It's been a great season to watch.
McGwire and Sosa surpassing Maris, the Yankees flirting with a storybook season, Roger Clemens as strong as ever, Jesse Orosco pitching his 1.000th game... If baseball never lost the dedication of fans like us, it may have regained some credibility even for those who had felt betrayed in the past few years.
But the season is developing in quite interesting ways in the Owners' League as well. As for today, the Brokers seem absolutely unbeatable, and the Mikes may face their first no-postseason campaign ever. The Bucks are even hoping wild card there. The race for Central Division seems very close, between the Pachos and the Candies. In the East Division, the Burberries are still favorites, even if the Christian can field an impressive lineup.

PREVIOUS BULLETINS

12/20/96 The Ghiotto meeting: Candies spend! (with trade rules) 12/23/96 Flowers: The Mob Visited My House! (in Italian) 01/05/97 The Loan Auction 01/19/97 The Trades Deadline 02/01/97 Brokers Are 1996 Champions 02/23/97 Freeze Time Coming 03/10/97 Keepers Submitted 05/05/97 Draft Time! 12/20/97 Realignment and the expansion draft plus predictions! 01/10/98 Mikes latest Championship Team 03/01/98 1998 Keepers and Draft 04/14/98 1998 Season starts

But the most important issues of 1998 were the implementing of new rules which revolutioned the system of freezing players, and the change of ownership for the Fatties. As for the latter, Mr. Massimo Facchini took over from Mr. Simone Motola, and the team's name is now Faccos. You will find old informations about this particular issue in the rest of this site (the teams pages still carry the Fatties, but the team is actually the Faccos), and this will be fixed during the offseason.
About the freezing rules, you can obviously find every detail in the rules page, but the core is the following: the previous system of freezing nine players, whichever their value, has been replaced with the introduction of the payroll system. Any owner can freeze a total value of L. 70.000, with a maximum of 13 players. The value of a player is determined by his statistics in the last three seasons, and the best players' value is between L. 8-9.000.
This system allows owners with few marquee players to go with youngsters and/or replace quality with quantity, giving them more flexibility and giving to the league more equilibrium at the start of every new draft.

Other pages for our friends online:

• A complete list of the keepers for each team (see also the reference page on the same matter).
• A complete list of the players drafted by team (a reference page is available on this matter as well).
• An updated team by team analysis in our usual Teams page, a fan favorite; it displays a roster analysis with the projected lineup for each team.
• The latest edition of this year's statistical recap for each and every player involved in our game. This page is updated weekly throughout the season, and is the best reference tool to evaluate the current strengths and weaknesses of each team.

You can see all the statistics of the 1997 DiamondMind Baseball Championship; they are provided, as usual, by courtesy of the Flowers Home Page.

Check the League's Coming Events . Stay in touch!

 For a complete recap of all the year's trades, see the Trades List Page, which appears (or does it?) thanks to the Flowers' archive site.

 

Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Mail me at r.caramelli@bo.nettuno.it.
Thank you.

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