Morning folks. It is Tuesday morning, and the start of the week for me instead of the normal Monday start for two reasons. One, I was sick as a dog yesterday, but I’m feeling better this morning thankfully as it seems like it was one of those 24-hour deals. Two, we had a holiday yesterday in Ontario, called Family Day.
Family Day is a made up holiday to celebrate family and to promote time together and family values. After already spending three full days together—the kids had Friday off from school as well—a fourth day of togetherness was more than enough. Hello Tuesday! Let’s get to some baseball chatter.
Or in this case, let’s kick things off specifically with some Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy Baseball chatter. I’ve already received some great feedback on the 2010 Compiler & Draft Buddy, which I’m going to share with you. In the case of that feedback requiring some action by myself, I’ll tell you what I’ve done to remedy it or what I plan to do.
- Exspell sent me a bunch of feedback, not the least of which was, “hey, there are no sound files for Draft Buddy.”
Whoops. Normally I package up the Compiler & Draft Buddy together into a zipped archive, including the sound files for Buddy. This year I decided just to upload unzipped versions so people can just copy the files anywhere on their computer and not have to deal with the confusion of running an install or unzipping the files, but I just plain forgot about the sound files.
As soon as I’m done this blog post I will upload the sound files by themselves in a zip to the Compiler download page. Download to your computer and unzip so a /sounds/ folder (which will include the sound files in it) is in the same folder as you saved Draft Buddy. From there, the sounds should play in Buddy.
Note the sounds still do not work on a Mac. Sorry Mac users.
- frankbama has an auction keeper league. He wants to input the keepers into Draft Buddy in advance, but doesn’t know the auction nomination order until draft night, so how does he handle that?
I believe the best way to handle this is going to be to show you guys how to quickly alter the nomination order in Draft Buddy. It will be a custom (i.e. manual) inputting of the nomination order, or draft order for non-auctions, but instead of using every single drop-down which would take forever, some copy-paste action will get it done in a matter of a couple minutes.
Lobby for the draft order or nomination order as soon as you arrive for your live draft, and you should have plenty of time to input the proper order without having to change the keepers already input in advance before people settle in for the draft.
- Luis has an NL-only league, but noticed that Alex Rodriguez shows up in the “Top ADP Players Available” box on the summary tab in Draft Buddy.
And it isn’t only A-Rod, but as the draft goes on other American League players will show up there. Basically, the ADP does not distinguish between AL-only and NL-only leagues. I’m going to have to fiddle with formulas in each of the Compiler and Buddy so we get a AL-only or NL-only ADP list for those leagues.
If I get anything accomplished with regards to this for this season, then it will probably be on the simple side of things and just blank out the opposite league players, and won’t adjust the expected draft round of each player. Definitely something to work on for the future though.
- Cubbiesyear asked a simple enough question yesterday—where is the download link?
I am still working out the kinks of this new website design and subscription management software. However, not too many people have gotten lost yet so it seems to work pretty well, for the most part.
If you are logged in, then you can click on your username which is in what I call the member bar, located to the right of the logo and just below the navigation links. That will take you to your member page. This shows you your current subscription status (free or free + Compiler & Draft Buddy), plus links to change your password and profile, and a link to the download page for the Compiler, Draft Buddy and Projection Pal.
Eventually what I would like to do is have the website better recognize you are logged in (or not) and if you are and you’ve already purchased, then show the download link and not continue to show the order links.
- Last one. elephantman1237 asked if the Compiler & Draft Buddy will work on a Mac with Microsoft Office 2004.
Absolutely. Any Mac Office version prior to Mac Office 2008 is fine. It is the newest Office, Mac Office 2008, which we have issues with because Microsoft stripped out the Visual Basic support, so those dandy macros which are kind of crucial—Compile Cheatsheets, Update Projections, Setup Draft Buddy, etc., etc.—do not work.
I am currently in discussions with a developer to help fix this problem for future versions of the CC/DB, and I’ll give you progress updates as there are updates to give.
Trash talking sound effects play box found on the summary tab in Draft Buddy.
Top ranked players available based on average draft position info box from the summary tab in Draft Buddy.
To everyone who has already purchased the 2010 Cheatsheet Compiler & Draft Buddy Baseball, thanks a bunch! Your support helps us keep doing what we’re doing, trying to help you win your fantasy league(s), something we are very passionate about.
no more free. version.
Is that a question Frank? No, the Compiler & Draft Buddy Baseball are no longer free as they have been for 5-6 years. After a bunch of enhancements last year, and Rick slaving away on projections the last two years for nothing, I finally figured it was time to sell it and see if people would buy it. If not, I should be spending my time on other projects. I hope we do well enough we can continue to offer the Compiler & Draft Buddy for a long, long time.
I am a little confused by the ranking. I am in a Fantasy Points league and want to use auction dollars for ranking. Is there any way to get the auction $ and number of fantasy points on the cheatsheets. If I say auction it only shows dollars. If I default to non-auction it gives the points and ranks the players in a slightly different order.
My second question is why the ranking order is different for my points league when I rank using auction vs. non-auction. I would expect that the ranking order should be the same regardless of the draft method. In the forum I saw some reference to auction using 5×5 scoring as a default. I want to make sure that my points league is being accounted for correctly.
Also, a question regarding the program setup. What is the strategy implication of using Last Starter vs. Median Draft Pick in setting the player value?
Finally, one last question. The league is using LF, CF, RF, and 2 OF positions. In the ranking, CF get the top 3 OF rankings and only then does Ryan Braun get rated (despite a points projection more than 60 pts higher than the CF). Is this a glitch, is the program indicating that their is a big dropoff in CF, or do I need to edit something. The player records seem to indicate LF, RF, CF separately but I do notice a note on the 1st sheet about adjusting the display.
Thanks for your time. It looks like a great program. I also like the flexibility to add a second set of projections.
Hey Mike. Sorry I couldn’t get to this earlier but I was out all day.
The cheatsheets don’t (can’t right now) show both the fantasy points and dollar values for auction. The reason is because when I designed it, the cheatsheets were pretty wide as it was with all the hitter positions. If I added an extra column it would be even wider.
Also, that extra column isn’t necessary for roto leagues, which are half the league formats. Now, you know what I might be able to do is put the fantasy points where the ADP info is. That might be the quickest/easiest fix. The fantasy points are calculated and on the hitters and pitchers tabs.
Different rankings … shouldn’t really be different or very different. Do you think it is due to rounding since the dollar values are probably rounded to the nearest dollar? I’d have to see it to assess. Do you want to send me your copy of the Compiler?
Last Starter vs. Median Starter … kind of personal preference. It only impacts the overall rankings, not the positional rankings. I think Last Starter makes more sense in most cases, but the options are there to give users more control over tweaking their own rankings as they see fit.
The OF rankings … it would be due to a bigger drop-off in the CF starters causing them to rank above Braun overall, even though he is projected for more points. Again, I’d have to see it to be sure, but I think that is what is going on.
To add a second set of projections – I assume projections off the Internet somewhere – you’ll need to get using Projection Pal. Download it, go over the instructions on the first tab, and let me know if you have any questions.