So you're a multi-millionaire. Now what?

One of the things I’ll blog about is cool team concepts. If you’re new to Diamond Mind Online, this might offer you some tips.  For those of you who are vets of the game, well, you’ll have your own perspectives, of course.  I’m going to use this format to examine some of those vets’ team strategies as well.  But for this post, I’m going to discuss some basics for the rookie team owners and those brand new to the game.

So, once you have your first team, you’ve become a Theo Epstein (with less money) or a Billy Beane (with a lot more!).  While we'd all like a place in the Hamptons or a fleet of Lamborghinis, your quasi-cash is used to assemble your player roster.

Getting started with Diamond Mind Online is really quite simple:  when you’re ready to tackle a full-season league, you pick a league to join (many to choose from), a team name, and a home park. Then you pick your players.

All the players in our player pool have salaries based on their normalized real-life career stats.  By “normalized,” we mean that their performance “coding” is adjusted for how the effects of the parks and times in which they played.  Baseball has changed over time, and so has the way the game is played and what constitutes good or bad performance.  For example, if you hit .301 in the American League in, say, 1930, you were just an above-average hitter… .013 better than the league average and 80 points behind the winner of the batting title, Al Simmons.  If you hit .301 in the A.L. in 1968, on the other hand, you won the batting title – just ask Yaz (left).  Likewise, hitting 50 home runs in Chase Field is a lot different than hitting 50 shots in Petco.  So, we adjust each player’s real life performance to take these things into account and determine their “real” performance were they to play in a neutral sort of environment. 

As experienced DMO team owners know, you need to take this into account in building your teams.  I wonder how many real GMs do that… though they needn’t worry so much about adjusting for era of play (Brian Sabean won’t get the chance to sign Honus Wagner, but he might if… uh, never mind), they should think about the effect of their home parks. 

OK, back to our game.  So, you’ve got $100 million (plus weekly income) that comes into play when you are forming a team (25 active and 3 inactive players) for a Standard League (with or without the DH). Custom Leagues, which are set up by individual team-owners, range from a salary cap as low as $50 million to an unlimited amount.

Once your league gets underway, you set your lineups, starting rotation, bullpen roles, bench assignments, and team and individual player tactics. You can sign free agents, propose trades to other team owners, and even take out loans to acquire better players (no credit score required here). Every possible player, team and league statistic is tracked and at your fingertips throughout the season.

- Dayne

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