A Note About Normalization            Back to Reference Index

Bear in mind that in general, your players compiled their real-life stats in different eras and different parks from those you'll see in your league. The quality of your opponents isn't likely to match real life, either. In the course of any season, real-life players face a few superstars, some very good players, a bunch of guys who perform near the league average, and a good number of second-tier players who range from utility guys to injury replacements called up from the minors for "cups of coffee" who quickly disappear and are never heard from again. A lot of bad players are not on our player list. Therefore, the level of competition here is generally higher.

Your Diamond Mind Online® league is likely to be different from real-life baseball in many ways:

(a) It will be played in one specific era, and that will affect players from other eras;

(b) The games will be played in a set of home parks chosen by the team owners, and those parks could collectively favor hitters, favor pitchers, or be fairly neutral overall, with a variety of choices not available to real-life owners and general managers;

(c) You (and your opponents) will be able to choose your own park and more easily tailor your players to your team's home park than real-life general managers because of the larger player pool;

(d) Your league's salary cap may allow teams to assemble more talent than the average real-life team, which means that it may be harder for your players to compile stats as impressive as they had in real life; and

(e) Depending on the salary cap and the draft strategies of your fellow owners, your league might be especially loaded with hitting talent, pitching talent, or fielding talent.

The bottom line is that many of your players will be playing in different eras and parks and facing different opponents than they did in real life. As a result, you should NOT expect your players to exactly match their real-life stats. You should expect them to match their real-life stats adjusted for how their real-life era/parks/teammates/opposition compare to the era/parks/teammates/opposition in your Imagine Sports league. In other words, we do adjust the players’ hitting, pitching and defense (as well as durability) based on the era and home ballpark each played in as well as certain team situations that may have affected those statistics.

In addition to the difference in opposition and the normalization for era and park factors, players sometimes simply exceed or fall short of expectations. Please do not misunderstand this to mean that you will be getting a specific year from the player’s career. You won’t be. The player you get in one league is the exact same player you would get if you drafted him in another league. A player may do better than you expect in one season because you're smart enough to put him in the right situation or maybe you just got lucky. Of course, if you make some poor choices or your luck runs the other way, your player may perform differently, and you could be in for a frustrating season. These things happen all the time in real life, and they will happen in your Diamond Mind Online® leagues, too.