Your Team    Position    $
Miguel Olivo C  6
John Buck    C  2
Ryan Howard    1B    35
Dan Uggla    2B    18
Ryan Zimmerman    3B    27
Asdrubal Cabrera    SS    18
Andy LaRoche    CI    2
Alcides Escobar     MI    10
Luke Scott    OF    10
Nate McClouth    OF    17
Scott Podsednik    OF    5
Cody Ross    OF    12
Ryan Raburn    OF    3
Jack Cust    UT    2
Cliff Lee    P    23
Matt Garza    P    17
Jonathan Papelbon    P    22
Matt Capps    P    12
Ross Ohlendorf    P    2
Homer Bailey    P    1
Justin Masterson    P    2
John Lannan    P    8
Ryan Rowland-Smith    P    6
Yorvit Torrealba    BENCH
Jose Mijares    BENCH
Tyler Clippard    BENCH
Daniel Ray Herrera    BENCH
Mike Jacobs    BENCH
Micah Hoffpauir    BENCH

Offensive Projections
BA: 0.265570371   R: 985.6  HR: 272.1  RBI: 998.2  SB: 132.9

Pitching Projections
W: 81.1   SV: 65.8   ERA: 3.987408492   WHIP: 1.322327965   SO: 1040.8

Projected points, based on last year’s numbers, approximately 131 points.

More to come on this later this week.

The MLB.com Fantasy 411 will be on MLB Network! Check out the release here.

Not only the Draft Preview show on March 21 but also five days a week at 5pm on MLB Network!

MLB NETWORK & MLB.COM TO PARTNER ON FANTASY PROGRAMMING THROUGHOUT THE 2010 REGULAR SEASON

MLB.com Fantasy 411 Draft Preview to Air March 21 at 8:00 p.m. ET

MLB.com’s Fantasy 411 to Air Daily on MLB Network and MLB.com Starting April 6

March 15, 2010, New York & Secaucus – With 2010 fantasy baseball drafts underway, MLB Network today announced it will air the MLB.com Fantasy 411 Draft Preview on Sunday, March 21 at 8:00 p.m. ET. Hosted by MLB Network’s Greg Amsinger and Harold Reynolds along with MLB.com’s Cory Schwartz and Mike Siano, the two-hour show will provide detailed analysis and insight on the topics fantasy baseball enthusiasts will be focusing on as fantasy draft days continue before Opening Day, including:

· Position-by-position analysis and player rankings

· Discussion of strategy for draft day and in-season transactions

· “Breakout, bargain and bust” picks for the 2010 season

· Top picks for prospects expected to be called up during the 2010 season

Continuing with the fantasy programming, throughout the 2010 regular season MLB Network will simulcast MLB.com’s Fantasy 411, the site’s longest-running hosted program, on weekdays at 5:00 p.m. ET, beginning Tuesday, April 6. The program, hosted by MLB.com’s Jeremy Brisiel, will provide key insights from analysts Schwartz and Siano to help further fans’ enjoyment and knowledge in their respective fantasy leagues.

Schwartz, the Director of Stats for MLB.com and a regular contributor to MLB.com’s fantasy baseball section, has been competing in fantasy baseball since 1989, including expert competitions such as the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) and Tout Wars. Siano, the Director of Multimedia Production for MLB.com, has been competing in fantasy baseball for more than 10 years, including the highly-competitive Tout Wars league. The MLB.com Fantasy 411 can be found on its blog at http://fantasy411.mlblogs.com and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/fantasy411.

So I have incorporated projections yet because I am waiting for a community projection that comes out from a source. Other than that, this is the basic model I’m going to use in a few weeks at an auction. Download here at 2010draftkit. I’m going to start to add projections soon and also modify my own kit so people don’t see who I like/don’t like.

Now that football season is over it is time for projections!

PECOTA came out with standings projections. Their picks? Tampa Bay, Boston, Minnesota, Oakland in the AL and Philadelphia, St. Louis, LA Dodgers and either Arizona-Atlanta as the wild card. The Washington Nationals are projected to be 82-80, taking third place over the Mets and Marlins. The Giants are picked for 4th place and projected they would give up more runs than allow. With that pitching staff, you can’t do that. Then it turned out Baseball Prospectus had a data problem and fixed it. Arizona now projected to win the NL West and the Dodgers to finish 3rd.

CAIRO, another projection set, projects the Yankees, Red Sox, White Sox, Mariners, Phillies, Cardinals, Dodgers and Braves as playoff teams.

First impressions? I think the Braves are not as good as these projections sets say. I’m not shocked Tampa-Boston-New York will be jockeying for the AL East/Wild Card. I’m also surprised at the White Sox projection, and even more that it is for 87.9 wins. Are the Cardinals that dominant? Maybe. However, both projections say the Reds will be over .500.

Meanwhile CHONE projects the Yankees, Red Sox, Twins, Rangers, Braves, Cardinals, Dodgers-Rockies, Phillies.

I do predict the standings and World Series with a friend of mine and we normally do it in April which gives us a better chance to hit the right standings. We usually fail, especially in the Central Divisions.

There are still moves to be made so we’ll see if these early projections, as of 1/27-28, will change. Over and over and over they will change. Meanwhile I am working to add projections to my draft kit.

So a brief review on development. I almost broke the entire kit by making it a read-only by trying to enable some protections. Now I’m busy adding league’s to every team’s player so you can separate AL/NL leagues. I blieve that I have nailed the most basic elements of this kit and now will try to create a good projection set to draw from.

Then I added the chance to enter values in for multi-position elgile players on the multi page. Here’s a look at what the third base page looks like with that.

I added hyperlinks to every player with multiple eligibility. So you can hit the player’s name on the other page(s). Next I have to add the value entry in the MULTI section to become the value of the player when you enter it in. If that makes sense, let me know. As always, click for a larger image.

I still need to do projections but this is a big step! Now I have the keys to identifying where each player is located and should make this a little easier to put the numbers together.

I’m going to have pieces on RotoSavants every Thursday. This past Thursday was the Nationals closer situation where the Nats signed Matt Capps and have a lot of relievers behind him if he falters. One guy I like? Tyler Clippard. Even if he regresses I think he might have some value in deep leagues.

Monday’s are also my CAA weekly for Rush The Court. I think if you had to look at all four 4-1 teams, I’d put them in the order of Old Dominion, Northeastern, William & Mary and George Mason. Mason is really young and they need to win on the road (lost last two road games by 20+). I got to watch both Hofstra @ Old Dominion and UNC Wilmington @ George Mason. First impressions? Hofstra could not get to the basket in their offense but that might have more to do with Old Dominon’s defense. UNC Wilmington had a lot of good plays but they just turned the ball over every chance they got. Mason is a good team but they are extremely young and will have a great shot at the conference tournament in March.

I’ve made a bunch of updates to the Draft Kit. I increased the font on the tool page to make it a little more pleasing to the eye. Add to that I don’t see very well and it helps me too. I’ve yet to lock the formulas, I’m going to try to work on that. I added a status bar to pitchers so I could edit their status as “retired”, “reliever”, “closer” and others. The more entrenched closers I have labeled in all caps as “CLOSER.” Right now I’m probably locking in the tiered formulas but I could change that quickly. Other than that the only major addition I’m thinking of doing is a search bar and integrating projections.

I’ve been updating the players every day and I right now favor Sean Smith’s CHONE projections.

So one thing I did before the holiday season was ask around, get some very generous help and laid down a few formulas for that. If I did this wrong, feel free to comment.

The answer I got to calculate a max bid formula was “Dollars left minus positions left plus 1.” It sounded easy and I kept writing formulas but found I ran into problems getting it right until I went with these formulas.

I wrote the Positions Left formula first. Facing difficulties I found it like this in Excel: =SUM(23-(COUNT(I2:I24,”>0″))) . So the sum of all the numbers that are greater than 0 will count as 1, theoretically, and will be subtracted from 23 to bring the number of players that are left.

Using that I wrote the simpler next formula =SUM(F9-F11)+1 which are the sum of the money left to spend minus the positions left then adding one.

So I also changed the tool page below and why? because I wanted to add some more depth to all the analysis going on. I wrote formulas that would find the average value of all three tiers and the elite/top tier players. Then I hid the formulas below the analysis and told you not to touch them! So here’s what I got.

Yes, I know people dont’ want to know the extent of cents (6.75) but I found a problem with making the formulas round up and make you think you’re spending more. Plus it didn’t hurt the appearance really. #DIV/0! ’s will show up when there are no numbers entered in the fields.

Here are the amount of players per position I have right now. Do you think they are enough?

SP: 264  (13.2 pitchers per team for a 20 team league)
RP: 243 (12.15 pitchers per team for a 20 team league)
C: 60 (3 catchers per team for a 20 team league)
1B: 52 (2.6 first basemen per team for a 20 team league)
2B: 53 (2.65 second basemen per team for a 20 team league)
3B: 61 (3.05 third basemen per team for a 20 team league)
SS: 56 (2.8 shortstops per team for a 20 team league)
OF: 134 (6.7 outfielders per team for a 20 team league)
DH-only: 19 (not enough DH types though but nobody uses a DH only anymore, do they?)

One of the many sites I like to read, when I’m not reading Roto Savants of course, is FantasyBallJunkie.com. I like how they write and I love scouring all the different feeds I have, I have a whole lot, for baseball news and fantasy notes.

I contacted Eriq, who is the editor at this site to figure out a few answers to questions I had to potential auction draftees. Eriq was kind enough to take time out of his day to answer my questions and I thank him for that.

So I’m not going to lie here, Eriq gave me a lot of things to think about my drafting strategy and creating something that can help me execute that strategy. I will tell you up front that I went by the seat of my pants last year. Decided early that everyone was paying too much for some players, then went out on a spending binge for Matt Kemp and Brandon Phillips. Desperate for a closer, I made a bid under the gun for a high amount on Jonathan Broxton (I believe that is who it was), made the league wait a few minutes to settle if I got the bid on in time and got the player. Basically I had no plan, then made a flurry of trades and was good enough to finish in the money.

Even with that, I think even I’m going to adhere to more of what Eriq is talking about rather than my lack of planning.

Me (RyanRestivo.com): When you enter an auction draft, what goes through your mind?

Eriq (FantasyBallJunkie.com): I’m looking to build te best portfolio of players by capturing the greatest value for my spending budget. Usually, that means analyzing my keeper assets, the amount of money I’ve spent and figuring out both position and category needs.

It means estimating the right time to overspend versus the right time to hunt for bargains. It means analyzing the bidding behavior of my fellow competitors, looking at trends and keeping an eye on talent scarcity. In sum there’s a lot of complicated computations that go through my head during an auction. (I suppose I’m also looking for fun and enjoyment.)

Me: What would you look for in excel-based draft tools?

Fantasy Ball Junkie: I think they are interesting but rather cumbersome. I find that right now, my ability at mental arithmetic outweighs the advantages of any excel-based tool I’ve encountered.

I suspect that excel-based tools hold promise to those who need some help managing the player acquisition process… Perhaps tools will one day offer more than basic-level  roster-building and projection-servicing, such as the ability to intelligently analyze and offer bidding suggestions to auction participants, but until that happens I would mainly look to use the most unobtrusive tool available.

Me: What type of general analysis are you doing in the draft (either auction or snake)?

Fantasy Ball Junkie: I’m doing both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Typically, I’ve already set a game plan for myself and have already made pre-assessments about options; during the draft or auction, it’s usually more about executing the preparations made during the pre-draft or pre-auction process.

Me: Thank You!

Fantasy Ball Junkie: Good luck!

The only reason to be overjoyed on a late Sunday night at 1am I found was because I figured out a data variation problem I was looking to complete for this draft kit I keep building.

So I decided to try and create a “Like/Dislike”, “Love/Hate” kind of thing where you write the word in a column and the values of the player (the E column) get calculated for all the players you wrote (in the U column) were “Like/Dislike” or “Love/Hate” players.

Still with me?

Okay so, I created all the player pages. Then I went into Data > Validation, shown how to get to here (click on the image for a larger size):

So after getting into that, I would hit this page and fill out the following like this (again, click for larger image):

Now Source =$U$1:$U$2 is me selecting U1 and U2 on this spreadsheet. You can see in this photo is that U2 is the “Dislike” option. So from U3 on down there is a drop down which gives the options “Like” and “Dislike” and I can change that later.

Now, for a later time, how I created the formulas to break them down on the tool page that will show when you like or dislike a player, how much they are going for in auctions.