2013 Fantasy Baseball Draft Cheatsheets (Roto, Auction, H2H) | Version 1.3

I often get tons of really interesting suggestions from readers on how to improve these cheatsheets. I don’t always get to implement all of them but, this week, I’m very happy to introduce a new feature that has been asked for in the past.

In this update, users of the cheatsheets can now play with their own custom combined projections. What that means is that you can select how much weight you want to put on each available projection to come up with your own combined projection. You want to put 50% weight on Steamer’s hitting projections and 50% on ZiPS? Sure, you can do that.  You want to put 20% weight on five different projections? Have at it.

The other fun part is that you can now apply a different projection for hitters versus pitchers. If you want to weight Marcel more highly for pitcher projections than hitter projections then you have that freedom too.

Of course, this creates questions about what the ideal weights for each projections should be. I’ve done my own research on that topic and I’ll post on this site later but, for now, the default weights are possible ideal weights from my preliminary research on the subject. This new feature may not be for everyone but I think it’s pretty awesome and has the ability to create even better projections for you to use in drafts!

And, that’s not all in this latest update! Fantasy Gameday has agreed to share their work with me so now you have the option of using their ADP data and Average Auction Values. They do a great job of pulling from multiple sources, including mock drafts and various sites around the web, to get a good baseline for average draft position information. In the past, I’ve written about why I hate ADP data that pulls from mock draft sites. That data is highly skewed by the mock draft site’s rankings so it doesn’t give an accurate portrayal of public opinion (however, it is still interesting information to know because if you draft at CBS then you know that your leaguemates will also be very influenced by the default site rankings). But, the beauty of Fantasy Gameday is that they take all of that bias out to give us a good snapshot of what a player’s true perceived value is to the public. In the spreadsheets at their site, they also have tons of other neat information on trends in ADP. Definitely worth a look!

In addition, I made a lot of tweaks for usability of the Auction sheet and just some other minor updates here and there. The next updates after this will focus on updating ADP, Rankings and Projection data as well as trying to finally get an NL-Only and AL-Only option out there (no promises).

For those completely new to these fantasy baseball cheatsheets, I encourage you to read the opening post for more information on them.

Before downloading the cheatsheets below, please be forewarned that these cheatsheets are designed to work in Excel 2007-2010 and were designed in Windows. The Mac version of Excel (and older versions of Excel) has been known to have problems when trying to operate these cheatsheets. Also, Microsoft has a few security features which makes opening these spreadsheets more annoying than it should be. If you have the default security settings, you’ll be asked if you want to enable macros when opening this spreadsheet and you must enable macros in order for this cheatsheet to work! In addition, Microsoft may point out that the file originated from an internet location so you will have to click the button that says Enable Editing. You can always change your settings in Excel so you don’t get asked that again but those are two hiccups you might encounter before you get to play around in the sandbox here. Now that you’ve been prepped, go ahead and download your cheatsheet of choice:

2013 Roto Cheatsheet
2013 Roto Auction Cheatsheet
2013 Points League Cheatsheet

After opening the cheatsheet, you’ll be presented with a form to enter some of your league specifications such as number of teams, team names, number of starters at each position, your roto categories and so on. You’ll also choose what sources you want to display information from. Keep in mind that you can always change this info later if you just want to close that and peek around for now.

The Draft Central tab is your home base for these sheets and it is where you’ll see a summary of information for each player throughout the draft and this is where you’ll enter what team drafts each player. Changes on this sheet update the Live Standings and Team Summary tabs. The Live Standings tab will calculate each team’s projected starters and base the current standings throughout the draft on that info. The Team Summary tab shows who is on each team and who is projected to be their starters. The Player Profiles tab allows you to compare players and look at all of the projection and expert data for them. For roto leagues, you’ll also see a calculation of how many points in the standings you may gain (or lose) by drafting that player.

Data included for this v1.3 release:

• CAIRO projections
• Steamer projections
• Steamer (with Fan playing time) projections
• Fangraphs Fan projections
• Oliver projections
• ZiPS projections
• MORPS projections
• Clay Davenport projections
• Custom combined projection option
• MockDraftCentral ADP data
• CBS ADP data
• Yahoo ADP data
• ESPN ADP data
• Fantasy Gameday ADP data
• RotoChamp dollar values
• CBS Sportsline dollar values
• Yahoo dollar values
• ESPN dollar values
• Fantasy Gameday average auction values
• ESPN rankings
• RotoChamp rankings
• Hardball Times rankings
• CBS Sportsline rankings
• David Gonos rankings
• Mr. Cheatsheet rankings
• FantasyPros expert consensus rankings

I put a lot of work into these obviously and I’m very happy to put these out for free to the public. However, if you’re a nice fellow and would like to send a dollar or two my way to fund my coffee addiction, hit the donate button below.