In This Month’s Newsletter
Tournament News
The 2021 Masters champion has been crowned!
George Kreiner took out his second Masters title and now has recorded the two best championship scores in the 12 year history of the tournament. You can find a full wrap of the 2021 Masters by tournament director Bob Jecmen here.
Registration is underway for the 2022 Masters!
This year, the tournament is open to all comers (no “minimum qualification” requirements). You can register to compete in this most challenging of all DMO tournaments here.
Grand Open XV Finals Underway!
The finals of the biggest of all DMO tournaments – the Grand Open Tournament XV – is into its third week. Bob Jecmen’s defence of his GOT XIV title is off to a rough start, as his Parallel Universe team’s record at the time of writing is a lackluster 17-25 (though in a division where the division leader is just 21-21), and he’s pushed some chips into the pot with a substantial loan to sign Rick Monday to provide some DH punch.
Congrats to George and good luck to Bob (who has plenty of time to right the PU ship, as he undoubtedly will).
New “SIM Santa” Site Features
Our dedicated DMO customers are always ready with suggestions for making the game more user-friendly. In particular, for the past few years Scott (Passedball) Hiett has been posting the “Sim Santa” request wish list.
Christmas may have come and gone for another year, but we’ve been hard at work adding many of the features requested, including, amongst others:
- Increasing the maximum number of player search fields from 10 to 20
- Adding Details links for SSG players (so that you can view their “sim stats”)
- Adding the ability to set player fielding rating, RPDur, clutch and jam ratings so that players will display whether or not they have the rating set (SPDur will be added to the range of ratings with this function)
- Displaying total roster salary value, as well as the subtotal salary values of position players, pitchers and players on the inactive reserve
- The ability to use the Search for Batters/Pitchers function in your leagues to scout the stats and ratings for players on the rosters of other teams in your league
- The ability to view My Pitchers and My Hitters of other owners on your league’s Scout page
- Adding a 5-minute limit manual draft option
And we’re not done yet!
Notable NO-NO’S
No hitters have been highlighted in previous newsletters – like Chris Young throwing consecutive no-no’s – and they take center stage here once again.
There has been one no hitter in World Series history: Don Larsen’s perfect game for the Yankees against the Dodgers in Game 5 of the 1956 series. That didn’t finish off the Dodgers, though, as the series went to seven games before the Yankees triumphed.
Johan Santana, for the Allen Ginsberg Poets in the Billy Gardner League, fell short of perfection, but he did deliver the final dagger in the Poets’ sweep of the Philadelphia Turf Toes, tossing a no hitter in a 6-0 Game 4 coup de gras.
Meanwhile, in the Tommy Everidge League, Tyler Ensor’s Boston Blueberries faced off against division rivals the North Dakota Nutsacs, with two games separating the teams in the standings. The Nutsacs drew first blood, with Wes Ferrell tossing a no hitter in Game 1 of the series. But Bud Black struck back for the Blueberries in Game 3, no hitting the Nutsacs.
And finally, there was a no hitter thrown by Matt Beech for the ’97 Tino Rockets in the SSG Big Fishes Small Pond III league. Granted, as the name of the league implies, with the exception of two superstars per team, the rosters in this league are ultra low cap. Nevertheless, kudos to Beech, who went 4-9 5.07 for the Phillies in 1997 and makes the DMO minimum $500,000, on his no-no.
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, captain 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 Jim Mudrock, a regular creator of Classic custom leagues like the Bright Star Lesser Lights and Today’s the Day series..
We asked Jim to answer some questions for us and here’s what he had to say:
Q: Tell us something about yourself: age, occupation, marital status, where you live, and interests (apart from DMO, of course).
A: I’m 62, have worked for TSA for almost 17 years; starting to get close to retirement. I live in Sacramento and am engaged to a beautiful, smart, funny, talented woman who I met at just the right time for both of us.
Along with my TSA job, I also have been President of our Union Local for the last 10 years. In case that doesn’t keep me busy enough, my honey and I love to travel, we go camping during the summer, and love to watch movies together. And I have three cats at home.
Q: When did you start playing DMO and how did it first come to your attention?
A: I really can’t remember how I first discovered this game. Probably it came out of being a Pursue the Pennant fan, first with the board game version and then the PC game.
Q: Where do you get the inspiration for your Custom League ideas?
A: Ah, the “where do you get your ideas?” question. Mostly, I just try to think of a theme that amuses me and hope that eleven other people like it. I try to mix up the rules a bit, sometimes DH on, sometimes off, with a cap between $80-$120m depending on what I think best fits the theme. I like generally lower caps and limited pools.
Q: What have been your favorite leagues?
A: Favorites? Some are long running recurring leagues like He Played For Us?, Bright Star and Lesser Lights, and Screw the 3 True Outcomes. Some interesting one offs include Octavio Dotel’s U-Haul, Angry Birds, and Famous Beanings. I do seem to have a tendency towards captains or franchise leagues.
Q: Is there any advice you would give to people who haven’t created a league before, but would like to give it a try?
A: My best advice would be just to go for something that you think is entertaining, and pick the rules that you like. This is a game, and it should be fun.
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Why not try creating a Custom League yourself? Just click on the “Start a League of Your Own” link top left of your My Teams page to get started!
Mentor League
Diamond Mind Online can be a daunting game, especially for newcomers. Many DMO owners are data-driven detail-oriented veterans of the game. But most are also more than willing to offer advice when asked, for example, on the Advice message board.
Mark (Kalithebaseball) Malone, a relative newcomer to the game, has taken the initiative to create the Mentoring League, which is a Classic (career-rated) player pool league with Standard League settings. Newcomers and others struggling to find success in the game are welcome to join this league, which will be “mentored” by a few veteran owners there to offer advice and assistance.
To join, click on the Join a Custom League link on your My Teams page and find the Mentoring League in the list. No password required to join.
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.
Pitchers in Diamond Mind Online are not better in one role than another. Of course, a pitcher who doesn’t have an SP designation can’t start, but a starting pitcher can relieve, even if he doesn’t have an RPDur rating. (In that case, the “default” rating that will apply is Vg.) He’ll be equally effective as a reliever as he is as a starter.
In SSG, where getting maximum value for your available cash means not paying for a lot more innings pitched than you will use, using starting pitchers in relief (especially guys who threw relatively few innings) can be particularly valuable.
When one of your starters has just a few innings left before their “PTL” is exhausted, you can take advantage of those remaining innings in the last week or two of the season by shifting them to the bullpen. And to fill their spot in the rotation, one of your relievers who has an SP rating and has innings to spare can be inserted in their place.
What about pitchers who are designated as closers (CL)? Well, all things being equal (which really they never are!) you might favor a pitcher designated CL over one with comparable stats designated RP. Why?
A team that is losing will pull out all the stops in the 9th inning of a close game. So a closer, over the long haul, may face tougher hitters than a set up man or middle reliever.
When we rate players, their stats are just the starting point. For pitchers, in particular, we take into account the batters they faced, the fielding they had behind them, the parks they pitched in and other relevant factors. We start with the stats, but then simulate the season thousands of times over, exactly as it was played out in real life, refining the ratings to adjust for such factors.
So, for a closer to achieve stats comparable to those of a set up or middle reliever, they may require slightly better ratings.
Randy Johnson MLB Career and Early Life
Over a 22-year career, left-handed fireballer Randy Johnson dominated the league in a way few pitchers have ever done.
Tommy Lasorda MLB Career and Early Life
Forever associated with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Tommy Lasorda became one of baseball’s most successful managers in the 1970s and 1980s
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