Fantasy Baseball Draft Buddy 2017 Released

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playballThe 2017 version of Draft Buddy for fantasy baseball is now available for download!

If you are an existing member, and do not have access to download Draft Buddy yet, then login and re-up your (free) subscription via the Add/Renew Subscription button from your member page. First timers, register a (free) account checking off you want Draft Buddy and then you should have access.

I feel like I’m behind getting this out to you, but then I look back and my first newsletter went out February 19 for last season. Hmm… maybe I am continuously behind, or just feel that way. As I mentioned to one of our members Joe this morning on Twitter, I am juggling other things on the home and work front, so I am on a sort of every other day schedule to work on this website. Not ideal, but doing the best I can.

In terms of features, there are currently no changes from the prior year version of Draft Buddy, except some compatibility things with the newest versions of Excel for Mac. Give me strength Microsoft. Hey, it was already pretty good feature-wise as-is, right? It is a time thing, and a free tool to boot, so not only hard to jam in more features but also hard to justify.

Lets give a shout out to the websites that provide the baseball projections for Draft Buddy, currently Steamer-Fangraphs and FantasyPros for the Zeile projections. I updated each of these this morning.

Plus, the ADP comes from FantasyPros and NFBC. If you are looking for an online money league to play in then NFBC is the way to go. They have a long history and excellent reputation.

Last but certainly not least, props to members Kevin and Mark who are back again this season volunteering their time to keep the depth charts up to date for us. Thanks guys!

Okay, that is about it. Thanks for supporting Draft Buddy for fantasy baseball, fantasy football, or both! If you have any questions then please email me or hit me up through our Facebook page or on Twitter.

Suggested Improvements to Fantasy Baseball Draft Buddy for Next Season

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We are almost a week into the start of the MLB season, and I am going to my first Toronto Blue Jays game on Saturday versus the hated Boston Red Sox. Can’t wait! Although if there is no Josh Donaldson in the lineup that will be a real bummer. Latest is the Jays are hopeful he returns Friday. Come on Bringer Of Rain!

Anyway… this is pretty much a wrap on fantasy baseball season as far as our Draft Buddy draft software is concerned. Everyone is done drafting now, I take it?

If you were among our members who used Draft Buddy this season, I hope you found it extremely useful and want to come back and use it again next year. Thank you for the positive feedback, occasional donation, and even suggestions for improvement.

Speaking of which, I wanted to get some of these suggestions for improvement written out and saved where I can easily find them before we ramp up for next fantasy baseball season. I’ve tried keeping them on my desk before and that just doesn’t work very well. Plus, now you have an opportunity to add to the list right here, in the comments section.

Below are some suggestions I received by email, or thought of myself. Keep in mind I cannot promise all of these will happen. Some are a bit of a brain dump of ideas that haven’t even been fully thought out if they are possible. If you see one you really like then by all means comment your support for it, and as always I will do my best.

  1. FIX: Check conditional formatting for last row in the cheatsheets, as it may be missing.
  2. FIX: On the new Top 25 feature, some players are appearing more than once… I believe this is due to a handful of players (likely 3 or more) having the same projections of a particular stat category.
  3. FIX: Not sure the count of drafted players at UT and CI/MI are correct on the summary tab in certain cases. Check Steve P.’s email and file.
  4. NEW: Add Draft Player buttons to the hitters data and pitchers data tabs, enabling ability to draft from any tab that lists players.
  5. NEW: Add AB as a scoring category for fantasy points leagues.
  6. NEW: Add more / improve data such as positions for top prospects in MLB organizations to enhance keeper and dynasty leagues.
  7. NEW: Perhaps have a separate ranking list of top prospects to draft from beyond the rankings generated from the projections.
  8. NEW: Player comparison tab similar to the football version… or enhance the online player comparison tool (better idea).
  9. NEW: Deeper ADP list.

That is all I have for now, but again, if you have other suggestions then feel free to comment below, as will I if I receive (or remember) any other ideas by email.

Thanks again for supporting Draft Buddy. Enjoy baseball season, and go Blue Jays!

Baseball Projections and Rankings Update, Member Q&A

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Hey, didn’t we already update the fantasy baseball projections in Draft Buddy earlier this week? We did, but that was mostly because I was traveling and unable to update towards the end of last week.

Today everything got updated again – projections from all three sources, Steamer-Fangraphs, Zeile from FantasyPros and ZiPS, ADP from NFBC and FantasyPros, and our depth charts (thanks for members Kevin and Mark for doing the heavy lifting on that front).

Please support the sites contributing to Draft Buddy. I wanted to update in time for the upcoming Easter weekend. Some of you guys are forgoing the family commitments for your fantasy baseball draft, am I right?

With the new projections, our online fantasy baseball rankings and Last Player Picked are also updated, for those looking for a quicker print-and-go cheatsheet for their draft.

Not much else to report in terms of site or feature updates. I’ve received some great feedback (thanks!) and good suggestions for Draft Buddy which I appreciate, but won’t be able to implement for this season. Lets close with some questions and answers from my emails with Draft Buddy members this week which may be useful to many of you.

Q: Can you update the stats in Draft Buddy after your draft, just to check new projected standings with the recent stat updates?

A: You can update. It will update the cheatsheets since they are driven off the projections, but then everything will be updated including projected standings. Hopefully not too much change! The only thing you need to be aware of is to change the two reset options on the action tab to “no” before you update. Otherwise you will lose the keepers and draft results.

kris_bryantQ: I noticed Kris Bryant is listed correctly with a position of 3B in the hitters tab but on the main draft tab shows OF. Why the position change? Would this throw off the projections at all?

A: After reviewing your Draft Buddy file, I see your league has a 10 game position eligibility. Default is 20. Bryant actually qualifies as an OF since he played 19 games at OF last season. So in yours he is listed as both OF and 3B… you can see this on the hitters tab. In terms of popping up as OF on the overall rankings (and this flowing through to the summary tab) it is probably just due to sorting. I’m not sure if maybe he had slightly more value at OF so Draft Buddy put the OF position higher on the list, or simply OF moved higher than his 3B record. You should be able to draft him and then switch him to 3B on the draft report tab to carry him through the rosters tab at 3B. Or, even just switch his position on the overall rankings from OF to 3B.

Q: On version 3.0 after I entered my keepers, on the Action tab I changed the Reset Keepers to “no”. The issue is that when I Compile Cheatsheets, all of those keepers stay on the Keepers tab, but all players are removed from the Draft Report tab. Usually changing that setting to “no” keeps the keepers on the Draft Report tab, but for the latest version they are not. The only way I can Compile Cheatsheets but have my keepers stay on the Draft Report tab is to also update Reset draft order to picks to “no”.

Is this how it is supposed to work? I’m afraid that if I get to my draft and something changes, all of my keepers will be removed from the Draft Report.

A: You should be fine by changing them both to no. I know it is a bit confusing but depending on the keeper type you dont want to reset the draft report tab either and that must be the case for your league. Sorry about the confusion.

Q: I have recently come across Draft Buddy, I think it is amazing. However, as you can guess as a Mac user, my system is giving me some hangups. I am running Excel 2008 for Mac. Is it pointless to try and get it to work with macros? Or is there a way to make it happen?

Also, I did jump over on a friends PC (Excel 2011 or greater) and did get things to work smoothly. The only snag I hit there was inputting Keepers. It would not populate a list when I tried to do the pull down bar. Is there an error there? Or is it once again, a software issue?

A: Unfortunately, you really need the macros to work to get Draft Buddy to do what it is supposed to do. Creating the cheatsheets, updating projections and even something as simple as drafting a player all use macros to function properly. And, there is no way to get the macros to work on Mac Office 2008. Believe me I’ve tried! That is the only version with an issue, because Microsoft took Visual Basic out of that version.

You could probably install a trial version of the newest Office for Mac. I personally don’t like the newest version – I find it exceptionally slow (perhaps because my Mac is a bit dated) – but Draft Buddy should work in it. Install the trial for a month and cancel it, would at least get you through this season.

It will work on all versions of Excel for Windows. I don’t believe the keeper thing you are experiencing is due to an Excel issue. Did you select the position first on the keepers tab? Try that, it is the first, smaller yellow highlighted box under the team name on the keepers tab. Then the player drop-down should work after that.