Highlights From Diamond Mind October 2023

NEW “CLASSIC” PLAYERS ARE HERE

As foreshadowed in our September newsletter, we have now added 339 new players to the Classic (career-rated) player pool, our single largest “induction” of new players ever!

The players added span the entire history of major league baseball, from the 19th to the 21st centuries, and range from future Hall of Famers Albert Pujols and Buster Posey, to black stars banished by the International League in 1888, as the exclusion of black players from (white) Organized Baseball took hold.

TOURNAMENT FINALS!

It’s come down to this: the 24-team final round leagues in the two biggest tournaments on the Diamond Mind Online calendar are now underway. In the Grand Open Tournament XVII, Todd Vriesman was eliminated in Round 3 and so will not be defending his GOT XVI crown. But the star-studded field does include past champions Craig Natale, Geoffrey Farmer and Andrew Bywaters. In the 2023 Masters Tournament, two-time past champion George Kreiner enters the final round of this cumulative scoring tournament atop the leaderboard with 326.5 points and a handy lead over his nearest rivals: Chris Visser (317), five-time Masters champion Bob Jecmen (315.5), Alan Zick (315) and three-time runner up Scott Matranga (298.5). Opening Day is in the offing in the GOT, while the Masters is one-third of the way through the season. Jecmen (32-19) and Kreiner (29-22) are both travelling nicely, but blitzing the field in the early going is Matranga, whose masters finals aces 23 team sports a 39-12 record in the early going!

RATINGS CHANGES

As a general rule, here at Imagine Sports we don’t do “one off” ratings changes. We have confidence in our ratings methodology, and know that, once we start addressing one-off ratings queries, it would become a never-ending process.

However, we’re also committed to providing the most realistic game possible and being flexible and responsive to customer concerns. So, after recent discussion, we’ve come to the conclusion that two longstanding ratings issues merit addressing:

• In conjunction with the next salary adjustment (end of November), Dave Parker’s OF Throw rating will be changed from Av to Vg.

• Roughly 10 weeks from now (to provide the fullest possible advance notice to owners who have him on their teams), Dick Allen’s 3B rating will be changed from Vg to Av.

In each case, when Classic salaries are adjusted at the end of November, their salaries will be based, not on usage, but recalculated on the basis of these ratings changes.

CUSTOM LEAGUES KINGS

This month we’re visiting with Bruce (RedHook) Warner, the current commissioner of the long-running Undroppables and TURBO for FUN AGAIN leagues.

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.

A recent query on the message boards by (and this surprised me) an experienced owner, concerning the basics of interest charged on preseason loans, got me thinking that a “refresher course” on loans and interest would be useful. So, here are the basics:

“Weekly” income payments: these are credited shortly after your league completes the last game(s) of the “week”.

Daily interest payments: these are credited at 12 noon PT.

Daily interest on loans/cash advances: the “day” ends at 3:00 p.m. PT for the purpose of calculating interest on loans/cash advances. So, if you take out a loan at 2:59 p.m. PT, you will be paying one more day’s interest than if you take out a loan at 3:01 p.m. PT.

In the preseason: interest is payable on loans taken out in the preseason for each day prior to Opening Day, so you will pay more interest if you take out a loan right after your league drafts than if you wait until after 3 p.m. PT the Sunday afternoon before your league gets underway.

In general, whether you are taking out a loan, or simply spending money in your team’s account, it pays to wait. But that also depends on whether there is some risk that another team might snap up the player you want before you make your move, so you may need to weigh up the risk/reward of waiting.

At this point, strategies for Classic (career-rated) and SSG (single season) leagues diverge. The two types of leagues treat the “cash in value” of players differently: in Classic leagues, you lose 25% (or whatever % has been set for a custom league) of a player’s salary when you “cash him in”; in SSG leagues, you lose whatever % of his salary equals the % of his PTL (Playing Time Limitation) PA/IP you have used up.

This means that the financial advantage in a Classic league for taking out a loan in the preseason to upgrade a player (since you get back 100% of the player’s salary in the preseason, and therefore are “saving” the 25% cash in “haircut” that would apply once the season starts) is absent in an SSG league. But it means that the cash in value of SSG players once the season starts, particularly bench and IR guys who have not been used very much or at all, may be greater, on a percentage basis, than in Classic leagues.

This suggests a few strategies in SSG for optimizing your finances:

• For bench players who won’t see much action, whom you may be cashing in later in the season as part of an upgrade strategy, a guy with lots of PA/ IP will lose less of their value than a guy with a relatively small number of PA/IP.
• You might consider cashing in a guy who hasn’t been used much or at all, when signing a player, rather than the guy the player you’re signing will replace, who has more or less exhausted his PA/IP and has little or no cash in value. Even if you have plans down the track for the guy you’re cashing in, if he’s not been used yet, you get 100% of his salary back, and can always re-sign him later. So, in the meantime, why not keep the money in the bank, earning interest, or reduce the amount of the loan you’re taking out and therefore the interest you’ll pay on that loan?