DMB News February 1999

February 15, 1999
Written by Tom Tippett and Luke Kraemer

Welcome to the first edition of the Diamond Mind email newsletter. Through these newsletters, we will try to keep you up to date on the latest product and technical information about the Diamond Mind Baseball game, related player disks, and our ongoing baseball research efforts. Back issues are available on our web site.

If you don't wish to receive these messages in the future, please send an email response with the subject line "unsubscribe". We'll immediately remove your email address from the list. If you know someone who would like to subscribe to this newsletter, we'll be happy to add them to the mailing list if they send us an email message with the subject line "subscribe" and their name and street address in the body of the message.

Topics for this issue:

Goals of this newsletter
Corrections to the 1998 and 1939 Season Disks
Tips from Tech Support
TBW and OPS3
The 1950 Season

Goals of this newsletter

For now, we don't plan to make this newsletter into a big production that would include research articles and season replay reports and the like, though I could see it evolving into that someday. Our initial goal is to distribute company news, product information, answers to frequently asked questions, and anything else that we think would be of interest to a lot of people.

One of the regular features we plan is a brief write-up on a season from baseball history. Our goal is to bring some of these past seasons to life in a way that the numbers in a baseball encyclopedia cannot do all by themselves.

We may occasionally include material submitted by others provided it's sent to us in machine-readable form (email messages or simple text files) and doesn't require much editing. But please understand that because this is a free newsletter, we don't have a budget to pay someone to edit it, and that limits the nature and amount of material we can consider publishing.

Rather than clutter your mailboxes with monthly or weekly bulletins, we feel it will work better to send these messages only when when we feel we have new information worth sharing with the Diamond Mind community. Our guess is that this will happen a few times per year.

Corrections to the 1998 and 1939 Season Disks

Regrettably, we found a few small errors in our recently released 1998 and 1939 season disks. The good news is that you can fix these errors in a couple of minutes; the bad news is that they happened in the first place, and for that we apologize.

On the 1998 Season Disk, four outfielders who played on more than one team have incorrect error ratings on their combined records. The correct values are:

Geronimo Berroa -- 80
Ellis Burks -- 120
Jacob Cruz -- 100
Glenallen Hill -- 162

The team-specific records (e.g. Burks records for SF and Col) are fine, it's just that our program that produces the combined records for multi-team players had a problem with outfielders who played different outfield positions for different teams. To fix this, do the following:

- from the main menu, choose Organize/Agents to access the list of free agent batters

- choose Modify, select the player, choose Ratings, make the correction, choose OK to dismiss the ratings form, then choose Go to get back to the free agent menu

If you've already drafted your league or used Migrate to move your league structure from the 1997 disk to the 1998 disk, you'll probably need to use the Organize/Roster/Player/Modify command to find these players, instead of Organize/Agents as noted above.

On the 1939 Season Disk, we had the same problem. Here are the guys who were affected and the corrected error ratings:

Bud Hafey -- 87
Chet Laabs -- 92
Gene Schott -- 100
Dixie Walker -- 113

Also, on the 1939 disk, we discovered that two members of the Yankees have incorrect range ratings. Rolfe should be rated Av at 3B and Keller Av in both LF and RF.

We'll be happy to send a corrected season disk to anyone who wants one. Keep in mind, however, that if you've already drafted a league, you won't have to redraft or redo the migration if you make the corrections yourself.

Once again, we apologize for these errors. We'll try to do better in the future.

Tips from Tech Support

For the second year running, the most common question we've received about the new season disk is "Why isn't the computer manager picking the starting lineups when I try to autoplay a season?"

We tried to anticipate this question by answering it in our player disk notes. It's clear that many of you have seen these notes, because the number of times this question has been asked is down considerably from last year. For those of you who haven't seen those notes, you can view them using the following commands (assuming the 1998 Season Disk is your active player disk):

- from the main menu, choose Info
- from the Info menu, choose Source and then select Player Directory
- choose View and select the document titled 1998 Season Disk Notes

Getting back to the question, this occurs when you're trying to autoplay a season using the real-life transactions and game-by-game lineups but have made some changes to the team rosters. As you might imagine, the real game-by-game lineups are useful only if the right 25 players are active for each game, and the right 25 players will be active only if the rosters begin with the real-life opening day rosters and the real-life transactions are applied in the right order. If you change the rosters yourselves, everything gets out of synch and the computer manager cannot use the real-life lineups.

Fortunately, the solution is simply to turn off the use of real-life transactions and saved lineups whenever you wish to make your own changes to the rosters (such as in any draft league). To do so, choose Organize/League/Modify and change the play mode to "No transactions." Do this for both leagues.

TBW and OPS3

Baseball fans, especially those with an analytical bent, seem to have an almost unlimited apetite for statistics that purport to measure overall offensive production for a player. We have Total Average and Runs Created and Offensive Runs (from Total Baseball) and lots of others. The problem with many of these is their complexity -- they often have enough terms in the formulas that you need a spreadsheet or calculator to work them out.

That's one of the reasons I like OPS (on-base percentage, OBP, plus slugging percentage, SPC) so much. It has a very high correlation with actual scoring, so it's an accurate measure, and it's easy to figure in your head if you have access to a book or other source that publishes on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Some find that the results are a little better if you multiple OBP and SPC, but the gain in precision is relatively small and it's not as easy to multiply two three-digit numbers as it is to add them.

Two members of SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) recently put forward two additional measures that meet the twin tests of being pretty accurate and easy to compute. I'm sorry I don't recall their names. I'd give them credit if I did.

The first is TBW, which is the sum of total bases (TB) and walks (W). It's a counting statistic, rather than an average, so it measures overall offensive production without taking into account the number of opportunities the player had. For that reason, it doesn't measure how efficient the player was in his plate appearances, but rather shows his total output for the season. The leaders in 1999 were Mark McGwire with 545, Sammy Sosa 489, Albert Belle 480, Barry Bonds 466, and Ken Griffey 463.

The second is OPS3. This is actually just OPS divided by three, so it's nothing new. The wrinkle is that by dividing by three, you end up with numbers that are distributed roughly the same as batting averages. For example, the 1998 AL had an OBP of .340 and a SPC of .442, so the OPS was .772. Divide by three and you find that a league-average player would have an OPS3 of .257. A very good season (e.g. Bernie Williams) has an OPS3 of about .300, and a truly outstanding season might creep over the .400 mark, as Mark McGwire did last year with a .407. We all have a sense for what it means to be a .300 hitter or a .400 hitter, and OPS3 taps into that subconscious evaluation system.

The 1950 Season

There have been many great Pennant Races over the years, but very rarely will there be two in the same season. A year that is often overlooked as being a classic is the incredible 1950 season.

Both races were nip and tuck the entire year with the NL not getting clinched until the last day of the season when the Dodgers squared off against the Whiz Kids Phillies in Ebbets Field. Not unlike the Phils' future 1964 edition, they had a comfortable seven game lead with ten games to go. Seemingly in charge, they proceeded to lose eight of those first nine but won the finale to take the crown, their first since 1915. Robin Roberts had to make his third start in five games on that last day!

Over in the AL, the Red Sox entered the season prohibitive favorites over the Yankees. It appeared time for the changing of the guard with the aging Yankees being overcome by the offensive juggernaut up in Boston. But the anticipated demise of the Yankees was premature with the Tigers, Indians, and eventually the Bean Eaters making a run at the defending World's Champions.

The key to the Phillies' (91-63) success was the near-perfect health of their regulars. This is pretty amazing considering their lead-off man and first baseman Eddie Waitkus was shot in the chest the previous season by a deranged, female fan, in a scene similar to the one in "The Natural". Del Ennis (.311, 31, 126) had the best year of his career as did Puddin' Head Jones (.267, 25, 88) at third. Robin Roberts (20, 3.02, 146) was the workhorse of the staff going 304 innings. Bullpen ace and League MVP Jim Konstanty showed current day form by appearing in 74 games, winning 16 and saving 22 with a 2.66 ERA!

The Dodgers (89-65) were heavy favorites to repeat as NL Champs even though they only won in a one game squeaker over the Cards the previous year. The Flock, as they were commonly known as back then, led the league in virtually every offensive and defensive category. Snider (.321, 31, 107), Hodges (.283, 32, 113), Campanella (.281, 31, 89), Furillo (.305, 18, 106), and Robinson (.328, 14, 81) highlighted the stellar attack. Newcombe, Roe, and Palica combined for 51 wins but no one stepped up to the necessary fourth slot in the rotation.

The Giants (86-68) ended the season on fire, going 41 and 21 the final two months. They'll be tough next season when their rookie centerfielder arrives. Like the Phillies, this team stayed incredibly healthy. Dark (.279, 16, 67), Thompson (.289, 20, 91), Thomson (.252, 25, 85), and Westrum (.236, 23, 71) had good years. Jansen (19, 3.01, 161) and Maglie (18, 2.71, 96) anchored the strong pitching staff. The Boston Braves (83-71) hung close for most of the season. This time around it would have been "Spahn, Bickford, and Sain and pray for rain." Not nearly as catchy but the trio combined for 60 wins and 883 innings! Gordon (.304, 27, 103), Elliott (.305, 24, 107), and Torgeson (.290, 23, 87) had good years.

The Cardinals, (78-75) after coming oh so close in 1949, totally collapsed. They were leading the league as late as July 25th but injuries killed them. Musial (.346, 28, 109) had his usual stellar year and Slaughter (.290, 10, 101) was productive but no one else had much to write home about. The Reds (66-87) dug themselves into a deep hole early and never could put together a good string of games to climb back to respectability. Big Klu (.307, 25, 111) was fearsome and Ewell "The Whip" Blackwell (17, 2.97, 188) was awesome. Too bad they couldn't have played on a better team.

It's hard to believe that the Cubs (64-89) had the worst offense in the NL. If the ball didn't fly out of Wrigley, it was going to be caught. Pafko (.304, 36, 92) and Sauer (.274, 32, 103) had great years.

The Pirates (57-96), as usual, were pathetic. It'll be another eight years before fans have something to cheer about other than Kiner (.272, 47, 118), his fifth year in a row to lead the league in homers. Something he'll do again in 1951 and '52.

The scribes' crystal balls sure failed them in the AL. Little did they know that 1949 was only the first of five Championships. Joe D (.301, 32, 122), after being benched early in the season for lack of hitting, went on a tear after returning to the lineup. Yogi (.322, 28, 124) could have been the MVP but Scooter (.324, 7, 66) took those honors. It'll be tough to keep the Big Cat (.277, 25, 72) on the bench with that production in ONLY 274 at bats. Raschi, Reynolds, Lopat, and Byrne combined for 70 wins and rookie Whitey Ford put them over the top going 9-1 with a 2.81 ERA.

The Tigers (95-59) were expected to be good but not this good. They were in first as late as September 21st and led for most of the season. This team overachieved by playing six games better than their Pythagorean numbers. Balance best described Detroit but hats off to Wertz (.308, 27, 123), Evers (.323, 21, 103), and Houtteman (19, 3.54, 88).

Boston (94-60), the overwhelming pre-season favorites started slowly and ran out of time at the wire. This team scored an amazing 1027 runs, the fourth best total in the Modern Era. The pitching was strong too holding the opposition to 804 runs. It's incredible to think that a team could post a +223 run differential and finish third. To top it all off, Ted Williams (.317, 28, 97) missed nearly half the season with a broken arm!

Cleveland (92-62), the final member of the AL's fearsome foursome, had the league's best pitching staff with Lemon, Feller, Wynn, and Garcia. Rosen (.287, 37, 116), Doby (.326, 25, 102), and Easter (.280, 28, 107) were great. Washington (67-87) was the best of the worst. Yost (.295, 11, 58) and his 141 walks would earn him team MVP.

The White Sox (60-94) had a few good players in Zernial (.280, 29, 93) and Robinson (.314, 20, 73) plus some modest pitching but this team never was in the same class as the top four.

The Browns (58-96) are, well, the Browns. They do offer some finds for any draft leagues with Lenhardt (.273, 22, 81) and Garver (13, 3.39, 85).

The Mackmen (52-102) are just plain awful. They'd probably have trouble in a AAA league. Chapman (.251, 23, 95) made the best of a bad situation. Hooper amazingly won 15 games with a 5.02 ERA.

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