Highlights From Diamond Mind March 2022

A Welcome Back, Bring ‘Em Back Promo!

For a limited time, if you previously were registered on Diamond Mind Online but haven’t created a team in at least twelve months, we are offering a “Welcome Back” promotion: with any purchase, we’ll add double the amount of your purchase to your account as well. To claim your reward, email support@imaginesports.com after making your purchase.

And if you’ve been an active owner during the past twelve months, and you bring someone back who hasn’t created a team during that time, we’ll credit your account with a free team as well! To claim your reward, ensure that the person you’ve brought back includes your name in their email to support.

Jecmen Repeats as Grand Open Champion!

Bob Jecmen has repeated as GOT champion!

In what was a terrifically hard-fought 24-team league final round, just one team (Mark (callmecal2) Gardner’s GOT Finals Aardvarks) managed to top 90 wins on the regular season. And defending champion Bob Jecmen’s Parallel Universe just snuck into the finals with an 82-80 record.

Nevertheless, Jecmen rolled through the playoffs, winning the World Series handily in five games and his second consecutive GOT championship. Here is the update from Tournament Director Ron (8GoBucs21) Carr heading into the Series:

Bob Jecmen has made it to the finals of an IS tournament. What are the odds?

In the LCS, he dropped the first two at home, and then decided to go into overdrive as his 82-win team ran the next four taking the American Association championship in six games. Bob defeated two of the best the game has to offer in Dvd Avins and Chris Visser in making his way to the finals.

He’ll take on the National Association champion, Jarred Scott, who defeated Gregory Clark in seven games in the first playoff round, followed by a 4-2 win over Tim Schere. This is Jarred’s first visit to the finals of the GOT Tournament while Bob is making his third consecutive.

Sign ups for GOT XVI will begin sometime late next week/early week after!

Diamond Mind H2H Mobile App Beta Testers Wanted!

Diamond Mind Baseball is fantasy baseball at its best.  Our baseball game allows you to create your Dream Team of players from the entire history of Major League Baseball.

Diamond Mind is dedicated to providing the most realistic strategy-oriented baseball game.  You’ll find an almost endless variety of ways to enjoy the National Pastime using our Diamond Mind Baseball Head 2 Head game and our catalog of related single seasons.

Diamond Mind Baseball Head 2 Head allows users to play live games on their iPhone or iPad devices.  (Android support will be coming soon.)  Create a game to play against the Sim Manager.  (Play against another person also will be coming soon.)  Choose a season and team for yourself and the Sim’s team.  Set the starting pitchers, line-ups and game settings and start live play.

Access to the mobile app is by invitation only.  If you are interested in trying the app on your iPhone or iPad, send an email to support@imaginesports.com. We will send you an email via Apple to install Apple’s Test Flight application on your iPhone/iPad.  After you install the Test Flight app, open the Test Flight application.  You will select the Diamond Mind Baseball Head 2 Head app to install.

After the installation is complete you can start up the App.  The App is not linked to IS accounts at this time.  You will need to sign up in the App using your email and a password.   To continue to play the game in future we do encourage you to keep your email updated on your IS account.  After you sign up, you will receive a verification email.   Click on the link in the email to activate your account.  You can optionally sign in using your Google or Facebook account.  Now you can sign into the app and start creating your first game in a few easy steps.

We would like to have your feedback on the user interface and the game experience.  To provide feedback or report an issue at any point, all you need to do is click on the (i) icon on the top right corner of your screen. This will open a feedback dialog, with the option to send a screenshot and your device info.

Pirates 1925 first base platoon: George Grantham (L), Stuffy McInnis (R)

SSG v.5 Back On Track

With our team slowly but surely returning to action, SSG v.5 is back in the works.

The 2021 season is up and running. Next up for SSG v.5 is the extension of platoon splits back from 1928 to 1924. When this occurs, salaries also will be recalculated. (The platoon splits will apply immediately, including in leagues in progress, but the recalculated salaries will apply only in league created after their implementation.)

Once those have been implemented, we’ll be moving on to replace the 1932 and 1963 seasons, which have been rerated in their entirety, with salaries recalculated accordingly. As with the changes to 1924-27, the player ratings changes will take effect immediately, including in leagues in progress, but the salary changes only will apply in leagues created after their introduction. (“Before and after” qualitative ratings will be posted under the Downloads section in advance of these changes taking effect.)

Finally, as part of SSG v.5, we will be doing a major review and reconciliation of injury ratings, based on the number of games in which players appeared for their teams in a season. In particular, players currently rated as Normal or Prone who appeared in all but one or two of their team’s regular season games, will have their ratings changed to Iron.

Makeover For SSG Standard Leagues

With the introduction of the 2021 season, we’ll be revamping the SSG Standard League format.

The player pool for SSG standard leagues will consist of the most recently completed single season only, set in the AL “era of play” for that season with the DH on.

SSG standard leagues will continue to be accelerated nine games per day leagues.  The salary cap will be $120 million with “weekly” income ($ millions): 2, 3, 4, 8, 4, 3, 2.

PTL will be standard (110%), PTL on splits will be ON, injuries will be player profile, there will be 26 player active rosters with the catcher collision rule and intentional walk rules in effect.

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda 2020

With the 2021 season up and running, let’s take a look at some top sim performances from the 2020 season , and what players, based on their performance over the abbreviated 60-game schedule, might have achieved in a full 162-game season:

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, captains 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 Greg (GMLBFan) Scholz, creator of the legendary MicroBrew leagues.  Here’s what Greg had to say:

Q: Tell us something about yourself: age, occupation, marital status, where you live, and interests (apart from DMO, of course).

A: My name is Greg Scholz. I am 62 years old and live in western NY near Rochester. I recently retired after 33 years as a high school science teacher working for the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES). I worked in an alternative education setting primarily with economically disadvantaged students who struggled to learn in a traditional classroom. I’ve been married for 33 years and my wife and I have 2 children who still live in the area.

Baseball occupies much of my increased free time, both playing Diamond Mind and doing some independent research of my own. My primary area of interest is Negro Leagues players, and I spend hours going through digital newspaper articles in search of player information and scouting reports. I spend a fair amount of time at the gym, golf when the weather allows, and I’m a person who enjoys doing yard work. I guess after all the years of a very dynamic and sometimes chaotic workplace I’m enjoying a little more normalcy in my days.

Q: When did you start playing DMO and how did it first come to your attention?

A: I go way back. I remember the first advertisement for “The Winter Game” like it was yesterday. I saw it in the very first issue of Baseball Weekly (the Rickey Henderson cover) and I was hooked immediately. My first league was called “The Outlaw League” in the spring of 1991. The game has gone through several transformations since then, and I’ve played in leagues in most of them. Thankfully, it’s become a whole lot more affordable over the years, I think that very first league cost me several hundred dollars when they totaled up the special fax service and transaction fees!

Q: Where did you get the inspiration for your MicroBrew leagues?

A: I’m originally from Milwaukee and grew up a Brewers fan. I wanted to run a league that featured only Milwaukee Brewers players, and I felt like I needed a “hook” to get people interested in the idea. I started playing around with the idea of building player 6-packs that used the beer brand as a theme and it took off from there. My main goal was to create a league where some different players would be featured instead of the same “value” players that seemed to show up in every standard league. The leagues have expanded beyond Milwaukee and have included themes from beers all over the USA and Canada as well. The leagues are very graphics heavy, I think that’s a carryover from that first advertisement in Baseball Weekly. I wanted something that would generate a sense of excitement when the player packs were revealed and help breathe some life into the league.

Q: What has been your favorite of the MicroBrew leagues?

A: I’ve only had one team make it to the World Series in these leagues, so I think it would be the Bob Uecker MicroBrew League. It was a special league to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Brewer franchise in Milwaukee. A pair of 83-win teams ended up in the World Series, and it went 7 games before the winner (not my team) was crowned. Very exciting to play game 6 of that series live. I’ve enjoyed playing in all the leagues, it’s a lot of fun to watch the teams evolve over the course of the season and see which player packs end up making the playoffs.

Q: Is there any advice you would give to people who haven’t created a Custom League before, but would like to give it a try?

A: I think the most important thing is to get organized and have a clear idea of what it is you want to do. Learning how to work with the player pool is important, it will save a lot of rule editing if you can eliminate the players who don’t fit your criteria.  The first MicroBrew League took a while to fill, so
don’t get discouraged if your idea doesn’t take off right away. I think if you have a creative idea and stick with it, owners will eventually discover your league as there are many different ways to play and enjoy DMO.

Start a League of Your Own

Turnbuckle Bros

Want to get the most out of your team in a high offensive environment? Steve Mutzu (LeMayRipper) reveals scores of effective team building techniques and his 70/30 rule when spending on hitting and defense.

Watch: 6:52 Tutorial

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 Ladder Leagues Random 600 Association is a long-running series of Classic player pool leagues that draft manually from random pools of 600 players.  With the drafts for Season 38 recently completed, and the members of the Turnbuckle Bros King’s Roundtable also now drafting an RA600 style league, there’s been some discussion of team composition and drafting strategies for limited pool leagues, which I thought were worth sharing here.

Scouting the player pool.  The starting point in a limited pool league is to “scout” each position.  A player who might be considered a lesser value in a league with a larger or unlimited player pool, may be much more valuable in a limited pool league that lacks quality depth at his position.

Making compromises.  One big difference between real-life GM’s assembling their teams and DMO owners assembling theirs, is that no real-life GM has access to the numbers and depth of playing talent available to DMO owners.  Nor does there exist in the “real world” the “perfect market” for free agent talent that exists in DMO.

The import of this difference is that real-life GM’s must make compromises that DMO owners do not have to make.  A real-life GM cannot, for example, simply choose to build a team of, in effect, all Ex and VG fielders; at any given time, there are only so many major league calibre elite fielders around.  And there are only so many middle-of-the-order impact hitters, so our real-life GM may need to play one in the field who is defensively challenged to get their bat into the line-up.

A DMO team owner in a limited pool league is in a position that more closely resembles that of the real-life GM.  The more limited the player pool, the closer the resemblance, and the more likely and necessary it will be for team owners to cast aside preconceived notions about players they might otherwise consider unacceptable.

Drafting quality ahead of value.  When real-life teams are participating in a draft, players are drafted in (what they judge to be) best-to-worst order.  In a DMO draft from a very large or unlimited pool of players, this is not necessarily the case; a lower-order or bench player, an innings eating back-of-the-rotation starter or similar may be an early draft pick, because they are perceived to be a particularly good, money-saving value.

A DMO draft from a limited player pool more closely resembles a “real-life” draft: it is more important to secure quality players early in the draft than it is to save a few dollars on complementary players who will play a lesser role on your team.

You need a realistic plan.  When planning for a draft from a limited player pool, you need to be realistic and have a multi-faceted plan.  You simply cannot expect to get every player you would choose for your ideal team, and you need to plan accordingly.  If you miss out on one of your top targets, there may be a similarly-priced and skilled alternate, but if there’s not, you need to have an alternate strategy in mind, for example, to downgrade your target at that position to a lesser player, and upgrade your target at one or more different positions.