Tag Archives: video

Compiler v.1.2 Plus New YouTube Tutorial Importing Holds, Quality Starts Projections

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I promised an update to the fantasy baseball projections, ADP and depth charts earlier today on our Facebook page, and it got done this afternoon, so you are now free to update your copy of the Cheatsheet Compiler. Same method as before, go to the update tab in the Compiler and hit Update Projections.

Ah, but there is more to the story which is why it took me an extra nine hours to post about the update. You’ll be particularly interested in this part if your league uses Holds or Quality Starts as a scoring category.

Last week member prnichols7807 asked why Holds are available at Razzball.com in the Steamer-Razzball projections on their website, but not in the Steamer-Razzball projections available in the Cheatsheet Compiler (and here). Good question. I learned that Razzball adds the Holds projections, and Quality Starts too, and they want to keep those proprietary.

No problem, of course. I can understand that, because Holds and QS are not as commonly projected as other stats, so if you want them you need to visit Razzball to get them. However, that doesn’t help us get them in the Cheatsheet Compiler to incorporate into our cheatsheets for leagues that use Holds, Quality Starts, or both, does it? The answer: Projection Pal. We can use Projection Pal to import just the Holds and QS into the Compiler, and add them to our existing Steamer projections.

The question then of course is how to do that, which inspired me to create a new YouTube tutorial on exactly that. The video shows all the steps from copying the projections off the website, pasting them into Projection Pal, getting them into the Cheatsheet Compiler, adding them to the existing Steamer projections, and creating our new cheatsheets for a 6X6 league (standard 5X5 plus OBP and Holds, and QS instead of Wins).

These videos are time consuming to produce but I can understand they are more helpful than reading instructions. I hope you find this one helpful.

As a further addendum to this story, when I first ran the Holds projections through the Cheatsheet Compiler, relievers with Holds were overvalued quite a bit. I made some adjustments to Compiler version 1.1, and uploaded version 1.2 to our download page with a new feature.

Similar to the “Stockpile Closers” feature already in the Compiler, there is now a “Stockpile Holds” feature on the roto adjust tab that forces relievers projected with a base level of holds into the draftable player pool. That change, plus an appropriate adjustment to the holds value as discussed in the video, spits out the projected best setup men in baseball at reasonable dollar values relative to closers and other positions.

The time to do one update plus another nine hours later, we have updated projections, a new version of the Cheatsheet Compiler and a new YouTube video. Yep, that is a full day, and I’m calling it a night. Enjoy!

Baseball Compiler 1.1 Plus Draft Buddy Released

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After an extensive update to the depth charts, enough players changed from version 1.0 of the Cheatsheet Compiler that I needed to release a version 1.1. It is now ready and available from our download page.

For those new to the website, the 2013 Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy for fantasy baseball is completely free. It is free to download, use and update right up to Opening Day, no strings attached. You just need to register an account to get access to download. Existing members can login to download again this season.

If you already downloaded the earlier available Cheatsheet Compiler 1.0, then you must replace it with version 1.1 to ensure the update pages and Draft Buddy work properly. There are no other feature changes since 1.0, but 1.1 includes updated Steamer and Zeile projections, updated Average Draft Position data from each of FantasyPros and Mock Draft Central, plus ADP from National Fantasy Baseball Championship and the depth charts.

Oh, and that little gem called Draft Buddy is also now available. Not a bad update, eh?


 

If you notice any issue with the Compiler, Draft Buddy, or anything on the website, then please send me feedback so I can correct it. To submit feedback, like the CC/DB on Facebook, follow @DraftBuddy on Twitter and Google+, post in the blog or send me an email.

Auction Draft Lessons Learned and Draft Buddy Tips

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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.

TEAM MACGREGOR
C Kurt Suzuki, Oak
1B Lance Berkman, StL
2B Dustin Ackley, Sea
3B Michael Young, Tex
SS Starlin Castro, ChC
OF Justin Upton, Ari
OF Hunter Pence, Phi
OF Shane Victorino, Phi
DH Billy Butler, KC
OF Drew Stubbs, Cin
OF Peter Bourjos, LAA
1B Kendrys Morales, LAA
OF Bryce Harper, Wsh
SP Ricky Romero, Tor
SP Ubaldo Jimenez, Cle
SP Tommy Hanson, Atl
SP Brandon Morrow, Tor
SP Mike Minor, Atl
RP Grant Balfour, Oak
SP Francisco Liriano, Min

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.


 

Videos Showing How To Re-Rank Players and Remove Green Triangles

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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.


 

YouTube Video of Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy Fantasy Baseball

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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:

  1. Opening the Cheatsheet Compiler
  2. Inputting league settings and scoring
  3. Importing the Zeile Consensus Projections via Projection Pal
  4. Using the Zeile projections to create your cheatsheets in the Compiler
  5. Setting up Draft Buddy
  6. 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: