Highlights From Diamond Mind October 2022

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN FOR THE LADDER LEAGUES RA600 ASSN

Registration is now open for Season 40 of the Ladder Leagues Random 600 Association.

For those unfamiliar with them, the Ladder Leagues operate like European soccer, with a ranked leagues structure. At the end of each LL season, the top teams from that season are promoted to higher leagues and the bottom teams relegated to lower leagues for the season to follow.

RA600 leagues draft manually from random limited pools of 600 players. There were 5 leagues in Season 39, which played with the DH; Season 40 will be played without the DH in the Moneyball Era of Play, which is now the era of play for all RA600 seasons. All other league parameters (cap, income, injuries, etc) are standard.

The RA600 manual draft format is challenging and fun, and the Ladder Leagues promotion/relegation system ensures competitive leagues of similarly skilled owners. For more information, or to register, you can go here.

NEW SITE FEATURES

We’ve added a number of new features to the DMO site:

Hoover (HooverH) Hampton has been creating utilities to enhance the DMO game experience. His Daily Recaps, which identify noteworthy games and player performances, can now be accessed from your My Teams page.

We have added a Game by Game schedule and results table.  Click on Schedule under your team’s Team menu and you can toggle between the calendar and game-by-game displays.

And at the bottom of each of your teams’ Front Pages, we have added links to each of your other active team Front Pages.  (This will enable you to go directly from one team to another without first having to go back to your My Teams page.)

TWICE AS NICE

Only one pitcher in major league history (Johnny Vander Meer in 1938) has pitched consecutive no-hitters. But Al Mamaux matched Vander Meer’s feat for (coincidentally) Mark Streacker’s team, The Wurst, in the Horse LXII league.

There have been 56 games in major league history in which the leadoff batter for both teams has hit a home run, but this has never occurred in a playoff game. In the first game of the LCS in the Choose Wisely League, Eddie Collins for the Bunting Fools and Bernard Gilkey for Ern As You Learn led off with home runs for their respective teams. Interestingly, neither team scored again until the 13th inning, when Ern As You Learn pushed two runs across and then held on for a 3-1 win.

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 Mark (mstreacker) Streacker.  Mark is the steward of three of the longest-running series of leagues at Diamond Mind Online: One Stadium, Ed’s Trading Post and Horse.

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

I am 62 years old and a semi-retired (part-time) software engineer with JPMorgan Chase (my employer for the past 29 years).  I’ve been married for 36 years and became a grandparent for the first time this past December.  I live in Columbus, Ohio.  Besides DMO I enjoy pickleball and I’m a buyer and seller (not a collector) of comic books.  My wife and I have tables at 2-3 comic book shows every year.

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

I have been at DMO since day 1.   I go all the way back to the old Bill James Winter Game days.  I have a folder from 1995 with all the mailings from my first “Friendly Confines” league.

You’re the driving force behind a number of long-running Custom Leagues, including Ed’s Trading Post, One Stadium and Horse.  Tell us something about these leagues and what’s involved in running them?

Ed’s Trading Post – This is a very complex but unique league I took over when the commissioner became ill and was not able to continue.  It is such a great league I didn’t want to see it go away so I agreed to run it.   Originally called “Blind Draw”, I renamed it in honor of our commissioner (Ed Kosiarski) who could not continue.  Each team gets a randomly generated team with a limited number of pre-season and in-season transactions.   You are not guaranteed having every position filled and with having limited transactions, teams must resort to trading.  Last season resulted in almost 200 trade offers!  An armchair general manager’s dream.  Generating the teams, managing the reserved player in-season drafts and the overall tracking of events is a LOT of work for the commissioner. But I enjoy it.  We even have our own website.

One Stadium – This is a league I created way back in the ESPN version of the game.  When DMO came along, I brought it over.  We are in season 79!  Pretty basic concept, every team plays in the same stadium.  Little bit higher payroll ($125M) and $4M weekly income.  We have a “Cornerstone” draft prior to the season.  One round where you can select the player to build your team around.   World Series winner chooses the next stadium (stadium cannot have been used in the past 25 seasons).   Sad note – I’ve won a World Series in every league I’ve had multiple seasons in … except my own.  That’s right, I’m 0-78.   Maybe some day I’ll get to ring that victory bell.

Horse – Again, another league I didn’t start but I took it over a while ago after the commissioner left.  As the league description says: “Hard, challenging and a whole lot of fun!”  $50M/600 players.  The average player salary is set to $2.5M.    My favorite saying about the league is: “Anyone can manage an All-Star team but can you manage a bunch of bottom feeders to a title?”   The name of the league comes from the quote: “There has to be a horse somewhere in this pile of ****.”   The thing I like about this league is finding that diamond in the rough.  Those players you would rarely ever use, but are forced to, and then finding these guys actually have value.

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?   

Be creative, but not too creative.  You want to have a theme that will attract people, but at the same time not so complex that it scares them away.  If you ever find yourself saying “I wish there was a league that …”, there you go … you have your custom league. Last, but not least, don’t be afraid to sell it.  After you’ve created it, use the Custom Board to promote it. 

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.

Let’s talk about SSG roster and upgrade strategies.

Rule number 1, which should be the principle guiding every roster and upgrade strategy:

Do not pay for PA or IP that you will not use. 

Rule number 2, of any upgrade strategy:

Plan your roster so that the players you add throughout the season are better than the players you started with. 

Let me provide a concrete example that incorporates both of the above rules.

In the “Franchise Stalwarts” league, owners were required to select as a “captain” a player who played in three decades for the same franchise.  They had to start with a version of their captain from one decade season, then replace him with a version from another decade season after Week 2 (36 games), then replace him with a version from another decade season after Week 4 (72 games).  Large weekly payouts were provided after Weeks 2 and 4 to facilitate these “upgrades”.  (There were other considerations, like who your captain’s teammates were in each of those seasons, but we’ll leave those to the side for this exercise.)

The difficulty here is that you want to wind up with a “best” version of your “franchise stalwart” when you upgrade after Week 4, but you also don’t want to pay for a bunch of PA or IP that you can’t use over the remaining five weeks of the season.

One team in this league chose Clayton Kershaw (2008-2021) as their “franchise stalwart”, opting for these “versions”:

The 2020 version provides enough IP to cover the first two weeks of the season at a high level and low cost, freeing up cap space for other players.  The 2009 version is, relatively, the weakest of the 3, but again, the relatively low cost allows some of the big upgrade payment at the end of Week 2 to be used elsewhere. (N.B.  You pay only for the IP you use in Weeks 1-2 and 3-4, getting a “refund” for any unused IP.)  And the 2016 version is one of the most dominant starting pitcher seasons in the entire SSG player pool, but being just 149 IP, is the perfect upgrade for the last 5 weeks of the season.  (N.B. so long as he doesn’t get injured!)

Now, a couple more tips/observation:

Many teams in SSG leagues are working with relatively limited player pools, which often will include multiple versions of the same players.  You may want to start with one version of a player, then upgrade to a better version of that player.

You should try to make the switch just at the point when the last best version of the player you’ll be adding has just enough PA/IP to get you to the end of the season.  But, if you have a number of guys like this and/or other players whose PTL will run out, it may be that your weekly upgrade money lags behind the ideal time to upgrade these players.  So, do you wait until the money comes in, or take out a loan to advance the upgrade?

The answer to this question depends on, amongst other things: the cost of the loan, whether the reduced future payments will prevent you from making other necessary or desirable upgrades, and how much better the version of the player is that you would be taking out the loan to upgrade.

You’ll have to work all that out for yourselves 😊.