Final Fantasy Baseball Projections Update for Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Mike MacGregor

I am away for some rest and relaxation right now, but constantly connected and still updating ye ole website as possible and as needed. Today we were due for an update. I received a final fantasy baseball projections update from Steamer Projections Blog for the Steamer-Razzball projections. FantasyPros also updated their Zeile Consensus projections, and with Opening Day now officially in the books yesterday, I’m putting a cap on that and calling those the final projections as well.

The update is now available for the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy. Each set of projections are updated, plus Average Draft Position (ADP) data from each of FantasyPros, Mock Draft Central and National Fantasy Baseball Championship.

The depth charts are taking a little more time than I’d like with all the final week changes, and my desire to not mess up the available players we already have in the Compiler & Draft Buddy. I updated the AL East so far, plus the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim so I could get Vernon Wells on the New York Yankees, and I’ll work away at the rest as time allows (and to not annoy the wife while on vacation).

Thanks once again to all the guys at FantasyPros, Steamer, MDC and NFBC for their contributions to the Compiler & Draft Buddy this fantasy baseball season. It is very much appreciated.

Thanks to all of you, our members, for continuing to use the CC/DB, or trying it for the first time this season. I hope you liked it, and will remember us again next year. Or, even better, if you play fantasy football make sure to try out the fantasy football version of the CC/DB.

Have a great season. Go Blue Jays!

One Day to Opening Day, Projections Update

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Mike MacGregor

It is nearing 1:30 am in the morning where I’m sitting, and I have a family vacation planned to start tomorrow. Er… later today. Not too late in the day though. Our flight leaves at a ridiculous 6:30 am, so just 5 more hours to boarding and departure.

Why then am I up right now instead of getting some much needed rest? We have another projections update! To start with, I had to stay up until the final of the Florida Gulf Coast-Florida game so I could appropriately update my March Madness Survivor Pool.

As I was waiting for the game to finish, I flipped over to FantasyPros and saw they updated their Zeile Consensus projections. Then I zoomed over to Steamer Projections Blog to find out they updated their Steamer-Razzball projections. Everyone is keen for a last final tweak to their projections before we hit Opening Day on Sunday night and Monday.

I guess it is time for an update for the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy, and our online fantasy baseball cheatsheet rankings. Those are now updated as of this post, so open your copy of the Compiler, select the projections you want to update, and hit Update Projections.

Thanks again for all of the support this year. The response to the baseball Compiler & Draft Buddy continues to be very strong. If you are still drafting this final weekend before real baseball starts, good luck! Have a great season!

Zeile Projections Update To The Update

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Mike MacGregor

It is a tricky business relying on fantasy baseball projections from other sources, and trying to stay up to date all the time, especially when they have a seemingly random update schedule. After finalizing the update yesterday for the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy, I woke up this morning and, after noticing one small mistake I wanted to correct, I checked the Zeile consensus projections over at FantasyPros and they updated them again, late last night, after our last update. Darn it.

It is the weekend and many of you might be drafting today or tomorrow, so lets get everyone up to date with the latest projections, even though it is difficult to decipher exactly what changed from the last version to the current version. Okay, as of typing this I updated the Zeile projections again. You’ll see even if you already hit Update Projections after yesterday’s update (Friday ~ 7:00pm Eastern), the Compiler will tell you once again this morning (Saturday ~ 8:00am) that there is an update available.

As for the small mistake, I noticed in the Cheatsheet Compiler that Reid Brignac was still on his old team, Tampa Bay, even though I know I switched him in our depth charts weeks ago. I finally realized the issue.

The Compiler update pages I create were pulling the team and position information from the Zeile projections instead of the depth charts. Zeile still shows Brignac on Tampa. Steamer, by the way, shows him as a free agent. You’ll notice this on his player page where each of those projections are shown below his historic season stats.

Now I am pulling the team and position data from the right spot, our depth charts, so the Compiler properly shows his current team, the Colorado Rockies, after running the aforementioned update. This would apply to any other player who switched teams recently where our projection source haven’t quite caught up yet.

Fantasy Baseball Projections, ADP and Depth Chart Update

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Mike MacGregor

That took some time – longer than I expected (per usual) – but the projections, average draft position and depth charts are now updated for the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy. Open your copy of the Cheatsheet Compiler, go to the update tab, make sure the Zeile (FantasyPros) option is selected for projections source, and click Update Projections.

No update to the Steamer-Razzball projections this week, only the Zeile projections. I updated the ADP from all three of our sources, FantasyPros, Mock Draft Central and National Fantasy Baseball Championship. Thanks once again to each of our partners for their contributions to the CC/DB.

I also ran through every team to update our depth charts too. In terms of other online features, the projections update creates new updated player rankings for our cheatsheets and player pages, like Bryce Harper.

We had some questions the last few days about the projections, including a discussion on our Facebook page when member smackie1970 noticed there are way too many at-bats going to the Tampa Bay shortstops. Make sure to check that out to understand the reasoning behind it.

Commenting on a previous blog post, member prnichols7807 asked why Holds (and I noticed, Quality Starts too) aren’t included in our Steamer-Razzball projections when they are over at Razzball. It seems that Razzball adds those to Steamer, and they want to keep them proprietary, which is certainly understandable considering HLD and QS are not as commonly projected by fantasy baseball prognosticators across the inter webs. My suggestion if you really want these in your copy of the Cheatsheet Compiler would be to do so using Projection Pal. If I have time then I will revisit that topic next week to show how I would do it.

Okay, that is it for the update. Have a good one, and good luck if your draft is on this weekend.

Projections and ADP Update Ready for the Cheatsheet Compiler

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Mike MacGregor

I posted this morning on our Facebook page and Twitter account that I was going to work on updating the fantasy baseball projections, Average Draft Position (ADP) and depth charts today for the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy. That took some time, but the update is ready!

Both sets of projections, the Zeile Consensus Projections from FantasyPros, and the Steamer-Razzball projections from Steamer Projections Blog, were updated. Plus, I updated ADP from each of Mock Draft Central, FantasyPros and National Fantasy Baseball Championship.

I ran out of time to do the depth charts, so if a few people could look through them and let me know if there are any glaring changes that should be made, I’d appreciate it.

As a result of this update, we now have much deeper Zeile projections. Previously, I grabbed the Excel export file from FantasyPros, but member mjfhokie noticed that didn’t include the complete Zeile projections. Now I’m pulling them direct from FantasyPros’ API, resulting in much deeper projections. Our Zeile import used to include projections for 245 hitters and 181 pitchers, but is now at 358 hitters and 249 pitchers. Good stuff!

Note since this is a projections update, you do not need to download the Cheatsheet Compiler again. You can get the new data using the built in features. To update both sets of projections, perform the following steps:

1. Open your copy of the Cheatsheet Compiler, go to the update tab, and use the drop-down to choose Steamer-Razzball projections. Click the Update Projections button. You should see an indication that Steamer projections now are in Site A.

2. After that runs through the update, go back to the update tab and click the Move to Site B button, which will do just what it sounds like. It moves the now updated Steamer projections from section A to B on each of the hitters and pitchers tabs.

3. Now change the drop-down from Steamer-Razzball to Zeile (FantasyPros). Click the Update Projections button again.

4. Your ADP is already updated from the above steps. If you want to switch to a different source for your ADP, go to the adp tab, change the drop-down, and click the Update ADP button.

One final note that I did make some very minor changes to the Compiler and Draft Buddy download files, even though I didn’t change the version number. In the Compiler, the Check for Update button didn’t work properly. I fixed that.

In Draft Buddy, I noticed a problem on my Mac that threw an error near the end of the Setup Draft Buddy process. This was a curious one that happened because while running one macro (Setup Draft Buddy), Buddy tried to run another macro (recalculate the by pos tab), but ended up getting bungled up because the first task didn’t think the second task finished fast enough. I never noticed this issue on my PC, only the Mac.

Like I said, these are very minor issues, but if you do notice them and want to download a fresh copy of the Compiler or Draft Buddy, then you can certainly do that.

Enjoy the update, and again, let me know if you notice any significant depth chart changes that should be made, particularly those impacting the starting lineup, rotation and closers as shown on our summary depth chart in the Compiler.

Fantasy Baseball Cheatsheet Compiler Release Update

Status

We’re getting really close to releasing the 2013 Cheatsheet Compiler for fantasy baseball. Perhaps not later today because I still need to update our depth charts and get confirmation we can use average draft position information from a couple sources, plus then clean and format that data. On the plus side, the Compiler will have the ability to import the Steamer-Razzball and Zeile Consensus projections, and perhaps more if others agree to let us use their projections. Thanks for your patience!

Steamer-Razzball and Zeile Consensus Baseball Player Projections

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Mike MacGregor

I did say, “next stop, Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy” last week, but to get to that stop there are a few key steps we need to take along the way. Most importantly, we need some player projections to get into the Cheatsheet Compiler to generate our fantasy baseball cheatsheets.

Good buddy Rick Milleman isn’t doing the projections this year, so I reached out to a couple people to help us out and fortunately, and thankfully, they agreed to let us use their projections in the CC/DB. One you’ll recognize from a year ago and one perhaps not, although they do have a good track record.

The Zeile Consensus Projections are from FantasyPros, an average of player projections from a variety of fantasy baseball websites, and updated constantly from now through spring training and right up to Opening Day. FantasyPros let us use the Zeile projections last year, and I made them available for import into the Cheatsheet Compiler using Projection Pal. This year, we’ll see about a more direct import into the Compiler.

The Steamer-Razzball projections are a collaboration between the Steamer Projections Blog and top-notch fantasy baseball website, Razzball. Steamer is a system for generating baseball projections and they’ve coupled the projections with playing time estimates from Razzball. These will also be available for import into the Cheatsheet Compiler… somehow (I haven’t entirely figured it out yet).

Make sure to support these websites as thanks for providing their projections for us. Projection Pal allows for importing projections from other sources into the Compiler, but as anyone is aware who used Pal in the past, it can be a tad frustrating when player names don’t match up exactly with our database. Any possibility to skip that step and still get a solid set of projections is a welcome step into the right direction.

Zeile Consensus Projections Update

Status

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).

Projection Pal Available Plus Pal With Zeile Consensus Projections

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Mike MacGregor

Keeping with my knack for getting one significant item crossed off my high priority to-do list each week (uh oh, I’m running out of days this week), I uploaded Projection Pal to the Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy download directory late last Friday. Feel free to login and head over there to grab it as another tool in your fantasy baseball draft prep toolbox.

For those not sure what Projection Pal is, it is an optional add-on to help import projections from other websites into the Cheatsheet Compiler. From there, you can set your projection source from the default, DraftBuddy.com, to something else. Then the cheatsheets generated by the Compiler will be based off the other set of projections.

Here is an old video on how Projection Pal works, but fair warning, it is not the easiest thing in the world to use. I’m not apologizing for that, just stating a fact. The reason is because there are a myriad of ways that websites can present their projections. I can only automate so much in Pal to account for that. Once you get your projections imported and cleaned up in Pal though, then it does a wonderful job of exporting them to the Compiler, lined up with the right players on each of the hitters and pitchers tabs.

That caveat out of the way, I have excellent news to share. The guys over at FantasyPros have a new feature this year, compiling projections from, as of this writing, six different sources. They are called the Zeile Consensus Projections. FantasyPros gave me permission to make a special copy of Projection Pal available for you guys to download with the Zeile Projections pre-loaded.

This way, I’ve done the import for you, and all you have to do is download to the same directory as your Compiler, open both files, and hit the Copy to Compiler buttons on each of the hitters Raw and pitchers Raw tabs in Pal. Voilà, you have the Zeile Projections in your copy of the Compiler. Set the default projections on the setup tab in the Compiler to “100% Site B”, hit Compile Cheatsheets, and now your cheatsheets are powered by Zeile.

There is quite a difference between our projections and the consensus projections. I uploaded the overall cheatsheet from each for comparison sake. Check the cheatsheet using Rick’s projections and the cheatsheet using Zeile.

I’ll keep updating the Zeile projections periodically in our copy of Pal, so any time you want the new projections, just come back and download the file again, replacing your old one. Check the last update date on the download page to know if it has changed since the last time you downloaded.