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Hi, I'm Dr. K, and this is your Intro to the Diamond Mind single-season on-line game.
I've been in love with these games for a long time. I started out with the Bill James Classic Game in 1996, and have played all the successor games since, as well as all the competition's games. You can believe me that this new game, while being a lot like the old games, is also totally unlike them, because a startling new factor has been introduced that changes the game's concept of Value in a way that will be an exciting puzzle and challenge for you. Both Experienced Gamers and Newbies will love this game, because (a) everybody will be starting on a level playing field, and (b) for the first time, we have every player who was active last season. These are the guys you just saw play.
The startling new factor is Playing Time Limits (PTL). Tom Tippett wrote a program to limit players' effective Playing Time, using Plate Appearances (PA) for hitters and Innings Pitched (IP) for pitchers. When a player reaches 110% of his real-life Playing Time, he will turn into a Pumpkin.
So what is a Pumpkin?
* A Pumpkin hitter will have an OPS of, oh, around .403 (depending on his position; Pumpkin Shortstops will hit worse than Pumpkin First Basemen). That works out to an Runs Created per 27 Outs level of 1.22, or about one-third of the league average in the context of the MLB season.
* Pumpkin level for a pitcher has been set to produce a Runs Created Allowed per 27 Outs level of 10.5 in the context of the MLB season.
* Pumpkin fielding will not change. Position players will not turn into fire hydrants with rocks for gloves when the clock strikes midnight (i.e. when they reach their total number of games played at a position).
Now this, of course, is not what usually happens in real life. Players usually do not get awful all of a sudden (though it's been known to happen; remember Andruw Jones?). We are being guided here by a higher sense of reality, a sense of what the players actually accomplished last season. Without Playing Time Limits, a player who hit .350 in 40 at-bats would be a superstar, and we'd have to price him way above what he was really worth in real life.
Here's a look at what that means. Because of the PTL, we're gonna have an entirely different system of cashing in players. In this game, you don't get to draft some guy who hit .350 in 40 ABs, and then cash him in once those 40 ABs are used up for some other guy and get 75% of his value back in cash. We're changing all that. In this game, the cash-in price will be inversely proportional to Playing Time, as follows:
0% usage, 100% cash-in
1% usage, 99% cash-in
2% usage, 98% cash-in
and so on, up to
99% usage, 1% cash-in
100% or more usage, 0% cash-in
Here's what the Usage column on the Roster Page means. It's % of PA/IP before the guy turns into a Pumpkin, which happens at 110% of his Playing Time. So let's say a guy had 100 PA, and he's had 10 PA in his sim season. Usage will show as 9% (= 10/110, or the amount of Playing Time divided by the amount of Playing Time he will have until he becomes a mouse; also known as 1/11, or 9%). We put in the Usage column the number that would be of the most help to you in managing your team.
Free agents' prices will not change. A guy who has been cashed in will have the same purchase price he did at the beginning of the season. The Cash Worksheet will tell you if you're trying to make a mid-season pick-up of a player who has been released by another team. You definitely want to do a Control-F on the League Transaction page before buying anyone mid-season. You'd better check out how much use he's had and if he has anything left in the tank, because his Usage will carry over to his new team. That's true for traded players, too.
Now at this point, you EGs (Experienced Gamers) may be saying, "WHAT?! You have to be kidding me! That goes against Truth, Beauty, and the American Way of Sim Baseball I've been enjoying for lo these many years!"
Well, to that I say, "Um, excuse me, I'm from the Planet Earth and I'm new around here. Could you please tell me when you have ever, in any real baseball season, seen a team use Yuniesky Betancourt, carefully save up its pennies all season, and then spend them to upgrade to Derek Jeter? What is this 'upgrade' of which you speak?"
For the first time, the money you spend on Opportunity will get used up. What we're serving up here is a different game, a different puzzle. We did this because we tried to make a game that's more realistic. One way to think about it is, "How can I buy enough effective (i.e. non-Pumpkin) Plate Appearances and Innings Pitched to win?"
Now we're not totally heartless. We are going to keep the income in the game. We tried to make this game more like what MLB general managers get to play with, and keep the fun and challenge of the Classic version. And you can do whatever you want in Custom Leagues as far as income is concerned. We tried to make the basis of this new game a mind-blowing, original, new evolutionary leap for the Sim, and we hope you like the idea as much as we do.
A couple of things to remember:
The Manager is not superhuman; it is subhuman. It is not going to do everything you want. We've done a lot of work on it, and we think it's better, but it still may put in your Closer to mop up the last two innings of a laugher if you don't have somebody rested who hasn't already pitched. In a game where resources are even more precious than in past games, I can already hear the screaming about this. To which I can only say, "Hey! Wake up! It's the 21st Century! Do you know where your twelfth pitcher is?"
Everybody has the same Manager in the dugout, so that at least that's fair. It's just that if you buy Mariano Rivera, you want to be careful, like you would with a Ferrari. You might even want to put him on the IR/IL when he's not hurt, just to be sure you have him when you need him.
Also, the prices are very different from what you might expect from playing the careers game. One big hint: Having non-Pumpkins when you need them is very important. It's a lot better to have an average player in there in the pinch than being forced to play a Pumpkin.
That's the basis. Read the FAQ. Good luck!
FAQ
Q. How do the Playing Time Limits work?
A. When a player reaches 110% of his Plate Appearances/Innings Pitched ( = Opportunities), he turns into a Pumpkin. If he's a hitter, he will have an OPS of, oh, around .403 from that point on (depending on his position; Pumpkin Shortstops will hit worse than Pumpkin First Basemen). That works out to an Runs Created/27 Outs level of around 1.2, or about one-third of the league average in the context of the MLB season. Pumpkin level for a pitcher has been set to produce a Runs Created Allowed per 27 Outs level of 10.5 in the context of the MLB season.
We did not do that with Fielding Games. Position players will not turn into fire hydrants with rocks for gloves when the clock strikes midnight (i.e. when they reach their total number of last season's games played at a position).
We did not bother with setting PTL for splits. It just made our lives, and yours, a lot easier.
Q. Sheesh! 10.2? Why are you making Pumpkin pitchers that bad?
A. Well, the main reason is that we don't want any of you smart-alecks to try to draft an all-$500K staff and win that way. Actually, go ahead and try; it won't work. As you've probably already figured out, in a universe that includes absolutely everybody, there are still a few $500K pitchers who are going to get better if their Runs Created Allowed per 27 Outs is held to "only" 10.2. (There are hitters who are way worse than Pumpkins, too.) But we don't want $500K Pitchers to be anywhere near good. We want them to suck.
Q. How did you price the players?
A. In this new game, we are using a pitcher pricing method that does not rely on ERA, since ERA is always some percentage of actual Runs allowed, and that percentage can vary wildly even in very similar contexts. ERA also does not balance well with what hitters do, which is Create Runs. We are using instead Runs Created Allowed per 27 outs for pitchers, which creates a system wherein the dollar value of each Run Created per 27 Outs for hitters balances with the dollar value of each Run Created Allowed per 27 Outs for Pitchers.
We put a money value on every aspect of every player's game to within an inch of his life. Then we poked the results with a stick so that there are bargains and busts. We think that finding bargains and busts is more fun than you can have without a referee present. We should also say that we priced the players to reflect the most Value you can get out of them in the new system, and we did our darnedest to balance the hitting, the pitching and the fielding so that a Run is a Run is a Run, or more precisely, a Win is a Win is a Win.
Q. How about fielding games? Will guys lose their fielding ability after 110% of their real-life games?
A. Though we could have, we did not think it was a great idea to use PTL for per-game fielding. Consider for example 2008 Kevin Youkilis, who makes a great example. Youk played 36 games at 3B and 125 games at 1B in 2008. According to the code, after 36 games at 3B (which is obviously his more Valuable position) 2008 Youk would become a first baseman playing out of position at third: not a pretty sight. There are going to be enough new restrictions in this game, so we're giving you the ability to play guys like 2008 Youk at their most valuable position without having to worry about gloves going to hell after 36 games -- which would not have been a particularly realistic solution anyway. So we priced 2008 Youk as a third baseman with that level of offense, not as a first baseman. HINT!
Q. Why is there only one Era?
A. Well, it's not even an Era, is it? It's only a Year. There will only be NL and AL season "Eras" (a/k/a Run Environments) in this game.
Q. Will there be SimStats?
A. What for? You know where to find last season's stats, right? You know what the effect of parks on players' stats is, right? You know what playing in different Run Environments means, right? You know which league is stronger, right?
You do know, don't you?
You know, it's funny. There's been a lot of talk about dumbing down the game in order to make it more appealing to a broader audience. However, I've never understood that. I've always thought that we should make games that are more interesting to the very sophisticated audience we already have.
Q. What are the best sources for this game?
A. www.baseball.reference. Retrosheet.org is good too. Those two sites are going to be essential. You can link to them from your Roster Page for the players you have, and from the Draft Search page for players you are contemplating acquiring. You are going to be going there a lot, and if you are anything like me, you will be encounter esoteric factoids that have nothing to do with what you were originally looking for, thereby spending more blissful moments playing with information.
I strongly suggest that you use PA for hitters and IP for pitchers in every player search.
Q. Will the Manager know that the guy turned into a Pumpkin?
A. Yes, It will. So please don't write in to Support and ask why your 40-AB monster has turned into a mouse. The Manager will know he's no longer a coachman, and It can't Win the Game if It uses a mouse as a pinch-hitter.
Q. What happens in the post-season? Are the players all Pumpkins by then?
A. No. We start the PTL all over again with each playoff series. Now, we're not gonna let some 40-AB guy get all 40 in the World Series. We were gonna start each layoff series with 7/162 PTL, but we decided it was a better idea if you got roughly 10% of the guy's season (16/162) in each post-season series. At 7/162, Mariano Rivera would only be able to pitch three innings each series, and we knew that would not make you happy.
Q. What are Clutch and Jam and how do they work?
A. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away....OK, start over.
A lot of people believe in Clutch and Jam, i.e. that some people have the innate ability to be better in the clutch. It has never been proved to exist or, put another way, no one has ever figured out how to prove it exists. Due to popular demand, Tom Tippett put Clutch for batters and Jam for pitchers into DMB, and made it optional. When it's on, a Clutch player's odds improve in clutch situations (the late innings of close games) but they decline slightly in non-clutch situations to compensate so that his season totals come out right. Clutch and Jam are on. We may make it optional in Custom Leagues, so you can turn it off if you don't believe in the Clutch Fairy.
Q. I'm guessing the answer is yes, but is the fielding also adjusted for season levels? In other words, are errors going to be much less common than they are in the Standard Era since E rates have dropped consistently?
A. Yes, fielding will be at season levels.
Q. I am new here and really struggling with getting a team put together and joining a league. I selected a park and try to search for roster players but get nada for the most part. I also cannot see any reference but here to reach out to a league. Yes I have read the reference material, but it is really arcane and difficult to navigate. Please, some advice? Thanks.
Sure. You see the link on the Draft Team page that says "Draft using an Imagine Sports pre-built franchise team or one of your past teams"? Click on that, and then click on your favorite team. Most of those teams are over budget, so you'll have to take some guys off, but it's a quick way to get started. Or you can Search Players using team as a criterion. You can write me too (click on my username) and I'll be glad to help out.
Q. What's the difference between the careers game and this game?
A. Pretty much everything is different. The players are coded just on a single year of their career rather than their peak or total careers. The pricing is different, with different values given to different things. The cash-in scheme is practically the reverse. The Playing Time Limits are in operation here, and not there. Closers here are not given a boost just because they're labeled "Closers."
Q. Gimme more hints!
A. The average MLB team has 6300 Plate Appearances and pitches roughly 1450 innings during the course of the typical season. You might start with that. How are you going to cover those 6300 PA? Who's going to throw the 1450 innings that every team must deal with?
You're going to find, in the process of answering that question, that in a single year players can have insane, ridiculous splits. You might find that an expensive player who played every day and whose price is based upon that might have more Value as a platoon player.
You might want to save your spleen by making sure to set certain guys to Never be pinch-hit for vs. a same-sided pitcher. Do you know what Joe Lefty hit v. LHP in the season? LOOGYs (Left-handed One-Out GuYs) ate him alive. The Manager does not have to worry about hurting Joe Lefty's feelings by pinch-hitting for him. It only thinks about Winning the Game. If you don't want Joe Lefty pinch-hit for, then go to Team Instructions and set his PH for v. LHP to Never. That's what some teams did and do. But I don't know if you should do the same; only you can answer that one.
After all, It is just a collection of probabilities, which It knows far better than I do. Pay attention to those platoon differential statistics; they're key. That's why Davey Johnson loaded them on his computer. The best advice I can give you may not be, "Treat it like a real team." It's probably more like, "Know Thy Probabilities."
Hope you enjoy the game. Good luck!
~DR. K
©2012 Imagine Sports