I’ve been teasing this on Twitter since late last week, so I’m happy to finally officially announce the release of Draft Buddy 2.0 for fantasy baseball.
The big change here is pretty obvious if you were already using 1.0, or used our fantasy baseball software in the past. Instead of separate files for the Cheatsheet Compiler (custom rankings, cheatsheets) and Draft Buddy (draft tracker extraordinaire), they are now combined into a single file. For simplicity it is named, Draft Buddy!
Download Draft Buddy and try it out. It is still free to download and update. Don’t have access? Simply register a new member account or login and renew your old (free) subscription.
You’ll notice 2.0 looks the same overall with similar styling and most features work the same way, but it is a lot more streamlined than the past, and simply much easier to use as one file. It will take me some time to update the instructions, videos (ugh), etc. available to help people understand how to use it, but I hope it is fairly self-explanatory the way it is designed. Here are some quick guidelines:
- Start by filling in the yellow highlighted option boxes on the green tabs numbered 1 to 5. Once you’ve done this, go to the “5. action” tab and hit Compile Cheatsheets to update the cheatsheets on the hitters, pitchers and overall tab based on the current settings.
- There is now an older Excel (.xls) version and a newer Excel (.xlsm) version. If you aren’t sure which you have, review the two images in our instructions for how Excel looks to tell the difference. If you have Excel since Office 2007, use the newer Draft Buddy. It is a smaller file. If you are saving the newer version, make sure to save it as a macro-enabled workbook, which is what the .xlsm file extension stands for.
- If you need to change your rules or scoring settings, or change the projections source you are using, plus other options, then do so, and hit Compile Cheatsheets again to update the cheatsheets.
- When you are on the action tab and about to hit Compile Cheatsheets, note the two options above the button for resetting keepers, and resetting draft picks. For a brand new league, set both to yes. If you haven’t input any keepers (or don’t use them), or draft picks, or pick trades, or a custom draft order, keep it as yes. If you start adding those things to Draft Buddy and want to update your cheatsheets, make sure to switch these options to no prior to hitting Compile Cheatsheets.
- There is no more feature to save different league profiles, because it simply wouldn’t be possible to save all of the information for multiple leagues in one file. However, save Draft Buddy as a different filename for each league you are in. The only downside on this is you have to update projections in each file as needed.
- The cheatsheets are split between three tabs (which was always the case with Draft Buddy, not the Cheatsheet Compiler), but I’ve also removed the side-by-side cheatsheet format to keep things simple and more compact. The result of this is there is only one way players are now marked as drafted on the cheatsheets, which is the grey out option.
- There are fewer options to highlight different positions on the overall and ADP tabs, because of the limitation of conditional formatting in older versions of Excel. Eventually I will add more options for the newer Excel version.
That should get you started at the very least. If anyone notices any issues with Draft Buddy, then please post a comment or hit me up on Twitter or Facebook. There are so many different possible league settings it is a lot to test so it is possible I missed something. Hope you enjoy the new Draft Buddy 2.0!
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Thanks for combining these two, it really makes it easier!
I am getting an error however, on the Draft Report tab. When I switch Select Players from alphabetical to ranking I get the following message: “Cannot run the macro ‘draft_buddy_baseball_2014_2.0.xlsm!recalculate’. The macro may not be available in this workbook or all macros may be disabled.”
I enabled macros and resaved the file as a xlsm so I’m pretty sure that the macro is missing or mislabeled.
Thanks again!
I’m also getting an error when I make an entry in the draft report, for example Mike Trout in 1.01.
Run-time error ‘1004’:
Method ‘Range’ of object ‘_Worksheet’ failed
I can hit End and continue, but it seems to happen for every entry.
Mike,
Draft Buddy 2.0 is a great concept, but I’m running into error messages. I’m using the xlsm version on a Mac (OS X 10.8.5), and Draft Buddy 1.0 was working well on this machine (only the timer broke, which I didn’t care about.)
Upon opening 2.0, I was asked to Enable Macros (yes) just like 1.0, but then I was asked to Update or Edit Links to other spreadsheets, which wanted to link me to Worksheet A of a Draft Buddy source file. However, and not sure if this is related, the Compile Cheatsheets function breaks: MS Visual Basic gives Run-time error ‘1004’ “Method ‘PasteSpecial’ of Object ‘Range’ failed” – clicking End leads me to an unhidden Sheet1.
Guys, thanks for the feedback. There is so much stuff in here it is very hard to test all scenarios in all versions of Excel. Someone told me about an issue yesterday that was only happening on his Mac, but Windows was okay. That is probably the last issue for you, WilliamWallace.
Even the links that it asks to update, I can’t even do a search to track them down. Thought I had them all. I definitely removed the “recalculate” macro but didn’t find it was still triggered somewhere.
Once I get the kids off to school and check in to my home office for the day then I’ll work through these issues.
Thanks for the fixes. It seems to work like a charm, so far. Great work!
Thanks for confirming WW. I tweeted it and meant to post back here, but I uploaded new 2.0 files which I believe fix each of the above noted items. I want to wait a little bit and see if anything else pops up before changing the version to 2.1. Currently I am working through an issue with Projection Pal trying to get that figured out.
I believe Projection Pal is fixed up now too. I uploaded a new copy and, again, didn’t change version number yet.
I also uploaded a copy of Projection Pal with the composite projections from Cory at the MLB Fantasy 411 Blog. Login to the download page and then use this link:
http://www.draftbuddy.com/download/bb/baseball_projection_pal_2014_composite.xls
The errors I reported seem to be gone. Thanks for the quick fix.
Slight tweak to the link to the composite projections worked for me like this:
http://www.draftbuddy.com/download/bb/baseball_projection_pal_2014_composite.xls
Projection Pal threw an error when I tried to compile to Draft Buddy. Debug highlighted the 4th instance of:
Sheets(POS & ” Clean”).Select
as the offending row in Module 1.
Hope that helps.
Why do I always forget the year? Bah. Fixed my link. Thanks!
On the Pal issue, are you on a Mac, WW? Can’t remember if you mentioned this before. Definitely didn’t notice this on Windows earlier. Now I see it on my Mac, but strangely enough if I remove the screen updating then it worked. Want to make sure we are each experiencing the same issue.
If you want to try it, after you hit Debug, go to the top of that code section and change the line:
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
to:
‘ Application.ScreenUpdating = False
This comments it out. You might have to hit Stop in the debugger, the button with the square. Then re-run Copy to Buddy.
Also, does your copy of Pal have the drop-down Buddy filename options on the setup tab? That would indicate you have the latest version I uploaded yesterday.
Yes, it is the new one with the dropdown. And I am using a Mac. But oops, I didn’t rename my Projection Pal sheet with the .xlsm extension. Now it works great. Thanks!
Love the new single file approach. One item that I noticed is that the singles column in the projection pal clean sheet is returning the data as percentages.
Thanks pr. That is purely a formatting thing that slipped through the cracks. We must be close to a very stable version. I’m going to do a projections update and release 2.1 versions tomorrow to make all of these fixes official-official.
The keepers tab doesn’t respond to the draft order…also no way to not do a snake draft.
Also owners tab to select yourself you have to be in the correct place from top to bottom only on certain tabs summary at the top and draft report tabs
Nevermind about the straight or serpentine option….I found that. But I think the other issues are real. I had to physically put the teams in order from top to bottom instead of using the drop down draft order. I love this thing by the way…..I was new last year and used it at all my drafts and think the single file is much more friendly!!
Glad you found the straight/serpentine option. I think you’re right, easier to just get the teams in the right order 1 to whatever the first time, although that drop-down is supposed to work sorting them out for at least the draft report tab. It won’t be able to reorder them for the keepers tab, or summary tab. I’ll have to look into that. Now you bring it up, I think I do it a little differently in the football version so there must be a reason.
Thanks! I really like the single file a lot better too.
This is a great resource, thanks! Is there a way to add fewest strikeouts to the hitting category? And for pitchers, Quality Starts and K/BB ratio?
Thanks!
Thanks mb! I don’t have a way to add strikeouts for hitters, for roto leagues. Anything where less is better I don’t have a way to do it at the moment. Mind you, less is better for ERA and WHIP for pitchers, but I haven’t been able to apply it to other categories. It would be very difficult to alter Draft Buddy from its current form for different categories. The issue with QS is that we don’t have projections for them. Although, if you used QS instead of Wins, and had projections, then you could put QS over top of the Wins projections already in Buddy and then you’d be all set there. K/BB is trickier, since it is a ratio. You can’t just slot it in over top of another category, so I think that one is a no-go, too. I’ll have to see about adding more stat categories, or making the valuation system more flexible, for next year.
Great stuff. Love the fact that you’ve made the FanGraphs (FG) depth charts available for download. (I wish I had that level of coding skill). For folks who use FG player IDs (like me) do you have a crosswalk between DraftBuddy and FG player IDs that you could make available? I would donate money for that. Thanks and keep up the good work!
Hi Aaron. Thanks! Do you mean the depth charts in Draft Buddy? Those aren’t actually from FanGraphs, but instead from our own updates for our depth charts.
You know what? I guess I didn’t know for certain I had the FanGraphs IDs, but I suppose I do. I originally got them last year when I got the Steamer projections, but I got those direct from Steamer Projections Blog. So, I do have them in my database – Draft Buddy playerIds, and FanGraphs playerIds. What would you use them for? Are you going to change those DB.com links I have in Draft Buddy to switch to FanGraphs links? ;)