Introduction to Mr. Cheatsheet’s Way

If you’ve been a frequent reader of Mr. Cheatsheet then you know that I look at the fantasy baseball universe in a much different way than most people. My focus is primarily on preparing for the draft and evaluating draft trends and values. In doing a lot of my work here, I venture into somewhat-unexplored territories and thus have to invent my own terminology at times. As a result, if you’re a new reader then you may get confused by what is going on here every so often. So, it is probably about time for an introduction into Mr. Cheatsheet’s Way. I’ll try to keep this area updated with the key topics pertaining to this site as a good introductory spot for newbies.

The Stats

WERTH – Each roto statistic for a player is converted into WERTH to estimate the number of ranks in your league standings that you’d gain in that category by having that player instead of a league average player. Think of it as Roto Points Over Average Player or Roto Points Gained.

Total WERTH – In a 5×5 roto league, a player’s contribution in all 5 stats categories are added up for a Total WERTH to see how much he’d swing your overall place in the standings.

xAVG (Expected AVG) – Taking a player’s expected BABIP (xBABIP), xAVG is calculated to determine what a player’s batting average should have been if luck were not a factor. This can then be compared to their actual AVG to see if they were underperformers or not.

xQS (Expected Quality Starts) – This is calculated by accounting for IP/GS and ERA to determine the estimated number of Quality Starts that a pitcher should have based on his projections or results.

The Terminology

Narco – Instead of your standard “sleeper” pick or your proverbial “deep sleeper”, this new term was developed around here to describe the even-deeper sleepers that Mr. Cheatsheet tries to identify.

Roto Points – Each unit of WERTH is a roto point. A player who has a WERTH of 5.0 is helping you gain five roto points in the standings over a league average player.

ADP (Average Draft Position) – A player’s ADP is determined by the average place a player is being drafted on sites which host preseason mock drafts. These values should be taken with a grain of salt since the ADP values are heavily influenced by the site’s pre-rankings. However, they are the best pieces of data that we have as far as determining where a player may be drafted in your drafts.

The Cheatsheets

The foundation that this site was built upon was having a venue to distribute my Excel cheatsheets for your fantasy drafts. They are highly customizable and utilize a lot of cool features. By downloading them, you get an interactive cheatsheet that you can customize to your unique league settings and it will include tons of ADP data, projections, expert rankings, WERTH values and all sorts of bells and whistles to give you everything you need for your drafts in one special place.

Yes, you need Excel to use these and it should be at least Excel 2007. The Mac version of Excel does not play along nicely with these unfortunately.

Utilizing Projections

The draft prep data relies heavily on using projection systems so we are the mercy of their level of accuracy. There are a number of systems out there and each have different philosophies. When using the cheatsheets, you can view all of the projections in one place for a player to get a sense on what each system is saying for that player.

Other Key Pieces of Research

• Most significant stat in roto 5×5
• Players changing teams and what that means