While the countdown to Opening Day has been on for some time, now we are really getting close! Single digit days until this Sunday when the Chicago Cubs host the St. Louis Cardinals, and then a full slate on Monday for official MLB Opening Day ceremonies.

Yesterday I posted a full fantasy baseball projections, depth chart and ADP update for Draft Buddy.

The projections also flow in to the Last Player Picked Price Guide feature, plus help create new online cheatsheets for those who need a quick print-and-go baseball rankings option.

Latest Player News Feature

The update was meant to be finished Monday, but I realized then there was a small issue with the latest fantasy baseball news pulling into Draft Buddy. Didn’t realize Draft Buddy included the latest news headlines for players? Go to the hitters data or pitchers data tabs, and scroll to the far right to find them. This was a new feature added in version 2.0.

The problem was in some cases the news items were not lined up with the correct player, and in some spots it wasn’t the latest news item for a player. This, I believe, is now correct. A new download is not necessary. Simply update projections (action tab) and it should fix itself.

Keepers and Changing Draft Order

One tech support item I’ve heard about from a couple people in the last week is they have a league with keepers, they enter them fine, but they don’t know the draft order or nomination order for their draft or auction yet. This will not be known, especially in the case of an auction, until arriving for the big event.

It seems Draft Buddy is getting a little confused about what players (the keepers) go with which teams when changing the draft order on the owners tab. If this happens then it impacts the rosters and roto tabs.

I am still investigating this issue, and haven’t come up with a change yet, as it is fairly complex. However, what I would suggest to guarantee this doesn’t happen is don’t change the draft order on the owners tab. Instead, adjust the draft order or nomination order directly on the draft or auction report tabs.

When you get the order for the first round of picks (or nominations), select each team on the draft (or auction) report tab and a drop-down should appear to change it to the proper team. Do this for each spot in the first round. Now, if you have reverse order for second round then do the same for the second round. If you don’t have same order, then you can stop after the first round.

Next, highlight only the team cells for the first round or two that you just changed, hit CTRL-C or command-C to copy, and then select the first cell for team for the very next round, and CTRL-V or command-V to paste. You can copy/paste the order all the way down for the entire draft (or auction) report tab, instead of changing the drop-downs all the way, which should be must faster.

Auction Tips

1. Draft Buddy will assume that the nominating team won the player if the winning bidder column is not selected, so that helps speed inputting picks because no need to select the winning bidder team if the nominating team won the bidding.
    
2. Once you get to the late stages of the auction, and all players are going for $1, then you may just want to fill in $1 and copy/paste it down for a bunch of rows in advance.
    
3. The way auctions go, it can be difficult to keep up tracking the auction in Draft Buddy in the late stages, when you have limited funds and maybe just some specific player targets for your last bench and prospect spots. If so, then stop updating DB at this time, or at least stop updating other teams. I will tend to type in my late auction target list of players in the blank cells down the right hand side of the auction report tab, and just mark those players if they get taken.
    
4. One thing to be aware of, is if a team finishes early – fills their roster – then Draft Buddy will still give that team a place in the nomination order, which could be a bit confusing. Just pick a new line with the proper nominating team. This is one thing I’ve never been able to figure out tracking auctions in Draft Buddy, to adjust that nomination order on the fly after teams are done filling their roster. Some of the limitations of this are due to it being in Excel.

Good luck and have a great draft or auction on your way to a fantasy baseball championship!