Visser {csvisser}
Jamey Storvick {jamey2}
Bradd Schmeichel {lilschmeichel}
Michael Sweetland {masweets}
Conor Mullan {southpaw25}
Craig Natale {natalysis}
James Callaghan {circlechange3}
Robert Majewski {Naskra}
Bryan Pedato {bryandog1974}
Russ Mason {SlowCooker}

You can find the standings for the final round below:

http://imaginesports.com/bball/league/standings?curTeam=H2PYWJR6TMMUQDNNZ9DW