Welcome to the first part in a series of posts in which I’ll go through the process of plugging Steamer’s Rest of Season (RoS) projections into your existing ranking/dollar value spreadsheet so you can make informed and objective roster decisions during the season.
A few notes about the series:
- I assume you have followed the “Create Your Own Fantasy Baseball Rankings” process or that you have worked through the e-book “Using Standings Gain Points to Rank and Value Fantasy Baseball Players”.
- You are using Microsoft Excel 2007 or greater and you’re using a Windows PC. Sorry Mac users. I am told some of my formulas don’t work on the Mac version of Excel.
- If you register as an SFBB Insider, you can receive the entire series in a free user-friendly e-book along with two other helpful guides. I’ve also written a comprehensive guide on ranking players and calculating player dollar values that’s available at Amazon.
Let’s Get Started
If you’re a frequent reader of this site, hopefully you spent the offseason toiling over a spreadsheet making projections, developing rankings, and calculating dollar values.
That dynamite spreadsheet you created has probably been sitting on the shelf for the last month accumulating dust. But did you know you can still use it to make informed in-season roster decisions?
I’ll show you how in a second.
Avoid This Scenario
Once the season starts, we immediately become retrospective in our decision making. You navigate out to the free agent listing and you see the stats players have accumulated to date. Some utility infielder with a .240 career average is sitting there staring at you with 5 HR and a .386 batting average to start the season.
This is bad. We don’t draft based on last season’s stats, so why should we make current roster decisions about last week’s stats?
As we do during the draft, we should be making roster decisions based on projected or future performances.
Some sites do offer full season projections. They are helpful, but they become less meaningful as the season progresses. Full season projections are likely not being updated, and we don’t care about the stats that someone has already earned.
What we really want are rest of season projections. Or what a player is going to do from here on out.