Whirlwind of a weekend here! Daughter’s birthday, another family birthday to attend, Family Day holiday (yes that is a thing), ongoing development work for Dynasty League Football and somehow, some way, I was able to pull together a HUGE update for fantasy baseball Draft Buddy.

Draft Buddy is still free to download, use and update to Opening Day. The new features require a new download if you already have an earlier 2019 version. Read on for details.

More Projection Options

ATC and THE BAT projections are now available to import directly into Draft Buddy via the Update Projections feature on the action tab. If you missed it, check the ATC + THE BAT post for details about these projections. Detailed, high quality fantasy baseball projections from Ariel Cohen for ATC and Derek Carty for THE BAT.

You can scrap the ATC and THE BAT Projection Pal files I posted previously. Getting these projections in Draft Buddy is now way simpler. On the action tab, select the projections you want to import, and hit Update Projections. If you want to import both, select one, import and then use the buttons to move that first set from section Site A to Site B or C. Then select another set and import. Update Projections always pulls the data into Site A, the first large yellow section found on the hitters data and pitchers data tabs.

I will update ATC and THE BAT in line with our other scheduled updates. Note these are also available in Last Player Picked dollar value calculator. Again, huge thanks for Ariel and Derek for providing their projections for us!

Draft Buddy’s Baseball Projections

This is where using the name Draft Buddy for both the software and the website can get slightly confusing, but I ask you to please roll with it. Draft Buddy (website) has its own fantasy baseball projections. These are also available via Update Projections, and in fact are the new default projections in Draft Buddy (software).

They are based on Steamer projections (original default) but include our own playing time adjustments. Much of my fantasy baseball analysis this year is focused on playing time after noticing some issues with the Steamer projections pulled direct from Fangraphs.

A combination of reading The Fantasy Baseball Process by Jeff Zimmerman of Fangraphs and Tanner Bell of Smart Fantasy Baseball (highly recommended), noting Rudy Gamble at Razzball does similar with Steamer, and reviewing playing time from various sources, this seemed like a positive course of action to improve my own fantasy baseball knowledge and to improve Draft Buddy.

I plan to post my process for the Draft Buddy projections, which are also in Last Player Picked and the basis for our online cheatsheets. That now makes six projection options for Draft Buddy – Draft Buddy, ATC, Steamer, THE BAT, Zeile and ZiPS. ZiPS is not yet available. Unfortunately (?) there are still only three sections for projections in Draft Buddy but you can choose any combination of the six to fill the three spots.

Fantrax Integration

This one is huge and arguably deserves its own announcement. It is huge if you play fantasy baseball on Fantrax.com, which you really should. Fantrax is an excellent league manager product they’ve built and no wonder their site continues to experience excellent growth.

I am noticing more and more people mention Fantrax as their league manager, and not just for fantasy baseball. They manage leagues and contests for seven different sports. We ran the inaugural Draft Buddy RotoBowl roto fantasy football league on Fantrax last year.

Anyway, thanks to newly available integration with Fantrax, you can now import draft results, keepers and franchise names into Draft Buddy based on your Fantrax leagueId. For those who use the fantasy football Draft Buddy and the MyFantasyLeague.com integration features, you know this is an absolute game changer.

No more selecting each player via drop-down lists for the keepers tab. No more finding and selecting each player off the cheatsheets to add them to the draft report tab. For keepers, copy in the entire roster by team and click a button. For draft results, click a button and everything updates. Its a huge time saver and helps you keep focused on your draft.

I have old videos showcasing the fantasy football Draft Buddy integration with MyFantasyLeague.com for keepers and draft results. The Fantrax integration works very similarly, and I hope to create new fantasy baseball specific videos soon.

New Download Version 3.0

To get all of the newness (a.k.a. awesomeness), we have a new version 3.0 Draft Buddy available for download. You will find the projection changes on the action tab. The Fantrax integration options are on the options tab. All you really need is your Fantrax leagueId and you are set.

If you have any questions then let me know. Enjoy!