Five things to remember from 2007

As the last post of the year (I'm going to take the day off on Monday), we'll take a look at some of the memories from the 2007 season.

1. Liriano vs. Santana
All year long these two were contending for top pitcher honors. Both had amazing seasons and indeed faced off in the All-Star game. Neither was all that impressive in that game, but Liriano fared slightly better. Oddly enough the two would never face each other in a regular season game, but in round 2 of the playoffs, we finally saw the matchup we were waiting for -- twice! In game one, Liriano clearly outduelled Santana in an 8-2 victory, but game two was more even as both earned non-decisions. Liriano got to pitch in the World Series while Santana watched at home on TV. Liriano and Santana would once again contend, this time for the coveted Ben McDonald Award. Santana won by the skin of his teeth and Liriano was forced to settle for the Pat Listach Award.

2. New Blood
The Sardine City Straphangers and the New Jersey Team Buddah kicked off their inaugural seasons in 2007. Both teams started off with a loss - ok make that seven straight losses! After their eighth try, the Straphangers finally earned their first win and it took Team Buddah one extra game to win in their ninth try. Both teams will look to improve in 2008.

3. Newark's Steamrolling
The Sugar Bears were a powerhouse all season long, setting several offensive records along the way en route to a dominating final record. The Sugar Bears won their unprecedented fourth straight DMBL World Series. Chipper Jones took the Mitchell Award. Five Sugar Bears batters were in the top seven in OPS. Jim Edmonds and Marlon Anderson will forever be remembered for their gaudy and unexpected numbers.

4. Hall of Fame Opens its Doors
The DMBL finally took off in 2007 after much planning. The voters inducted four members: Tony Gwynn, Mark McGwire, Albert Belle, and John Wetteland. Although there weren't many votes, the Hall experienced a great opening year crowd in its Parsippany, New Jersey, location.

5. Brett Myers' Losing streak
Not since the days of Kevin Appier have we seen such a bad start to the season. Well at least as far as I can remember anyway. Either way, Myers faced a brutal start to his '07 campaign, going 0-12 early on. Myers finally broke the hex in May against the Honolulu Sharks. Myers looked like a sure bet to lose 20 games. His ERA stood at 10.62 at one point, but he worked hard with pitching coach Sam "Mayday" Malone and actually finished the season at 10-18 (meaning he was 10-6 following his disastrous 0-12 start). Considering where he stood earlier, his 6.27 ERA was somewhat respectable.

Top 10 DMBL New Year's Resolutions

The rosters and free agent lists are updated. Butch has a really good breakdown of the available players on the Ning.

Now for those of you that aren't sure what goals to reach for in the coming year, here's your DMBL-related goals for 2008.

1) I will reply to all email trade inquiries
Hey it doesn't take long to reply with a "no thanks". It'd be even better if a counter proposal was made, but sometimes you just don't feel like like making a deal.

2) I will make all appropriate lineup and roster changes when my player is hurt
Injuries happen to everyone and sometimes there isn't an available player on the roster to take a player's spot when the occasional bug hits. That's when it's imperative to make the right moves to ensure that Barry Bonds doesn't end up playing short stop or that guy with the 7.00+ ERA doesn't have to make a spot start.

3) I will complete at least one trade this year
It's hard to deal with some people and sometimes you just can't find a fit between two teams, but there has to be some way that one of the teams can be tricked...er I mean, convinced to make a deal that is beneficial to both sides.

4) I will vote for All-Stars, Hall of Fame, and Post-season Awards
We can all see that the voting results are pretty low sometimes, so take five or ten minutes and fill out your ballots! At least then you have a legitimate reason to complain when your guy doesn't make the squad or win the award.

5) I will post on the Ning
Everyone loves trash talk and rules discussions have been really great. It's a good way to get to know each other and to help mold the league into an even better one.

6) I will write at least one team note
Bring your team to life with some team notes. Some teams update their notes once a year, others every month, and yet others have tumbleweeds rolling through them (I believe Vancouver still has a reference to Honus Wagner on theirs).

7) I will show up to a live draft
Ok so it's not realistic for a couple of our out of staters, but it'd be nice to meet in person and put a face to a name.

8) I will make at least one snide comment about Butch "cheating"
Ok, that's the easy one!

9) I will maintain a full roster at all times
Why would you let yourself finish a season with less than 30 players? And don't forget to activate your disabled players in a timely fashion and make appropriate cuts after executing an unbalanced trade.

10) I will give the commissioner a large sum of money for all the hard work and dedication
Just checking to see if you're paying attention!

Season disk is here!

Saturday afternoon I found a nice present from Santa in the mailbox - the 2007 season disk! Woohoo. It's been a pretty busy weekend, but the rosters are updated and the free agent list will be soon too. Bear with me since the timing is not great right now with the Holidays and all. I probably won't be posting much until after the New Year, so have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and see you all in 2008.

What is a first overall pick worth?

It's always nice to win the lottery and get your pick of the litter in the first round. It would seem certain that you will get a top notch player - well certain at the time. How often does that pick really pan out? We'll take a look at the last ten drafts to see how our owners did...

Year	player	Team	Yrs w/ team
2007	Jered Weaver	HON	1+
2006	Zach Duke	WWD	1/2
2005	David Wright	ARK	3+
2004	Dontrelle Willis	TIJ	4
2003	Vicente Padilla	HAR	2
2002	Albert Pujols	PHI	6+
2001	Kaz Sasaki	VAT	3
2000	Tim Hudson	CAR	8+
1999	Orlando Hernandez	COL	1
1998	Nomar Garciaparra	PHX	9

In 2007, Honolulu selected pitcher Jered Weaver. Weaver had a solid rookie season and is looking as a likely keeper, so Honolulu did ok with this pick...for now.

Westwood's selection of Zach Duke was looked at as a no-brainer at the time, but Duke was mediocre for the Deductions in 2006 (8-8, 4.74) and was shipped off to Newark before the trade deadline. Duke fared much better for the Sugar Bears (5-1, 3.40), but wasn't protected for the 2007 season. South Boston drafted Duke on a flier, but he only got into a few games in relief and looks like a non-factor for the 2008 season.

Arkansas traded up to get the first overall pick in 2005, sacrificing C.C. Sabathia and six quality draft picks in order to get David Wright. That goes to show you what the Falcons thought of the young third baseman. For the most part, they were right to covet Wright as he has turned into a stud, possibly the best third baseman currently in the DMBL.

Tijuana had the first pick in 2004 and chose lefty Dontrelle Willis. It was a tough decision between Willis and Brandon Webb, who was drafted number two by Phoenix. In hindsight, he probably should have gone with Webb, who is a solid member of the Philly rotation now, but Willis did provide some decent seasons for the Banditos, even if his rookie year was a disaster. It remains to be seen if Willis is protected by new owner Tom Zagenczyk, though a productive 2008 season does not look to be in the cards.

In 2003, Harrison made a miscalculation by picking Vicente Padilla. Why was it a miscalculation? Because the third pick (that's right Junior Spivey was taken next) was none other than two-time Ben McDonald Award winner Johan Santana. Padilla was thoroughly mediocre in '03 (7-12, 4.31). Don't blame the Rats too much. No one knew Santana would be that good, but ouch, that still has to hurt.

2002 was another no-brainer as Philadelphia selected rookie phenom Albert Pujols. Pujols has been a fixture in the Endzone Animal lineup since day one and led the team to their first Morris Division title this year. Pujols is a perennial Mitchell candidate.

In 2001, Vatican City shocked the DMBL by picking reliever Kaz Sasaki with the first overall pick. Sasaki wasn't a bad pick, per se - he did save 57 games in three season with the franchise. But most of the league had been speculating over whether Jeff D'Amico or Barry Zito would claim the number one spot. It's not a true bust of a pick, more like a brain fart.

Carolina selected starter Tim Hudson in 2000 and as a testament to the Mudcats drafting prowess, Hudson is still a member of the Mudcats. Hudson has accumulated a 90-80 record over his eight seasons with a solid 4.20 ERA and 953 strikeouts. In 2004, Hudson won the Ben McDonald Award for his excellent 17-3, 2.08 season, the only award winner of the bunch so far.

In 1999, Columbia selected their second Hernandez brother in their franchise history. Two years earlier, the Crusaders picked Livan Hernandez in the first round of the draft. El Duque fared no better than Livan in his rookie season (7-19, 4.97) and was traded the following season. Duque has hung around in the league and has had some success. In 2000, he had a solid year for the Hawaii Volcanoes (15-6, 3.99) and was 16-9 in 2005 split between Las Vegas and Stanhope.

Finally in 1998, the Phoenix Dragons successfully drafted Nomah first overall, a player that would become a cornerstone for the struggling franchise. Garciaparra was a fan favorite and was still playing with the team until the franchise was dissolved in 2006.

Draft Lottery

Yesterday was the 2008 Draft Lottery to determine the draft order of the first eight teams in the first round. The big winner was Blue Ridge, who moved all the way up from fourth to first overall. If you checked it out last night, there has been more information added since, so you may want to go back and read up. The Lottery was started five years ago in a way to discourage teams from tanking games in order to get a better draft pick - not that it worked much on Las Vegas or Sardine City. Blue Ridge, with a good potential keeper list already, could really help themselves out with a strong draft, or possibly flip the pick for more draft picks. It should be interesting either way.

Lots of rumors are flying about the Mitchell Report. Many current and former DMBLers are being named, but don't worry, there will be no suspensions from the DMBL front office since steroids are not illegal under the current league constitution.

DMBL History Lesson, Part 4: the Modern Era

Amazingly the league back in 1997 is almost the same as it is today. Not much has changed other than some minor rules. Sure there's the Tom Prince Rule, which has never been implemented, the late season expanded roster rule, waiver period and the first round lottery, but none of these are really game-changing. Somewhere around 2004 or 2005 the waiver rules were relaxed and allowed teams to sign players after the trading deadline, though they were no longer elligible to be keepers past the current season.

On March 18, 2001, the first edition of This Week in the DMBL with Zane Smith premeired on the DMBL web site. Soon after, it was joined by Did You Know?, the Press Box, Rookie Watch, Number Crunch, and others.

2001 also featured the very first appearance of Butch's Pre-Season Sims. The Swami had debuted way back in 1993 in the MicroLeague Newsletter, but debuted on the web in 1999.

In the Summer of 2006, during a scheduled intermission, Butch Garretson ran a simulated tournament of the best teams in the DMBL's history, dubbed the Dream Season.

At the end of the 2006 season, the DMBL Hall of Fame began voting for its inaugural class. The voters voted in four members.

Who knows what the future holds for the DMBL? Maybe the scores will be featured on ESPN's bottom line? Maybe Mike and the Mad Dog will be doing more draft reviews? Maybe there'll even be a high-profile owner someday? Only time will tell!

DMBL History Lesson, Part 3: the Return

The MLB Strike left the MicroLeague in shambles even after the work stoppage was over. Many baseball fans were angry with the league and vowed to never attend, watch, or even follow another Major League ball game. But the MicroLeague was saved by another league. In 1995, Butch Garretson started the Steve "Bye-Bye" Balboni Newark Rotisserie Baseball League with six owners. One of the owners dropped out midway through the season and Garretson recruited Yaro Zajac to take over the delapidated roster. After being reintroduced to baseball, Zajac decided that he couldn't let the MicroLeague die. He recruited three of the Balboni League owners to take over for three of the owners who were no longer interested in reviving their MicroLeague teams - a fourth owner would drop out, and once again, another Balboni League owner was called on as a replacement. The three new teams would take turns picking apart the rosters of the three deserted teams, forming the Newark Sugar Bears, Jerusalem Rabbis, and the Toledo Mutthens. The league was successfully resurrected.

1997 saw a big change in the league for numerous reasons. MicroLeague was becoming old and stale and the new version, MicroLeague III was not a suitable upgrade. Garretson and Zajac had investigated a different simulation game - Diamond Mind Baseball. The game boasted more realistic results, with a lot more statistics in consideration and a lot more control for the owners. MicroLeague was cast aside and DMB became the new game engine.

With the success of the 1996 season and more interest in the league, the DMBL decided to expand to 14 teams in 1997. To accommodate four new expansion teams, the league instituted the first protected list rules. Teams would protect 15 players, then, as a player was selected in the expansion draft off their rosters, they could pull back one more player, up to two total players pulled back, for a protected list of 17 players. Austin owner Steve Zajac was vehemently opposed to the new rule, but the majority won out. In fact, most of the owners liked the idea of limiting the protected lists and kept the rule in place for each subsequent year.

Finally, the 1997 was perhaps most significant for the creation of the new league web site. Hosted on Yaro Zajac's AOL service, the site featured a lot of what it features today - stats, rosters, box scores. Finally, most of the league had a way to follow along with the happenings of the DMBL. About half of the owners had internet service at the time, but that number was going up.

DMBL History Lesson, Part 2

Please pay attention, there will be a quiz later. And spit that gum out...

So after a successful first season, Stump Matiash thought that he would run a similar league of his own. The league only had five owners and it didn't even make it through a full season before folding (I mean "permanent rain delay"), but it stoked the interest of Brent Campbell, who was invited to become the MicroLeague's first expansion team - the Scranton Sparrows.

Back in the early days of the league, there were no protected lists. It was what is known as a dynasty league. The entire roster was your keeper list. Back in those days, the draft was only ten rounds long, and no supplemental rounds. There was nothing left by that time anyway. Most teams were done drafting by round eight, leading to some joke picks in the final rounds like "Mickey Mantle" or "Mark Zotti". Brent was given the second pick in each round. The thinking was that it would not be fair to deny Maine/San Antonio the first pick that they have so rightfully earned. Brent was then allowed to solo draft for the final rounds to fill out his roster. Naturally the Scranton Sparrows did not fare well that season. With seven teams in the league, the schedule had a "bye series" for one team, meaning that one of the teams would not play for three days. This was also the first year that allowed for 5-man reserve squads, though it was pretty uncommon in those days to stash inelligible players there.

Having an odd number of teams was just weird, so the Powers That Be decided that the league should expand to ten for the 1993 season. Mark Hazen was the first owner recruited by Steve Zajac. It would mark the only time that an expansion team would make a trade in a year before their inaugural season. The Outlaws traded Rickey Henderson to Hazen's Cheyenne Warhawks for a draft pick. After the other two owners were recruited, the three expansion teams were allowed to make five waiver claims each during the season. With a roster of five players, at least the new expansion teams would not be so far behind going into the new 1993 season.

The three expansion teams would be cycled into the second, third and fourth slots in the draft order and rotate each round. The player qualifications were relaxed a little to allow a larger pool of players to be available. Commissioner Yaro Zajac wanted the league to be a little more realistic and since MicroLeague would randomly injure players in the game, he thought that injuries should factor into the game. The problem was that the MicroLeague games had no continuity. The game had no knowledge of what happened in previous games. There was no fatigue, no pitch counts, and no long-term injuries. The game never replaced players in the game unless they were injured or ejected. Even though the games were quick played - note that the quick play was not instantaneous, but more of a fast forward - you could tell when a player was ejected by the music that played when it happened. During the quick play, the game would pause to play the music, then continue quick play. So the commish came up with a scheme to determine if the injury was long-term by a roll of the dice. He set up a chart for a 10-sided die that he found in an old Dungeons and Dragons kit. Three of the numbers indicated a 15-game injury and one number indicated a 30-game injury. The rest were single game injuries. The first player to fall prey to the luck of the dice was Waikiki's Rob Deer. Deer would also become infamous for his record number of strikeouts that season.

1993 was the birth of the MicroLeague Newsletter - a weekly publication featuring stats, rosters, transactions and goings on in the league. It was distributed to its members to that they could better follow the league, since there was no league web site yet. Previously, the owners would have visited the Zajac household or phone in for their results. The Newsletter unfortunately only lasted about seven or eight issues - which are forever enshrined at the DMBL Hall of Fame.

The 1994 season went on pretty much the same. One of the few seasons without any new owners. Of course you may remember that 1994 was the season of the infamous strike in Major League Baseball. The strike left a bad taste in the mouth for many baseball fans and that was also the case with the MicroLeague owners. The league was abandoned and apparently left for dead for the 1995 season.

Next week, we'll take a look at the post-strike MicroLeague and start getting into some DMB...

DMBL History Lesson, Part 1

Most of you weren't around in the infancy of the DMBL - referred to as the MicroLeague back in the beginning. Here's a little trip way back in time to the beginning...

Always big fans of baseball, the founders of the DMBL played a lot of video games and simulations, including Hardball and Earl Weaver on the computer, Pete Rose Baseball on the Atari, and whatever was popular in the arcades (RBI maybe?). Mike "Stump" Matiash introduced the game MicroLeague to Yaro and Steve Zajac. Soon the newer MicroLeague II came out and Steve Zajac came up with the idea to compete against each other. Steve went out and bought a roto magazine and soon we were out recruiting for a new league. Yaro signed up Paul Barbosa and Brian Dissler and Steve recruited his buddy, Eugene Mullin. Ryan and Mark DeRonde were also signed up, but bowed out before draft day. With five of the original owners waiting for the draft to start and Paul running late - really, really late, we went ahead and started the draft, awarding Paul a player that he had originally talked about drafting in the first round, Will Clark. After the draft was completed, Paul finally arrived but it was too late. The Newark Crimewave were off to a poor start, but after Barbosa cooled off, he sat down and picked up the rest of his roster.

Now at the time, the rules were quite different. There was no pre-season and no five-man reserve roster. The season was only 150 games long. Rules for qualifications were different (400 at bats, 35 games for relievers). There were no injuries. With only six teams, there was only one division and it was decided that only the top two would meet in the championship. With only one division, the All-Star game featured the MicroLeague All-Stars against the Major League All-Stars in a two game match - one against the NL stars and one against the AL stars. Very few trades were made in that inaugural season. Arkansas traded Kelly Gruber to Vancouver for Mark Grace. Columbia traded Cecil Fielder to Arkansas for a package of players.

Eugene Mullin lost interest about 2/3 or the way through the season and Ryan DeRonde, originally slated as an original eight owner, took over. The Austin Outlaws took the division, but lost to the Vancouver Iron Fist in the first World Series. Bud Black was named the first series MVP - well-earned, as Black dominated the Outlaws in his two starts. Bobby Bonilla was named MVP and Ben McDonald earned the first "Cy Young" award in a controversial vote.

We'll take a look at some more history soon...

Tuesday Tidbits

There's a new Trade Talk article posted looking at some of the biggest trades. We kind of covered some of these in the last post, but this broadens the scope a bit.

Diamond Mind will ship the season disk on December 11, so I'll be making that annual call to put in my order. Hopefully that means that the rosters will be updated sometime mid-month.

We'll be starting the voting for the DMBL Hall of Fame soon. Last year we inducted our first class of Hall of Famers. The 2008 ballot will be updated soon and you'll get a chance to vote for the next group. Last year we inducted Tony Gwynn, Mark McGwire, Albert Belle, and John Wetteland.

There's a big discussion going on over at Freaks N Geeks about possibly expanding the farm teams in the DMBL. If you haven't checked it out and weighed in with your opinion, well, what are you waiting for?

There are going to be four rules/league items to vote on before this year's draft, so now's the time to put your two cents in. In case you don't remember, the four items are: 1) stadium leases, 2) outfield positions, 3) expansion, and 4) the new farm team rule.