Highlights From Diamond Mind January 2024

COMING SOON

We are in the final stages of testing the 2023 and completely rerated 1947 seasons, which will be introduced very soon!

Along with the introduction of these two seasons, there will be an overhaul of reliever endurance ratings for the 1920 season, updating of park factor windows for parks currently in use to include the 2023 season, and a change to Dick Allen’s 3B range rating from Vg to Av.

Other major projects/changes planned for later in 2024 include:

• Rerating of the 1948, 1955 and 1958 SSG seasons

• Review and reconciliation of SSG injury ratings

• Review and extension of Classic (career-rated) platoon ratings

• Adding Classic normalized counting stats as a searchable database

• Introduction of 1919 SSG season

• Annual intake of new Classic (including Negro Leagues) players

ZAT YOU?

Russ Mason has been running the Zat You, Santa Claus leagues for over a decade.

This year’s leagues are now in the record books. Congratulations to Jeffrey (KingTiger) Martin’s Bumbles Bounce! and Joe (riverfish72) Hennessy’s Homemade Eggnog, World Series champions!

RECORD SETTING SINGLE GAME PERFORMANCES

The modern record for home runs allowed in a game by a pitcher is six, on 11 different occasions, most recently on June 11, 2022, by Matt Swarmer of the Cubs against the Yankees. Three pitchers – Paul Foytack, Catfish Hunter and Mike Caldwell – have given up home runs to four consecutive batters, and one, Chase Anderson, on September 18, 2006, allowed three on consecutive pitches.

Clayton Richard, pitching for the Stupey Cabin Randos in the RA600-44 AAA League, earned a place in this dubious pantheon of achievement, when he entered the game in the top of the 12th inning against Tina’s Glorious Comeback and allowed home runs to five consecutive batters.

The modern record for hits in a single game is held by Johnny Burnett, who tallied 9 in 11 at bats in an 18-inning affair on July 10, 1932. Apart from that effort, just four have managed 7 hits in a game – Rennie Stennett (7 AB), Rocky Colavito (10 AB), Coco Gutierrez (7 AB) and Brandon Crawford (8 AB), with Stennett the only one to accomplish the feat in a regulation 9-inning game.

Tony Oliva, playing for the 1967 Minnesota Twins in the SSG Novice + Hesitants League, claimed his spot in this group with a 12th inning double, his fourth of the game and seventh hit in seven at bats, in a 7-6 win over the Hi Al, Bye Hal Tigers.

CUSTOM LEAGUES KINGS

This month we’re visiting Charlie (Clent) Lent.

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.

The “captains league” is one of the most popular Custom Leagues formats. I’ve created and played in many.

In this format, you choose one or more captains, and the rest of your team is comprised of their teammates. In an SSG captains league, the teammates may be limited to those from one or more specific seasons of your captain(s) and may be limited to those specific seasons of their teammates, or open to any season of their teammates from the particular season(s) of your captain(s).

Here are some tips that you may find helpful if you’re joining a captains league:

• While choosing captains who are good value players is great, the captains you choose are less important than the overall composition of the player pool of their teammates. For example, a cheap bench-type player who had a long career during which he played on many different teams can provide his owner with a deep pool of eligible players and maximum payroll flexibility.

• Look carefully at other league captains in choosing your own, because overlaps between player pools can leave you in a difficult position, possibly competing with one or more other owners for players for whom there are no satisfactory substitutes in your player pool.

• You might consider creating a spreadsheet containing your entire eligible player pool. Here briefly are the steps I follow: i) I list the seasons and teams my captain(s) played for; ii) then I alternately search hitters and pitchers for each team and stretch of seasons, copying the results into my spreadsheet by right clicking on the upper left corner cell in the spreadsheet where I want the pasted results to begin, choosing paste special, then unicode text; iii) then I sort the results by position and salary descending and do some other clean-up, like formatting the stats as numbers with the appropriate number of decimal places, deleting duplicate entries, etc.

• Finally, after putting my roster together for the draft, in leagues in which teams’ player pools are overlapping, not unique, comes the task that can separate the successful teams from the also-rans: determining your draft order. Assuming that your league doesn’t give owners “priority” rights to claim players based on most AB or IP as teammates of captains, you’ll need to work out the players you are drafting that belong exclusively to you, and those that also could be drafted by others, and for the latter, the ones for whom you (or others who could draft them) have no satisfactory substitute (and so who might be listing the players high in their draft lists). The way I do this is to list on a sheet of paper, for every other teams’ captain(s), the seasons and teams those captains played for. Then I go through my draft list player by player, checking each on BBREF for overlaps with other teams’ eligible player pools.

• One final tip when setting your initial roster and draft order: if you have players on your roster for whom you have exclusive rights (they were not teammates of anyone else’s captains), you might leave them off your roster until after the draft, and use those spots for second and third choice guys at positions where you’re competing with other teams for players you want. After the draft, if you’ve ended up getting your first choice, you can always replace these backup choices with the exclusive rights players you left off your initial draft. If you plan on taking out a loan preseason, this also is a good way to improve your chances of getting the players you want, with the “exclusive rights” player(s) being one(s) you can add with a loan on the eve of Opening Day.