The tech support questions keep rolling in for the fantasy baseball version of Draft Buddy as we enter the final weekends before Major League Baseball’s regular season kicks off, and fantasy drafts are running rampant.

Q: I’m having a little trouble with the software. When I first download the program and review the projections and rankings, the first four or five players are hitters (which I agree with). Once I enter in my league settings and Compile Cheatsheets, the first five or six overall ranked players are pitchers.

My league settings are…

24 active players, 5 bench for total of 29 rounds
14 hitters (C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, MI, CI, OF, OF, OF, OF, DH, DH, DH)
10 Pitchers (6 SP, 3 RP, 1 P)
3 keepers, cost a draft pick
Roto, mixed League
5 x 5 (Runs, BA, SB, HR, RBI, WHIP, ERA, W, S, K)

I leave all of the other settings as-is.

I’m trying to figure out why the rankings are changing so dramatically after I compile. I would expect Mike Trout to be the #1 ranked player on everyone’s draft board, followed by Stanton, Abreu, Cabrera in some order. After I compile the first three players are Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale and Max Scherzer.

Any insight would be great, really looking forward to using the software, you do a great job. ~ mgfarb

A: Thanks Matt! How many teams? Also I assume DH is really UT (any hitter) and not a true DH. Make sure you have it set to UT. Here are some thoughts from what you’ve sent me:

I’m surprised pitchers would be that high too. I’d still strongly prefer hitters first, but in terms of results, 6 starting pitchers is quite a bit relative to the other positions. I think due to position scarcity it might be pushing those pitchers up thinking you’ve got a lot of positions to fill.

Remember the results are pure numbers based. If we hit projections exactly, you probably are better off with pitchers. But, since they are more risky than hitters, and more unexpected pitchers emerge, that is why hitters get drafted higher.

That is why the hitters/pitchers cap allocation is split the way it is by default. What you could do is reduce the cap allocation to pitchers (increase hitters) even more, and that should shuffle more dollars to hitters overall, to get the cheatsheets more to your liking.

Follow-up reply: Thanks for the response, I changed the DH to UT and the projections and rankings look good now. Your point about position scaracity makes sense too. Appreciate the response and look forward to using the software.