Highlights From Diamond Mind February 2024

IT’S 2023 ALL OVER AGAIN

The 2023 season is now live and available online!

Heading the salary list is Shohei Ohtani. The AL MVP will cost you a cool $27,280,000

As part of the release, the rule limiting pickoff throws, introduced in 2023, has been added. It is available as an option in all Custom leagues.

We also have made changes to the SSG standard league setup, which replaces the 2022 with the 2023 season. The salary cap has been raised to $130 million, the periodic payments schedule has been modified, and loans can now be taken against future income payments.

BI-CYCLE

Hitting for the cycle is an uncommon and exciting feat.

Christian Yelich (August 29 and September 17, 2018) did it twice in one season. Adrian Beltre (Mariners) and Stephen Drew (Diamondbacks) did it in different games on the same day (September 1, 2008). But in major league history, two players have never hit for the cycle in the same game.

That feat was accomplished for Jack (jackfish65) fischetti’s Kansas City A’s in the Dan Schneider League. Bob Cerv and Sal Bando each turned the trick in the A’s 16-8 win over FJB in the Baker Bowl.

THE WILD ONE

From the sublime (two cycles in one game) to the ridiculous:

In the Big Fishes Small Pond XII league, Jack Baldschun tied the modern major league record for wild pitches in an inning (4).

Coming on in relief with a runner on first and none out for Steve (sjfore) Fore’s Aaron Seaver 1969 team, he gave up five hits (including a three-run homer), two walks and four wild pitches (two of which scored runners from third) in a five-run fourth inning and 13-8 loss to GTA ‘Rude v. Nails: 93WS Foes.

CUSTOM LEAGUES KINGS

This month we’re visiting Paul (coalcreekbaseball) Stark, owner of Starx Cards

Click here to read more.

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.

An incredibly useful feature that doesn’t seem to have been that widely adopted is Make a Note.

When you create a team, the Make a Note feature is available, even before you submit your team’s draft, on the Draft Team page. After your league drafts, Make a Note is accessible from the bottom of the Front Office menu, and anything you’ve entered prior to the draft is retained.

If you’re entering a team in an “open” league (one that accesses all or substantially all of the player pool), then tracking your roster plans as you go is probably not as important. But if, like me, you play mainly in leagues where you have access to a limited player pool, then tracking your roster plans can be very useful.

As I’m building my draft roster, I’ll use Make a Note to list players I will or may want to add during the season. When the league drafts, I’ll immediately add all of these players to my Cash Worksheet. I’ll also begin at that stage sketching out my upgrade plan, noting who I will replace with whom, and when.

Let me offer a pointed example. The SSG Big Fishes Small Pond leaguesplace a premium on managing your upgrades. The current format requires that you draft two players from the same season with a total salary of at least $32 million, with the rest of your team drawn from other players from that season. But the total salary cap for your team is only $62 million, with standard upgrades (2/2/2/2/2/2/4) throughout the season. In this format, every PA and IP counts.

I’ll let the screenshots below (roster, player usage table and Make a Note page) from my team in the upcoming Big Fishes Small Pone league speak for themselves. I have the top win % (.600) of all team owners in the series and have made the playoffs in all 7 leagues in which I’ve played, and I have no doubt that the greatest contributor to that level of success has been the detailed planning depicted below.