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Draft Buddy’s 2019 Fantasy Baseball Projections

February 28, 2019 By Draft Buddy Leave a Comment

Fantasy baseball projections

Draft Buddy has its own brand 2019 fantasy baseball projections. This is how we made it happen.

For the first time we have our own Draft Buddy brand fantasy baseball projections.

These projections are available in Draft Buddy draft software and Last Player Picked. They form the basis for our 2019 fantasy baseball rankings.

The projections are based on Steamer with our own playing time adjustments. Steamer projections from Fangraphs include playing time that is inconsistent with other trusted sources. This creates significant outliers in our ranking results.

If we improve the fantasy baseball projections then it ultimately improves the rankings output. That is the motivation for the Draft Buddy projections.

Steamer Base + Playing Time

Steamer is a proven solid resource for projecting hitter and pitcher metrics with its model dating back to 2008. There is little reason for me to pull Steamer apart.

However, the projected playing time is another story. Projected plate appearances for hitters and projected innings for pitchers is something to analyze for reasonableness, risk, etc. And, we can make changes to better reflect our best-educated guesses for the upcoming season.

Instead of “simply” going team-by-team through the depth charts and pegging a playing time projection for every player, I thought a better first exercise is to gather existing playing time data to review. This way, we can see the range of playing times for each player.

Fantasy baseball analysis naturally lends itself to a lot of number crunching. If you note a player you are particularly high or low on is at the opposite end of your expectations when you calculate his value against his projections, it may not be because he is a better or worse ballplayer than you thought. His underlying metrics may be right on par with your expectations. However, his projected playing time may be far different than you envisioned, suppressing or inflating his value.

If we review the range of projected playing times, then we can assess if a particular projection set is unusually high or low in expected playing time for a player. Once we determine our own playing time estimate for a player, we apply those to the Steamer projections to form our own projections set.

Collecting Playing Time Data

I began pulling projected playing time data from various sources. These were from projection sets already included in Draft Buddy: ATC, THE BAT, Steamer and Zeile from FantasyPros.

In addition, I collected playing time data from Razzball, by Rudy Gamble, who does a similar process for his projections, using Steamer and applying his own playing time adjustments. I also added Roster Resource, an excellent go-to for projected MLB depth charts and therefore a natural to estimate playing time.

After compiling this data in my baseball database, I produced playing time comparison reports by team for each of hitters and pitchers. Here is the Minnesota Twins hitters as an example:

+--------------------+------+-----+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+-----+
| Name               | Team | Pos | Roster | batOrd | ATC  | BAT  | Razz | RR   | Steam | Zeile | Count | High | Low |
+--------------------+------+-----+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+-----+
| Jorge Polanco      | MIN  | SS  | 25     | 1      |  617 |  614 |  635 |  656 |   641 |   606 |     6 |  656 | 606 |
| C.J. Cron          | MIN  | 1B  | 25     | 2      |  460 |  497 |  507 |  313 |   529 |   499 |     6 |  529 | 313 |
| Eddie Rosario      | MIN  | LF  | 25     | 3      |  623 |  635 |  654 |  604 |   622 |   599 |     6 |  654 | 599 |
| Nelson Cruz        | MIN  | DH  | 25     | 4      |  557 |  621 |  603 |  610 |   606 |   593 |     6 |  621 | 557 |
| Max Kepler         | MIN  | RF  | 25     | 5      |  600 |  607 |  579 |  592 |   594 |   569 |     6 |  607 | 569 |
| Jonathan Schoop    | MIN  | 2B  | 25     | 6      |  561 |  552 |  594 |  583 |   525 |   547 |     6 |  594 | 525 |
| Miguel Sano        | MIN  | 3B  | 25     | 7      |  506 |  586 |  573 |  565 |   545 |   544 |     6 |  586 | 506 |
| Jason Castro       | MIN  | C   | 25     | 8      |  307 |  410 |  311 |  367 |   339 |   296 |     6 |  410 | 296 |
| Byron Buxton       | MIN  | CF  | 25     | 9      |  479 |  517 |  488 |  512 |   484 |   504 |     6 |  517 | 479 |
| Ehire Adrianza     | MIN  | 2B  | 25     |        |  229 |  145 |  109 |   64 |   177 |   225 |     6 |  229 |  64 |
| Marwin Gonzalez    | MIN  | OF  | 25     |        |  511 |  595 |  516 |  515 |   542 |   523 |     6 |  595 | 511 |
| Tyler Austin       | MIN  | 1B  | 25     |        |  219 |  172 |  181 |  156 |   175 |   245 |     6 |  245 | 156 |
| Mitch Garver       | MIN  | C   | 25     |        |  313 |  171 |  267 |  176 |   208 |   279 |     6 |  313 | 171 |
| LaMonte Wade       | MIN  | LF  | 40     |        | NULL |    7 |   50 | NULL |     7 |  NULL |     3 |   50 |   7 |
| Luis Arraez        | MIN  | 2B  | 40     |        | NULL |    7 |   50 | NULL |     7 |  NULL |     3 |   50 |   7 |
| Lucas Duda         | MIN  | 1B  | 40     |        |  316 | NULL |  111 |    0 |  NULL |   312 |     4 |  316 |   0 |
| Michael Reed       | MIN  | RF  | 40     |        |   50 |   90 |   48 | NULL |    60 |   173 |     5 |  173 |  48 |
| Willians Astudillo | MIN  | C   | 40     |        |  293 |  125 |  276 |   97 |   186 |   272 |     6 |  293 |  97 |
| Ronald Torreyes    | MIN  | 2B  | 40     |        |   98 |  138 |  110 |    0 |   125 |   178 |     6 |  178 |   0 |
| Jake Cave          | MIN  | CF  | 40     |        |  289 |  193 |  179 |  193 |   198 |   272 |     6 |  289 | 179 |
| Zack Granite       | MIN  | CF  | 40     |        | NULL |   28 |   50 | NULL |    27 |    36 |     4 |   50 |  27 |
| Nick Gordon        | MIN  | SS  | 40     |        |   22 |   34 |   50 | NULL |    33 |    63 |     5 |   63 |  22 |
| Tomas Telis        | MIN  | C   | Minors |        | NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL |  NULL |    60 |     1 |   60 |  60 |
| Adam Rosales       | MIN  | 2B  | Minors |        |   20 | NULL |   82 |    0 |  NULL |   179 |     4 |  179 |   0 |
+--------------------+------+-----+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+-----+
24 rows in set (0.01 sec)

There are some pretty big differences across our six data sets. Roster Resource is not on board with regular at-bats for C.J. Cron at only 313 as of late last week. This is updated to 354, but still a far cry from the 460 and up from other sources.

Nelson Cruz has a 64 PA difference, Jonathan Schoop almost 70 and Marwin Gonzalez over 80. Prospects are even tougher to peg because of the uncertainty when they will get the call up to the Majors.

Here are the Philadelphia Phillies pitchers:

+----------------------+------+-----+--------+---------+----------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+-----+
| Name                 | Team | Pos | Roster | Role    | Rotation | ATC  | BAT  | Razz | RR   | Steam | Zeile | Count | High | Low |
+----------------------+------+-----+--------+---------+----------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+-----+
| Aaron Nola           | PHI  | SP  | 25     | SP      | 1        |  197 |  194 |  197 |  213 |   194 |   198 |     6 |  213 | 194 |
| Jake Arrieta         | PHI  | SP  | 25     | SP      | 2        |  173 |  181 |  173 |  172 |   181 |   170 |     6 |  181 | 170 |
| Nick Pivetta         | PHI  | SP  | 25     | SP      | 3        |  162 |  169 |  149 |  143 |   160 |   155 |     6 |  169 | 143 |
| Vince Velasquez      | PHI  | SP  | 25     | SP      | 4        |  134 |  150 |  130 |  140 |   137 |   124 |     6 |  150 | 124 |
| Zach Eflin           | PHI  | SP  | 25     | SP      | 5        |  144 |  145 |  137 |  153 |   145 |   139 |     6 |  153 | 137 |
| David Robertson      | PHI  | RP  | 25     | CL      |          |   68 |   65 |   65 |   67 |    65 |    66 |     6 |   68 |  65 |
| Seranthony Dominguez | PHI  | RP  | 25     | SU      | 1        |   67 |   65 |   71 |   70 |    65 |    68 |     6 |   71 |  65 |
| Tommy Hunter         | PHI  | RP  | 25     | SU      | 2        |   61 |   55 |   55 |   55 |    55 |    61 |     6 |   61 |  55 |
| Juan Nicasio         | PHI  | RP  | 25     | Bullpen |          |   53 |   40 |   22 |   52 |    25 |    48 |     6 |   53 |  22 |
| Adam Morgan          | PHI  | RP  | 25     | Bullpen |          |   46 |   45 |   32 |   52 |    45 |    47 |     6 |   52 |  32 |
| Jose Alvarez         | PHI  | RP  | 25     | Bullpen |          |   49 |   40 |   25 |   45 |    30 |    45 |     6 |   49 |  25 |
| Hector Neris         | PHI  | RP  | 25     | Bullpen |          |   57 |   40 |   44 |   30 |    40 |    56 |     6 |   57 |  30 |
| Pat Neshek           | PHI  | RP  | 25     | Bullpen |          |   54 |   55 |   44 |   51 |    55 |    49 |     6 |   55 |  44 |
| Adonis Medina        | PHI  | SP  | 40     | SP      |          | NULL | NULL |    8 | NULL |     9 |  NULL |     2 |    9 |   8 |
| Jerad Eickhoff       | PHI  | SP  | 40     | SP      |          |   54 |    9 |    8 |   88 |     9 |    57 |     6 |   88 |   8 |
| Ranger Suarez        | PHI  | SP  | 40     | SP      |          | NULL | NULL |    7 | NULL |     9 |    16 |     3 |   16 |   7 |
| Drew Anderson        | PHI  | SP  | 40     | SP      |          | NULL |   19 |   26 | NULL |    19 |    16 |     4 |   26 |  16 |
| Enyel De Los Santos  | PHI  | SP  | 40     | SP      |          |   51 |   74 |   69 |   60 |    74 |    38 |     6 |   74 |  38 |
| Edubray Ramos        | PHI  | RP  | 40     | Bullpen |          |   31 |   20 |   19 | NULL |    10 |    34 |     5 |   34 |  10 |
| James Pazos          | PHI  | RP  | 40     | Bullpen |          |   37 |   40 |   29 | NULL |    35 |    46 |     5 |   46 |  29 |
| Victor Arano         | PHI  | RP  | 40     | Bullpen |          |   39 | NULL |   24 | NULL |    20 |    39 |     4 |   39 |  20 |
| Yacksel Rios         | PHI  | RP  | 40     | Bullpen |          |    7 |   20 |   24 | NULL |    15 |    21 |     5 |   24 |   7 |
| Austin Davis         | PHI  | RP  | 40     | Bullpen |          |   10 | NULL |   27 | NULL |    10 |    34 |     4 |   34 |  10 |
| Edgar Garcia         | PHI  | RP  | 40     | Bullpen |          | NULL | NULL |   24 | NULL |    10 |  NULL |     2 |   24 |  10 |
+----------------------+------+-----+--------+---------+----------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+------+-----+
24 rows in set (0.02 sec)

Pitcher changes are going to be very injury driven, so I expect to see less variation in projected innings than hitters’ plate appearances. I input the Roster Resource projections manually using a cut off of 75 PA and 30 IP, so there are additional players projected by RR but those numbers are not captured.

Draft Buddy Playing Time

Initial playing time values for the Draft Buddy projections are not a straight average of the available data. To me, that doesn’t make a lot of sense, in part because ATC and Zeile are averages themselves. Why take an average of an average?

Buddy numbers are unlikely to fall outside the range from the six sources. To start, they are a weighted average of some of the sets that I consider the most trusted. Going forward my plan is to manually review and adjust playing time by team. To help with this, individual team reports allow for news, research and comments about changes to playing time.

To produce the projections, playing time is applied to Steamer. The ratios such as batting average, ERA and WHIP should be the same (or close, due to rounding) between Steamer and Draft Buddy.

Jonathan Schoop has 525 PA per Steamer, but Draft Buddy playing time bumped him to 579. The image below from Schoop’s player page indicate AVG, OBP and SLG ratios are all the same.

Jonathan Schoop's player page

The Curious Case of Chris Sale

Steamer loves Chris Sale. I mean, loves him. This is a good example of a projection system unable to adequately account for different risk levels between players. Running Steamer through Last Player Picked with 15-team NFBC settings, Sale values at $49.

Chris Sale Last Player Picked

Maybe the pitchers as a group are ranked too high relative to hitters by LPP, but regardless of that consideration, Sale is way ahead of Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom and every other hurler. At issue is his projected ERA of 2.76 (2.94 for deGrom) and projected WHIP of 0.97 (1.03 for Scherzer). The differences really increase the value of Sale. Yet, few people would draft Sale ahead of Scherzer because of concerns over Sale’s relative probability of staying healthy.

Even reducing Sale’s projected IP, he still ranks very high thanks to the considerably lower ERA and WHIP projections. Instead of SP1, a more appropriate ranking for Sale is Top 4-5 among starting pitchers.

To accomplish that, I manually (subjectively) adjusted his dollar value and ranking. This is something that will happen with more players going forward, but since he is such a significant player I felt an early adjustment is warranted for him.

Missing In Action Players

One problem using the Steamer projections as a base is, what if they don’t project a certain player who we otherwise have projected playing time? This is not very common but it is worth noting the players this applied to. They are shown in the following two tables.

+-------+-----------------+------+-----+--------+-----------+-------+
| id    | Name            | Team | Pos | Roster | Positions | _PA   |
+-------+-----------------+------+-----+--------+-----------+-------+
|  6687 | Matt Joyce      | CLE  | RF  | Minors | OF        | 133.0 |
| 17584 | Mark Reynolds   | COL  | 1B  | 25     | 1B        | 116.0 |
| 18038 | Hunter Pence    | TEX  | CF  | Minors | OF        | 112.0 |
| 18599 | Drew Butera     | PHI  | C   | Minors | C         |  68.0 |
| 18961 | Adam Rosales    | MIN  | 2B  | Minors | 2B        |  51.0 |
| 19658 | Lucas Duda      | MIN  | 1B  | 25     | 1B        | 221.0 |
| 19658 | Lucas Duda      | MIN  | 1B  | 25     | DH        | 221.0 |
| 20351 | Brandon Guyer   | CWS  | RF  | 25     | OF        | 125.0 |
| 20573 | Isaac Galloway  | MIA  | CF  | Minors | OF        | 142.0 |
| 20911 | Ryan Flaherty   | CLE  | 3B  | Minors | 3B        |  69.0 |
| 21286 | Bryan Holaday   | MIA  | C   | Minors | C         |  71.0 |
| 22993 | John Andreoli   | SF   | CF  | Minors | OF        |  67.0 |
| 23731 | Jack Reinheimer | BAL  | SS  | 40     | SS        |  99.0 |
| 25060 | Charlie Tilson  | CWS  | LF  | FA     | OF        |  67.0 |
| 26247 | Daz Cameron     | DET  | CF  | Minors | OF        |  73.0 |
| 26249 | Mike Gerber     | SF   | CF  | Minors | OF        |  98.0 |
| 26284 | Bo Bichette     | TOR  | SS  | Minors | SS        | 101.0 |
| 26294 | Brendan Rodgers | COL  | SS  | Minors | SS        | 154.0 |
+-------+-----------------+------+-----+--------+-----------+-------+

+-------+----------------+------+-----+--------+-----------+--------+
| id    | Name           | Team | Pos | Roster | Positions | _IP    |
+-------+----------------+------+-----+--------+-----------+--------+
| 10758 | Jason Hammel   | TEX  | RP  | Minors | RP        |  63.00 |
| 10758 | Jason Hammel   | TEX  | RP  | Minors | SP        |  63.00 |
| 16352 | Homer Bailey   | KC   | SP  | Minors | SP        |  20.00 |
| 20478 | Tim Collins    | MIN  | RP  | Minors | RP        |  15.00 |
| 21787 | Oliver Drake   | TB   | RP  | Minors | RP        |  27.00 |
| 22380 | Danny Barnes   | TOR  | RP  | Minors | RP        |  33.00 |
| 22565 | Brandon Maurer | PIT  | RP  | Minors | RP        |  23.00 |
| 23058 | A.J. Cole      | CLE  | RP  | Minors | RP        |  28.00 |
| 23176 | Merrill Kelly  | ARI  | SP  | 25     | SP        | 138.00 |
| 23555 | Derek Law      | SF   | RP  | Minors | RP        |  36.00 |
| 26019 | Jared Miller   | ARI  | RP  | Minors | RP        |  16.00 |
+-------+----------------+------+-----+--------+-----------+--------+

The only player I truly feel should be included in our projections but is not at this time is Merrill Kelly. He will either show up in Steamer next time, or I will manually add him to our projections.

Final Thoughts

As a first attempt at creating our own projections, I am pretty happy with the results. Not that we want to ultimately create a rankings list that is the same as Average Draft Position, but there are fewer outliers as a result of odd playing time estimates. We have a good base to build on.

This process increased my already healthy respect for the work prognosticators put in to help us value players for fantasy sports. It is a lot of numbers and a lot of time, and a potentially never-ending saga making adjustments, trying different approaches, fine-tuning things, etc. Props to Ariel Cohen, Derek Carty, Jared Cross (and crew), Rudy Gamble, Jason Martinez and FantasyPros for their contributions to fantasy baseball that help this project.

It also drives home for me how pure number-generated rankings are not perfect (i.e. Chris Sale). The numbers help immensely, and then we also need to look beyond the numbers as a sanity check. A combination of quantitative analysis and qualitative risk-reward decisions is the best way to consider all angles and to ultimately draft the best fantasy baseball team possible.

Filed Under: Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Draft Buddy

Announcing Draft Buddy 3.0 – More Projection Options + Fantrax Integration

February 19, 2019 By Draft Buddy Leave a Comment

Fantrax Fantasy Baseball Draft Board

This is the draft board for a draft I am currently participating in at Fantrax. Grabbing the leagueId from the URL unlocks an awesome new feature in fantasy baseball Draft Buddy version 3.0, now available for download.

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.

Fantrax leagueId

Get the Fantrax leagueId from the URL of any page for your Fantrax fantasy baseball league.

Draft Buddy Fantrax Integration

Input the Fantrax leagueId in the Fantrax Integration box on the options tab in Draft Buddy.

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!

Filed Under: Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Draft Buddy

ATC and THE BAT Projections Available for Draft Buddy

February 7, 2019 By Draft Buddy 2 Comments

Washington Nationals

High fives all around. Two new sets of 2019 fantasy baseball projections are now available for Draft Buddy – ATC by Ariel Cohen and THE BAT by Derek Carty.

Everyone likes more choice, am I right? With respect to that, I am pleased to announce we have two new sets of fantasy baseball projections for Draft Buddy. Draft Buddy is our custom rankings and draft tracker tool, and is free to download (free membership required). The projections are ATC by Ariel Cohen and THE BAT by Derek Carty.

Both sets of projections are available on FanGraphs, so I reached out to each of Ariel and Derek to ask if we could use them in Draft Buddy for our members. Each guy said, “for sure”. Awesome! Please give them a follow and thank you via Twitter @ATCNY and @DerekCarty.

ATC

ATC stands for Average Total Cost and it is an average of various baseball projections, but not a straight average, which is what I believe Zeile from FantasyPros is (already included in Draft Buddy). Ariel is an actuary so he is no stranger to crunching numbers and calculating probabilities. ATC weights particular projections from each system more or less based on their historical accuracy. For example, lets say Steamer has historically been excellent projecting stolen bases. ATC will then more heavily weight stolen base projections from Steamer in the average.

In Ariel’s article on RotoGraphs from 2017, introducing ATC, he compares his methodology to Nate Silver’s presidential election forecasting. I asked Ariel specifically about playing time, as this is an area of fantasy baseball forecasting I am paying more attention to lately. He said the playing time is derived in a similar fashion – a weighted average of playing time from other projections, based on historical accuracy.

Read more from Ariel at RotoGraphs, here and here.

THE BAT

Celebrating its second year at FanGraphs, THE BAT for season long is an extension of Derek’s original work, THE BAT created to project single game outcomes for daily fantasy sports. That is kind of like when I created Draft Buddy way back when for fantasy football, and then a bunch of you asked for a fantasy baseball version, and here we are today.

Derek is a sabermetrics guy, and as such, integrated many variables into his model. Whereas ATC is more like Zeile, THE BAT is more like (big picture) Steamer and ZiPS. Read his RotoGraphs article about THE BAT for more detail. I found this section particularly interesting:

Player stats are backwards-adjusted to account for all of the individual circumstances they’ve faced in the past in order to gain a truer estimate of a player’s underlying talent level. On the season-level, that underlying talent is then forward-adjusted based on the circumstances the player will face for the remainder of the season.

Playing time for THE BAT is similar to the Depth Chart projections at FanGraphs – based on projected lineup and staff input – plus some adjustments. Free agents are not currently included but should be soon.

If you are interested in THE BAT in-season, especially useful for DFS players, it is available at RotoGrinders.

Projection Pal

Now you are wondering how to get ATC and/or THE BAT into Draft Buddy. It is easy. Not as easy as selecting it off a drop-down list and clicking Update Projections in Draft Buddy, but the next best thing.

Did I mention Projection Pal is ready for the 2019 season? I did in last week’s baseball members newsletter, but otherwise this might be the first time. You can download Pal and use it to import projections to Draft Buddy.

Projection Pal is a necessary tool for importing projections to make sure the data you are trying to import matches the correct players in Draft Buddy. Otherwise, the prior year stats and other projections will be misaligned.

With respect to ATC and THE BAT specifically, I uploaded Projection Pal files that already include each of these sets of projections. Links to each are on the Draft Buddy download page. To get either set in Draft Buddy follow these steps:

  1. Download the Projection Pal file for ATC or THE BAT
  2. Open the Pal file, and open your copy of Draft Buddy
  3. Make sure the filename for your copy of Draft Buddy matches the filename on the setup tab in Pal (it should by default)
  4. Go to the hitters Raw tab and click the Copy to Draft Buddy button
  5. Go to the pitchers Raw tab and click the Copy to Draft Buddy button

After you click the Copy to Draft Buddy button for each of hitters and pitchers, there should be a short wait before it copies over the projections and takes you to Draft Buddy where you can review the imported projections. Then to use these projections in your cheatsheets, go to the options tab, adjust the default allocation key, and hit Compile Cheatsheets (action tab).

Projection Updates

ATC and THE BAT projections were pulled last Thursday, January 31st, from FanGraphs. I won’t necessarily be able to follow the same update schedule for ATC and THE BAT as the other projections, but it is pretty easy to update yourself. Download the latest CSV from FanGraphs, copy the data over the existing data in Projection Pal, check your row numbers and column headings, and click Copy to Draft Buddy, again. Or give me a nudge and I will see what I can do.

Thanks Ariel and Derek!

Filed Under: Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Draft Buddy

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