2017 Fantasy Baseball Cheatsheets (Roto or Points Leagues)

If you’re a fan of this site, you may have noticed that my fantasy baseball cheatsheets are coming out a bit later than usual this year. It’s for good reason. I completely overhauled the cheatsheets to make them functional on Macs (for Excel 2011 and later, that is) in addition to Windows computers. That wasn’t possible in the past. While doing these overhauls, I ended up reworking some of the functionality of the cheatsheets themselves and introduced new features as well.

Let’s take a dive into what these 2017 version of my cheatsheets offer you.

What Makes These Cheatsheets Special?

They’re free and they’re awesome! More specifically, these spreadsheets are designed to accommodate almost any variation of fantasy baseball leagues that you can think up. Roto-league owners can choose from a long list of potential stat categories and point-league owners can input their scoring system right in the sheet. Once you get everything set up, the cheatsheet allows you to choose which projections you want to use and then generates custom rankings and values that are unique to your specific league. There are a lot of things that can affect player value, including number of teams and roster size, and all of that is taken into account in these valuations in the sheet.

In addition to giving you unique league values, you can track your draft as it occurs to see your strengths and weaknesses and to see your league rosters and best available players.

And, if you like options, you get tons of ’em within these spreadsheets. You can choose from a variety of rankings, projection options and ADP or auction value options as well. Your cheatsheets will be catered to whatever options you do choose.

What’s Changed From Past Years?

A lot. The main things to note for draft leagues are:

  • The cheatsheet tracks draft order now. As you enter picks, it automatically will fill in who thinks has the next pick based on your settings. This allows for there to be a draft history in a tab now. This also means you can trade draft picks within there.
  • Since the cheatsheet tracks draft picks and order, you can also now enter keepers in separately so they don’t affect draft order.
  • During the draft, instead of scrolling around, you can enter all picks at the top of the page now by choosing the teams and players drafted and clicking Make Pick. Or, you can enter picks into the Draft Log directly if you wanted. You’ve got a few options.

For auction leagues, the main difference being that you can enter your auction picks from the top of the page. You’ll also have an auction history in a tab too that you can edit, if needed. For auction leagues, I’ve also spent some time working with the formulas surrounding player values so they should be improved from previous years.

What Data Am I Pulling In?

There’s a ton of data in here and most of it isn’t mine. So I owe a big thanks to all of these sources. But, here’s what is in there:

  • Projections Sources: Steamer, ZiPS, Fangraphs, CAIRO, Clay Davenport
  • Average Draft Position Sources: FantasyPros, CBS, Yahoo, NFBC
  • Auction Values Sources: FantasyPros, CBS, Yahoo, RotoChamp
  • Expert Rankings Sources: FantasyPros, Fake Teams, Yahoo, CBS, ESPN

WERTH Values (Roto Leagues)

If you’re playing in a roto league, you may notice that these cheatsheets have a WERTH value for each player. These are essentially z-scores in each roto category based on your league setting. The cheatsheets calculate who the projected league starters would be and then use that to calculate league averages and standard deviations in each category. Using that data, it then says how far above average each person is in that category (z-score) so a positive WERTH value means that player will contribute positively for your team. This is all dependent on your league settings which makes these values completely unique to your league.

Download Your 2017 Cheatsheet

Without further ado, pick your flavor of cheatsheet from the options below. Go out there and kick some butt in your fantasy leagues!

Download the cheatsheet for your rotisserie standard draft leagues
(Current Version: 2.58, uploaded on March 28 at 4:45 PM EST)

Download the cheatsheet for your rotisserie auction draft leagues
(Current Version: 2.58, uploaded on March 28 at 4:45 PM EST)

Download the cheatsheet for your points-based league drafts
(Current Version: 2.55, uploaded on March 28 at 4:45 PM EST)

Troubleshooting

I’ve tried testing these as much as I can and sent them out to others to test too but there’s tons of different scenarios to account for and tons of different types of computers that we all have so I can’t guarantee that everything will work perfectly (but I hope so!). So, if you have issues with the cheatsheet, post them as comments here so I can try to address them. If you have suggestions for ideas or features, let me know too. I’ll post new versions of the sheet up until Opening Day with bug fixes, data updates or new features so keep checking back.

Donations

Okay. Truthfully, I debate every year about whether I can dedicate the time to making these cheatsheets. I’m just one man doing this all by myself and it’s a lot of work. In fact, I tend to always forget how much effort and time these take to make until I’m knee-deep in them. I do them for free every year though because I’m happy that people seem to appreciate the work. That being said, it would make it a lot easier for me to keep doing this if I got a few bucks here and there as a thanks. If you’re cool with that, the donate button is below:


I want to keep these free and I want to keep doing these each year so I’d appreciate it but, if you can’t spare it, don’t worry! Enjoy the free awesomeness regardless.

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  • Chuck
    03/11/2017 at 2:16 PM

    Luke,

    Could you please add the ability to move a player from the active lineup to the bench? I’m using the Auction sheet. We can keep up to 5 players who we never activated last season. Most of the time these are prospects, but sometimes they are MLBers. We’re also able to keep 7-15 keepers on the active lineup going into the draft. So we can keep up to 20 players out of the 35 we end up with. When adding the keepers, the players that were never activated last year are being added to the active roster, but this totally messes up the team roster and standings.

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/11/2017 at 2:21 PM

      It’s on my list. It’s a pretty big overhaul to allow for that so we’ll see if I can find the time for it this year. The current way it works is that the better players would be moved into the starting lineup as you do your draft over those initial players to create the optimal lineup. I understand how it would initially make the lineups look weird with lower-quality players initially pegged as starters. Sorry about that.

      • Chuck
        03/11/2017 at 2:35 PM

        The other thing is that the keepers that are supposed to be in bench spots have no salary. So if they never get bumped, it might throw off the $ amount. For example, I’ve got Josh Bell as a bench guy. I’m keeping Greg Bird at $1, but I expect Bell would be kept in the active lineup over Bird.

        For me, I’m not worried about the optimal lineup, I just want players slotted in where they are supposed to be based on being a bench guy going into the draft, or being bought in the auction. If you could add the function you have on the Auction sheet where we can change the players position to the Teams sheet, and add Bench, CI and MI as an option, then perhaps players could be moved to the proper position.

        • Luke Gloeckner
          03/11/2017 at 2:40 PM

          Understood. Thanks for the idea. I’ll keep it in mind!

  • Chuck
    03/11/2017 at 2:18 PM

    I just noticed something else on the auction sheet. It’s probably not a big deal. When the sheet is first opened, the default is 5 bench spots. Our league has 12 bench spots, so I changed the settings page to that. When going to the Teams page, it shows 17 bench spots, so it’s adding the default 5 to whatever it gets changed to.

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/11/2017 at 2:23 PM

      That page isn’t set based on your league settings. It just fills up whatever rows aren’t “Starters” as “Bench” spots until it hits the last row. I could do make it so it only has the number of rows based on the roster settings though. I didn’t think of that.

  • nick
    03/11/2017 at 3:09 PM

    are you able to update the points spreadsheet to add and subtract points for plate appearances. You already have AB, but an AB doesn’t account for a walk, hit by pitch, sac fly or sac bunt. Thanks!

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/11/2017 at 3:31 PM

      Yeah, that’s a good idea! I’ll get that into the next update I do.

      • nick
        03/11/2017 at 4:22 PM

        thanks!

    • Nick
      03/11/2017 at 4:22 PM

      would you also be able to categorize pitchers as just P instead of only SP or RP

  • Kevin
    03/11/2017 at 3:37 PM

    On the auction sheet, the imported values shown on the “Your Roto Auction” tab seem to be two less than what is on the “Import (Values)” tab when Site Auction Values is set to Imported Values on the “Settings” tab. Thanks!

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/11/2017 at 3:44 PM

      I could see that happening sometimes. I should have made a note on that Import Values tab about that. By default, the spreadsheet tries to take site values typically based on a $3,120 total league budget ($260 per team for 12 teams) and then it converts the site values based on whatever your total league budget is. It does the same with imported values (so if your league budget is not $3,120 then it will adjust them). I’ll put in something on that page in the next update that may help with that.

      • Kevin
        03/11/2017 at 3:58 PM

        I see. Our league is $270 per team for 11 teams. Thanks for the fast response!

  • Kevin
    03/11/2017 at 4:12 PM

    Looking back on my earlier post (about our league allowing for 10 pitchers) I can just set that by the Save and Load tab and can override the restriction on the Setting tab. It just looks the like the Max Bid calculation on the Projected Standings tab is off by 1 (it should be one higher than displayed).Our league is $270 per team for 11 teams.

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/13/2017 at 7:00 PM

      Cool, I’ll look into it and try to address higher roster limits in the next update.

  • Jake
    03/11/2017 at 6:40 PM

    Is there a way to adjust the max allowed players? The limit for DH/UTIL is 5 but I would like to change it to 6. Points league.

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/13/2017 at 7:01 PM

      Yeah, good idea. I’ll address that in my next update.

  • Greg A
    03/12/2017 at 3:07 PM

    Hey Luke, just wanted to say this is incredibly done. I have one question though. Is there anyway to add another Roto Category to the drop down list to the setting tab? I only ask because we also account for HRISP and FLD% and I was hoping to be able to add these to make the predictions more customized to my draft. If so where would I import the data? Would I just make a new column in the Import (Projections) tab? Let me know if this is possible. Thanks again

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/13/2017 at 7:04 PM

      Thanks for the kind words! And, yeah, unfortunately you can’t add in custom stats to the projections. It just uses the couple dozen roto categories that are within the Settings options.

      • Greg A
        03/14/2017 at 9:44 AM

        No worries, just figured I would ask. I’ve always wanted to put something like this together but just haven’t had the time. Maybe next year. This is still a great help, thanks again

  • Nick
    03/12/2017 at 5:06 PM

    Hi Luke, imported ATC projections from Fangraphs (similar concept to your special blend). Once they’re loaded not seeing them come up anywhere. Do I need to execute any function to make them appear? Thought they would come up in Player comparison. Where do I go to see them imported into the spreadsheet

    Thanks

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/13/2017 at 7:05 PM

      You’d choose them as the Projection Source on the Settings page under Cheatsheet Options. They would then be used as the projection source for WERTH Roto Value calculations and such on the Draft/Auction page.

  • Tom
    03/12/2017 at 5:56 PM

    Mr. CC! Another year, another sheet. Gracias. Having trouble working a lot of the macros in LibreOffice Calc. Have you done anything to get it working on there, or just Excel?

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/13/2017 at 7:06 PM

      Hmm, no, I haven’t tried the cheatsheets on any spreadsheet program other than Excel. With so much happening within them, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are things it is doing that are unique to Excel and unable to work on other spreadsheet programs.

  • Chuck
    03/12/2017 at 7:44 PM

    Hi Luke,

    Any chance you could modify the sheets just a bit to highlight the row of the selected player in yellow, to make it stand out better?

  • Phil T Rich
    03/12/2017 at 7:49 PM

    Luke, first time using your cheat sheet. Seems to be what I should have been using for years. But on the list is shows guys like Yelich and Zunino all the way at the bottom of the list, almost like they are listed in alphabetical order. I’m using ADP as the listing type. Is this an error? Thanks.

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/13/2017 at 7:07 PM

      I think the Combined ADP may be off for that. I’d try an ADP option other than that one until I get my next update done.

  • Chuck
    03/12/2017 at 7:52 PM

    Just adding keepers to the auction sheet (v 1.2) and on the Team page, the stats for the pitchers aren’t displaying. Hitters are fine.

    Any chance of giving the option on the Team pages of displaying either the WERTH value or the Projected $ value?

  • Chuck
    03/12/2017 at 9:30 PM

    Also noticed that on the Projected Standings page, the $ left per player is apparently being calculated by including the bench players. In our league (and I would guess most auction leagues), the bench players are selected from those left over after the auction, and don’t have a salary assigned. Can this be changed to use just the number of active players needed?

  • Jon
    03/13/2017 at 3:01 PM

    I used to be able to input notes next to players. I found this quite useful, but now it says the sheet is protected. Any way to type notes next to player?
    Thanks for your great tool.

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/13/2017 at 7:10 PM

      Yeah, when I rewrote the spreadsheets this year, I initially couldn’t find a good spot to put that Notes column. I decided to take it off and see if people wanted it back. I’ve seen a couple other people mention it too so I’ll see what I can do to get it added back in my next update.

      • Chuck McGill
        03/13/2017 at 7:20 PM

        Add me to those who’d like the Notes column returned.

  • Eric L.
    03/14/2017 at 6:37 AM

    Any idea when the next update with your special blend included will be out?

  • DS
    03/14/2017 at 11:48 AM

    Great, great tool. Thanks so much for the work you put into it!

    A couple of things I noticed.

    1. BB for pitchers seems to contribute positive value instead of negative, making Edinson Volquez into a bizarro Kershaw.
    2. My league has H/9 as a category. Is there any way you can add that in?

    Thanks!

  • DC
    03/14/2017 at 5:26 PM

    Excellent tool and thanks for the work you’ve put into this!

    I do have a question…maybe I’m just not seeing it or figured out how to do it yet.

    1. In a h2h points league, with a snake draft, how do I see ADP, ADP Rd, and Odds Avail Next Rd, incorporated into your spreadsheet? For some reason, it’s completely blank for every player on mine. All I’ve done is add my scoring system and Team Names into the ‘Settings’ tab. Sort By ADP doesn’t work.

    Any help is appreciated!

    • DC
      03/14/2017 at 5:39 PM

      I think I figured out the answer to my own question. When you choose ‘Yahoo’ as the ADP Site under ‘Cheatsheet Setup’ it removes ADP and everything else associated with ADP. Is that a known and/or fixable error? Thanks!

  • KT
    03/14/2017 at 5:46 PM

    Hi Luke. I really like your sheets and have been using them for a few years. I just started going through this year’s sheet and have a few questions.

    Is there any way to change who drafted a player once you make the choice? I couldn’t figure out a way to do it without going to the “Save and Load” tab and clearing it there. Is that what I’m supposed to be doing?

    Also, in the past I’ve done some minor formatting to the sheets – just highlighting and adding notes after the final column. Will those things be possible in future releases?

    Thanks for all your hard work!

    • Rick
      03/15/2017 at 4:03 PM

      You can go to draft log tab & simply delete the player. When you go back to the Roto draft tab then it will be that teams selection again. I use this to see how players affect my standings.

  • RJ
    03/14/2017 at 10:21 PM

    Hey Luke. I’m having an issue on the Roto draft cheatsheet. I have 14 teams all with 3 keepers which i submitted. But when I go to use the “your roto draft” page to start making picks it will not move past the first pick. I click “make pick” and it will not move to the next pick in the draft, it just keeps it on the same team and when i try to make a new pick it just replaces the previous pick.

    Thanls!!

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/14/2017 at 10:35 PM

      Weird. Can you send me a copy of the sheet to luke at mrcheatsheet.com? Also, out of curiosity, what version of Excel are you using?

      • RJ
        03/14/2017 at 11:13 PM

        Okay sent! on PC excel 2007, and tried it on excel on my mac as well.

        • Luke Gloeckner
          03/15/2017 at 5:12 PM

          FYI for others, this one was identified and will be fixed for all in the next release. Thanks for bringing this one up, RJ.

  • Rick
    03/15/2017 at 4:07 PM

    Luke, I am having trouble with the Rosters tab. When i go into it, there are players on my bench that should be in empty position slots. Is there a way around this. I tried moving them & is P/W protected. I also tried deleting them in the draft log, & then re-drafting them. Player is still in bench slot after. This is of course altering my teams projected totals & skewing my teams needs.
    Am I missing a setting that tells the standings sheet to calculate all players not just those in positions?

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/15/2017 at 4:24 PM

      So you draft, for instance, a 2B and there’s an open 2B on that team but he’s being assigned to the bench? That certainly is not how the sheet should work. Can you send me a copy of the sheet with your settings to luke at mrcheatsheet.com? Thanks!

      • Luke Gloeckner
        03/15/2017 at 5:11 PM

        FYI for others, issue was identified for this one (though it required a bunch of variables for it to happen) and will be resolved in the next version.

  • Chuck
    03/15/2017 at 5:07 PM

    Here’s another bug in the Auction sheet (v 1.20). On the Projected Standings page, none of the Positions Drafted is being filled in for any of the teams. They’re all blank.

  • Chuck
    03/16/2017 at 5:35 PM

    Thanks for the latest update. In version 2.0 of the Auction Sheet, the Projected Standings page is now unprotected.

    • Luke Gloeckner
      03/16/2017 at 5:50 PM

      Whoops! That could cause some issues. Thanks

  • Allen
    03/20/2017 at 2:49 PM

    Having trouble with 2.10. All I have to do to start getting errors is enable editing and content and then when I start selecting names from the your roto auction tab is give errors. My draft took place this past weekend and on the version before today’s 2.10, everything worked great other than on the Teams tab the pitcher projection stats aren’t loading for any of them like the hitter’s stats are.

    Love this spreadsheet overall, and I reluctantly told the rest of the draft about it after we were done.

  • Luke Gloeckner
    03/20/2017 at 3:31 PM

    Interesting. I’ll check it out. What version of Excel are you using, out of curiosity?

    • Allen
      03/20/2017 at 3:36 PM

      Excel 2016

      • Luke Gloeckner
        03/20/2017 at 4:59 PM

        Try downloading again. Should be fixed now.

        • Allen
          03/21/2017 at 10:07 AM

          Much appreciated. No more errors on the new version, and it is showing the pitcher stats on the Teams tab now as well.

  • Matt
    03/20/2017 at 7:39 PM

    Awesome Sheet! Have you ever thought of creating a H2H Points/Auction sheet.

  • Chris
    03/29/2017 at 7:41 AM

    Please take a moment to send Luke some $! Whether you consider the excellent insight or the time savings, this is super helpful. This was my 2nd year using his model, and it was a tremendous help in my draft last night.
    Thanks Luke!

  • Tyler Thurston
    06/05/2017 at 12:48 PM

    Can you unlock the teams page? Would like the ability to update this throughout the season to target players.

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