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It is hard to believe a month has already gone by since my last status update in the blog, and we are out of April and into May as of tomorrow. Now really, there hasn’t been much to update here. The family and I had a great trip to Disney for a week this month. We drove to Orlando, which was a very long drive but enjoyable seeing many states we’ve never seen before. West Virginia has some great scenery on the interstate.
And… of course, planning and development of the fantasy football version of the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy. Or are we calling it just “Draft Buddy” this year? Maybe, maybe. All will be revealed in due time. I love that I’m already receiving some emails from people about the football version.
There isn’t much else to say. Yes, I know people want the old countdown timer back in the CC/DB this year, so I am trying to make that happen. It is going to be a busy month of May getting ready for another great season of fantasy football. Keep checking in for semi-periodic updates, but know when the football CC/DB is ready, we will let past customers know by email. Now back to the grind.
Quick status update here, saying that I just updated the Average Draft Position data and the depth charts in the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy. I also dropped Joakim Soria and Ryan Madson from the projections, as they are expected to miss the season. That news didn’t break until after our last update a week ago.
I haven’t received a full projection update from Rick, and truthfully, I’m not sure if he was planning to do one since the season is now underway. Generally, we don’t update projections after the season starts. This season is a little different than in the past with the opening series in Japan. (Hooray, I drafted Dustin Ackley last week!) If Rick has time to come through for us and send an update, then I’ll put it up and post when it is ready. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ for update notices. In the meantime, hit Update Projections in your copy of the Compiler to get the latest ADP and depth charts.
Last night marked the inaugural auction draft for the Screw ‘Um fantasy baseball league, organized by longtime Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy user, ezcollectibles, and run on ESPN’s league management website. The auction was meant to start at 8:00 Eastern, but when one of the 14 owners failed to get logged on, repeatedly, we had to say goodbye to him and delay the draft start to 9:00 Eastern. The ESPN auction is a good setup, but not flexible on short notice if something like this happens.
Fortunately ezcollectibles had an extra family member kicking around to make up the 14th team, and everyone else showed good patience sticking it out for the new start time and later night than planned.
All in all, it was a very fun auction draft. I like my team overall, but I made some mis-steps I wish I could take back. That is a typical outcome from an auction, since they are rather unpredictable. What looks like a good deal on a player one minute turns out to be a gross overpayment, when similarly ranked players end up going for bargain basement prices later.
As mentioned, it is a 14-team league with only 20 roster spots, so not a particularly deep league. The format is head-to-head with 5X5 roto scoring. We had $260 to spend at the auction. My post-auction roster is on the right, and ranges from a high dollar amount paid for Justin Upton at $48, while there were a handful of $1 and $2 players, including Kendrys Morales and Grant Balfour.
It seemed like a good idea to use this recent experience to create another YouTube video to discuss auctions in general, and also some specific tips using Draft Buddy for an auction. The video below includes discussion on using your cheatsheet as a guide to bid on players rather than using the dollar values as if they are set in stone. This particularly applies to high value players to ensure you don’t get shutout getting your share of studs on your roster. Depth is great, but an entire team of average players will usually provide just average results.
Also, it is important to appropriately value your roster spots. You may be able to bid on anyone in an auction, but you can’t buy everyone, not only because of the money but also because of limited space on your roster. I use my acquisition of Bryce Harper as an example of me not judging my remaining roster spots correctly.
Finally, some tips specific to Draft Buddy during an auction draft, including how to quickly find players that are still undrafted and can best help you in specific roto categories. The video is a tad long for my liking at 12 minutes, but I think you’ll find some valuable stuff in there if you have an auction coming up.
I popped over to FantasyPros this morning to see if there was an update to the Zeile Consensus Projections. There is! It seems a few of the projection sources they are using to form the consensus updated since last week, so I’ve uploaded a new copy of Projection Pal with the Zeile projections you can download and import into your copy of the Cheatsheet Compiler. You can read more about the Zeile projections in Projection Pal, and watch a video which includes steps to import them into the Compiler (really pretty simple).
I absolutely know there are a ton of sharp fantasy baseball players in the NFBC, so I agree the NFBC ADP is good data. I guess which you prefer could depend on who you are playing against. Do the owners in your league draft more like your average Joe MDC member, or your average Joe NFBC player?
Always one to give you guys choices, I created an HTML page with ADP from the NFBC that you can import into your copy of the Compiler, in case you’d rather use that instead of the default MDC ADP. The only thing you need to know, is how to change it. And that is why I created another video, to show how it is done.
Rick returned my email asking him if he has a player projections update for us, and he did! He forgot to send me his update last night as a result of managing an intense opening night ball game in his son Eli’s little league. The full update is now posted, so open your copy of the Cheatsheet Compiler and hit Update Projections for fresh projections, depth charts and ADP.
Amongst the projection changes we added new starting second baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, Freddy Galvis, to our database, reduced projections for Domonic Brown and Bryce Harper with their assignment to the minors, reduced Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Stephen Drew due to injury recovery concerns, added Humberto Quintero as the starting catcher for the Kansas City Royals, and upgraded Grant Balfour as the new closer for the Oakland Athletics. Plus a handful of other changes.
All-in-all, a pretty healthy update. Remember, if you already have Draft Buddy set up for your league, and you want to get the newly updated cheatsheets in Buddy from the Compiler, follow these steps:
Update projections in the Compiler. Compile Cheatsheets will run automatically after the update.
Open Draft Buddy. If you already have any keepers, draft picks, custom draft order, draft pick trades, etc. in Buddy, then uncheck the Clear Keepers and Draft Picks option on the setup tab.
Click the Setup Draft Buddy button.
Last thing, we are still looking for one more for a $50 league drafting on Monday night. Contact me if interested. Good luck in your fantasy baseball drafts this weekend!
I’m double checking with Rick to see if he has a player projections update for us as we head into the weekend, what is sure to be a heavy draft weekend. As of now, the depth charts and average draft position (ADP) data are updated. I uploaded the new files so you can get updates for those in the Cheatsheet Compiler. Hit Update Projections on the setup tab, or go to the individual depth and adp tabs, right-click any cell on each table, and select Refresh Data. The depth tab requires that step for each of the hitters and pitchers depth chart table. Post a comment if you have questions.
Day 2 of making screencast videos to show how to use the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy, and I’ve already learned or improved a couple of things from the getting started video posted yesterday. First, I found some shorter topics, which I think is more engaging than watching a screen and listening to me for over 10 minutes. Second, I learned how to remove the “umm’s” and “aww’s” from the audio.
On the downside, I couldn’t figure out what the loud clacking sound is that occurs in the background on occasion, until I finally realized it was when I was hitting the keyboard. I’m not sure why that is so loud, but I’ll see what I can do to prevent it going forward.
As for the video production, I have two new ones today. One is on re-ranking players in Draft Buddy. This can be useful if you’ve already got your cheatsheets from the Compiler, into Buddy after running the Draft Buddy Setup, and you want to move a handful of players up or down your cheatsheets.
You can move players by editing their projections in the Compiler (yellow section on the hitters or pitchers tab), but if you are at a stage you don’t want to get into the detail of projections, try a simple re-rank in Buddy. If news breaks that a player will miss some time with injury, maybe he is the only guy worthy of a change, knocking him down a few spots. This video is ideal for that.
The second video is more of an Excel tutorial than specific to the CC/DB. Have you noticed those annoying green triangles in your copy of the Compiler, or Draft Buddy? Those are a Microsoft Excel feature called error checking. Excel is referencing various error checking rules to identify formulas which potentially have an error. Not that they have an error, just that Excel is telling the user it thinks the formula might have an error.
All in all, the error checking rules are too strict by default and finding all kinds of potential errors, creating lots of green triangles messing up the look of the Compiler and Draft Buddy. What we want to do is turn off a bunch of these error checking rules, to get rid of the triangles. The next video shows how to do that in older versions of Excel, and newer versions since Excel 2007.
I did some demo videos and posted to YouTube back in 2010 for each of the Cheatsheet Compiler, Draft Buddy and Projection Pal. People find them very useful, and rightfully so, because you can actually see what is going on while I’m doing and talking about the steps using the fantasy draft tools, rather than read a bunch of instructions.
I was on hiatus from doing videos though, because frankly, they’re hard to do. They take time, and can be frustrating with mistakes and misspoken words resulting in retakes and editing. Hey, I’m trying to be a website developer / fantasy sports guy, not a video producer / director / actor / editor guy. Also the software to do the screencast videos was a tad expensive too.
In this day and age though, I guess we need to wear a lot of hats to get a half-decent website cobbled together. That is what I’m trying to do, and I want to do the best I can to help people use the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy. If videos are going to get that done, then I’d better produce some videos. Hopefully with more practice, they get more polish and less bloopers.
The first one is complete, and posted to YouTube on my YouTube channel which you can subscribe to if you so choose. The video is a general getting started video, doing the following:
Opening the Cheatsheet Compiler
Inputting league settings and scoring
Importing the Zeile Consensus Projections via Projection Pal
Using the Zeile projections to create your cheatsheets in the Compiler
Setting up Draft Buddy
Draft the first player in Buddy
That seems like a pretty good overview. Of course, the video ran longer than I would like at 12 minutes. Like I said, this is going to be a learning process for me doing the videos. Hopefully it is a productive learning process for you using the CC/DB. I’ll have to make sure I hit some shorter topics going forward.
Okay, without further adieu, here is the first fantasy baseball video for the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy for 2012:
Last year we ran a Home Run Derby Contest on our now extinct forums, and I never got around to figuring out and posting the results of that contest. I always felt bad about that, because CC/DB user ezcollectibles sent me a complete set of 2011 Topps Series I baseball cards to award to the winner. The cards sit here on my bookshelf next to me, unopened, and eager to meet their rightful owner.
Well, when I dumped the forums, I made sure I saved the entire thread for the contest to capture all of the entries. The contest was essentially a box pool, with ten different groups of five mashers in each group. Pick who you think will be the top home run getter from each group. Most home runs win. Check the two screen captures of my post (one, two) with the rules and players.
And we have a winner! Congrats to smokeyspop who finished first with 314 homers. Second was hellcat with 304 and third, mpr001 with 299. I earned the proud distinction of being the top entry that took a zero in one category, selecting Kendrys Morales in the “Pick Your Poison” group (no kidding). Our top three entries all picked Aramis Ramirez in that category for a 26 homer swing from Morales.
A perfect entry would have earned 349 homers consisting of the top player and their individual home run total for each group listed below.
Below are all the results from the contest. Click the “+” sign for entry details. Congrats smokeyspop, and please send me your mailing address so I can send you your cards.
