baseball projections Archives

Announcing Draft Buddy 3.0 – More Projection Options + Fantrax Integration

February 19, 2019 By Draft Buddy Leave a Comment

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.

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

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!

Projections, Depth Charts and ADP Update for Draft Buddy and LPP

February 25, 2016 By Draft Buddy Leave a Comment

Fantasy baseball season is in full swing now, and we have our first projections, depth charts and ADP update now available.

This data feeds into Draft Buddy custom cheatsheet and draft tracker, Last Player Picked dollar value calculator and our other online features (team-by-team projections, player comparison tool).

To update Draft Buddy, go to the action tab and click Update Projections. If you want to update both sets of projections – Steamer-Fangraphs and Zeile from FantasyPros, try this:

5. action tab

Select one of the sources with the available drop-down. Click the Update Projections button.
After the update finishes, click the Move Site A to Site B button. This will shift the newly updated projections from the first yellow highlighted section on each of hitters data and pitchers data tabs (Site A) to the second yellow highlighted section (Site B).
Now select the other projections source with the drop-down. Click the Update Projections button.

Note the ZiPS projections we had last season are not yet available.

If you don’t already have Draft Buddy, then make sure to login plus renew your free subscription, or register a new account, and download. The download file includes the latest projections, which you can always test by clicking the Check for Update button on the action tab.

There was one small issue noticed with version 1.0 of Draft Buddy. It seems some of the relief pitchers in our depth chart were in the database (and therefore Draft Buddy) as position “P” instead of “RP”, and therefore Draft Buddy did not include them in the cheatsheets. Updating the projections fixes this, so no need to download again. Thanks to Mark for bringing that to my attention.

That it is for this update, about the update! Good to hear from some of you via Twitter, Facebook and email. Thanks for supporting Draft Buddy!

Zeile from FantasyPros 2016 Fantasy Baseball Projections

February 11, 2016 By Draft Buddy Leave a Comment

We announced adding the Steamer-Fangraphs projections to the website earlier this week, updating numerous features including Last Player Picked. Today we added another set of projections, the Zeile consensus expert projections from FantasyPros.

Going by memory and for what it is worth, these projections are named after former St. Louis Cardinals third baseman Todd Zeile. Technically former Card and then 10 different teams in the final 10 of his 16 MLB seasons. We have a Shane Zeile in our database, apparently nephew of Todd per Wikipedia.

With the addition of the Zeile projections, not only do you have another option for LPP, but our player comparison tool has a little more to, well, compare. Say you wanted to look at Bryce Harper vs. Mike Trout for the upcoming season.

Thanks to Dave Kim over at FantasyPros for letting us use the Zeile projections and Average Draft Position data that will find its way into Draft Buddy.