Highlights From Diamond Mind Online January 2020

MASTER OF THE MASTERS

Registration for the 2020 Masters Tournament is underway. The tournament is organized and run annually by its originator, Bob Jecmen. Bob offered these thoughts on the tournament:

Bob Jecmen’s Featured Team Owner of the Month

The Masters Tournament at DMO has been running annually for over a decade. It is a year-long tournament broken down into four rounds, with cumulative scoring similar to its golf tournament namesake.

Each round has a unique theme. The collection of themes for all four rounds typically spans the full range of DMO league options from Classic to SSG, 12 team and 24 team leagues, constrained player pools, and a variety of financial and league parameters designed to challenge the participants to develop creative strategies to be successful.

I began the Masters Tournaments to encourage the top owners of DMO to compete against the best and demonstrate their adaptive skills to navigate the unique themes of the MT. DMO has other great tournaments like the Grand Open and Ladder Leagues, which largely focus on classic standard league structures. I wanted a tournament which forced participants to think out of the box and avoid repetitive cookie cutter strategies proven time and again to work in standard format or frequently used themes. I also wanted to test our best owners to show they can excel in all types of DMO formats. The eventual Masters Tournament champion is truly a master of the DMO game in all its richly comprehensive brilliance.

We have just completed the 10th annual MT in December with a record-breaking performance by the champion, George Kreiner. Most of the 10 completed MTs have been fiercely competitive battles, with the eventual champion only decided over the last few games of the final round World Series after nearly 700 games have been played by each participant. Feedback from past MT participants has been overwhelmingly positive. Many have said it is the most fun they have had playing DMO.

The 2020 Masters Tournament is now open for registration with four possible new themes for consideration by the participants. They include Classic league auctions for players, SSG player pools limited by the Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton presidential years, a low priced (<$10M) player league, and an alphabet letter player constraint theme. Detailed theme rules and registration are listed on the general message board. Come on and test yourself against the top owners playing DMO.

THE 2019 SEASON IS HERE

The 2019 SSG season is now online!

Leading the way in the salary ranks are NL 2018 MVP (and 2019 runner up) Christian Yelich ($21,336,000) and NL 2019 MVP Cody Bellinger ($18,264,000).

See All Player’s Salary Ranks

*Tip.. After clicking link, scroll down & list is already created*

On the pitching side, Stephen Strasburg tops the list ($17,267,000), followed by NL 2019 Cy Young winner Jacob DeGrom ($16,221,000). Houston’s dynamic duo of Justin Verlander ($15,528,000) and Gerrit Cole ($15,641,000), who finished 1-2 in the AL voting, are next.

See All Player’s Salary Ranks

*Tip.. After clicking link, scroll down & list is already created*

NEW CLASSIC PLAYERS COMING

With work completed on getting the 2019 season up and running, we are now focused on adding a group of over 80 new players to the Classic player pool, including such standouts as Adrian Beltre, Joe Mauer, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Tim Lincecum and Jake Peavy.

A TOUGH CROWD

In the Joe Haynes League, Alan Herzberg’s (WhatsMyID) Brookfield 1 squad racked up 96 wins, but still fell short of a playoff birth, finishing third in their division.

The division was won by Jeff Everhart’s (jeffever) Cleveland Blues, with 103 wins, with the wild card going to the second-place finisher, Ed Huff’s (jhcoop) Springfield Elves 53, who finished the regular season with 97 wins.

Brookfield almost caught the Elves in the regular season, winning their last four games while Springfield lost its last three. But Springfield heated up in the postseason, winning their LCS over Michael Zink’s (foxontherun79) North Dakota Nutsac Garglers in five games, then rolling over the Blues in a four-game sweep in the World Series.

See The Playoffs Recap Here

Watch The Game

ZAT YOU, SANTA CLAUS?

Each year for the past seven years Russ Mason (slowcooker) has run the Classic Zat You, Santa Claus? League(s). We asked Russ to tell us a bit about them:

The Zat You, Santa Claus? leagues — named for an old (but not as old as some of us who play this game) Louis Armstrong song — have been annual end-of-the-year events since December/January of 2013-14. They’re accelerated 24-team leagues in which one division uses the DH and the other doesn’t, with Santa delivering large sums of upgrade money into our bank accounts on Christmas and New Year’s Day (or Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, depending on the calendar).

For the first five years there was a single league, but for the past two years there’s been enough interest that we’ve expanded to two 24-team leagues. Santa hasn’t complained about the extra work … or the extra money he’s had to distribute. So it looks as though these annual leagues are here to stay, with sign-ups beginning in early December.

This year’s leagues were won by Sweet William Kennings (appleworm)

Playoff Recap

and LeRoy Walden III (Dinnerman)

Playoff Recap

Want to hear the song that’s inspired all this holiday merriment? Here you go!