IPDS - An Introduction

The system that I've developed to evaluate projected statistics for fantasy baseball purposes is called IPDS, which is short for Idiot Proof Drafting System.  For the past few seasons, I've played in non-traditional leagues.  I was using information custom made for standard leagues, though, and I began to wonder how that was affecting my performance in those leagues.  With that in mind, I created IPDS to generate custom dollar valuations based on user-specific settings. 

When you first open IPDS, you'll be greeted with the "Enter League Info" screen.  Here, you input the settings of your league.

• League Type: Select from Mixed, AL-Only, NL-Only
• Teams: Select from as little as 4 to as many as 20.  (I'd like to see the roster of the person that plays in the 4 man league.)
• Team Budget: Select from $250 - $300.  If you don't play in a league that uses an auction draft, just set this to $260.
• Hitters : Pitchers Valuation Rate: Select how much of your budget you want to devote to hitters and pitchers.  Choose from anywhere between 10% to 90%.  I recommend setting it to 65 / 35 [Hitters:Pitchers].
• Roster Settings: Select how many players your league will start at each position.
• Minimum Games Played to Qualify for Position: Select from 0 to 100.

Once you have selected your settings, click "Submit" and let 'er rip.  The next minute should be filled with flashing colors of Excel doing it's thing.  Once it's completed that, you'll be sent to the "DraftSheet" tab.  Here's an outline of all the tabs contained in IPDS:

• DraftSheet: Contains the $ Value, $ Value Over Average (VOA), ADP, and ADP Round of each player, sorted by ascending ADP.
• PosDraftSheet: Contains the $ Value and ADP Round of each player at each position, sorted by total dollar value.
• BigBoard: Lists the total $ Value and category $ value.  As an example, Albert Pujols' projected .327 BA is worth $12.55, while Adam Dunn's is worth -$4.06.
• AllHitters: Lists all the hitters with their projected statistics, category $ value, and total $ value.
• C, 1B, etc: Lists the projected statistics, category $ value, and total $ value of each player at each position.
• AllPitchers: Lists all the pitchers with their projected statistics, category $ value, and total $ value.
• SP, RP: Lists the projected statistics, category $ value, and total $ value of each player at each pitching position.

A few more notes:

• When you first open IPDS, you must enable macros or the system will not work.
• On each tab, you can click on the gray button towards the top of the page to sort by that specific statistic. Want to see who will hit the most home runs?  Go to AllHitters and click on the gray button underneath HR.  Apparently, Ryan Howard is going to hit a few of those.
• I know the system is a little slow.  It's what happens when you have an Excel file that is almost 50 MBs.  When you're inputting the league settings, you need to let Excel do its work before you click Submit.  If it tells you that it's calculating, let it finish calculating.  The best I can tell you is to be patient; it's a gentle giant.
• The projections are courtesy of Tim Dierkes of RotoAuthority.  Tim provides excellent insight and analysis throughout the season, and his projections are truly remarkable.  With his projections, I won a championship and had 2 second place finishes last season.  The current version of IPDS still has Tim's first batch of projections; I'll update IPDS to match his new ones relatively soon.  Also check out MLB Trade Rumors for the news and rumors surrounding the players who determine the fate of our fantasy season.

Although I am writing a longer essay detailing my methodology, I hope this provides you with a brief introduction into IPDS.  Click here to download it.  Please leave a comment with suggestions on improving the system.

Comments

[James]

Thank you. This is a great draft guide!

[baseballstars]

this is great. one question, why have you limited the salary cap to $300? i'm in a league with $450 salary cap, it would be helpful to enter the value manually if possible.

[David Rasmussen]

My suggestion is that documents such as these be posted on Google Docs. That way, I will not time out downloading from your site, nor will I run up your Internet bill. Also, system compatibility issues will go away. MacLinkPlus has been busy translating the spreadsheet for ten minutes. (48MB is a large file.) Thanks for posting.

[Ike Warner]

Baseballallstars:

Thanks for the comment. I'm going to do some revisions to IPDS this weekend, and will change the salary cap function to range up to $500. Also, I'm going to change it to include Tim's revised projections.

[Ike Warner]

David:

Thanks for the comment. Posting IPDS on Google Docs is a great suggestion. I'll post it on there this evening.

[Nadav]

This is great!

I'm interested in adding additional stat categories to the dollar values, like hits for hitters and K/BB for pitchers. Where in the spreadsheet would I have to look to make this change? Is it just a matter of changing the cells, or would I have to make substantial changes to the macros as well?

[Ike Warner]

Nadav:

Those changes would be quite substantial. You'd have to change macros, (literally) tens of thousands of cell references, and probably a lot more than I can't think of. In the future, I hope to add the ability for the user to set the scoring categories used in their leagues. I doubt it'll happen anytime soon, though. If only we all didn't have to work and could focus on the things that really matter, like the upcoming season!

[Ike Warner]

I tried posting IPDS on Google Docs, but I think the file size is too big. I put it on Mediafire instead; the link on the main page should be update to reflect that.

[Alex]

excellent work - this will be totally useful ...nicely done, thank you!

[John Greco]

Glad to hear you are considering allowing for specific league scoring categories as there are many leagues that are not 5x5. Even a 4x4 option would be most helpful. Great work and thank you!

I did have one problem (actually 2). When I press "submit" on the input screen, I get the message: "Can't execute code in break mode" The spreadsheet does seem to accept my user input (i.e. I get NL results when set for NL and AL results when set to AL) However, I cannot find the Draft Sheet or PosDraftSheets. The rest of the described tabs are present though.

[rafi]

Thanks for this! I may as well state some changes I'd love to see though:

Johan moved to NL so he doesnt show up in AL-Only. Is there a way I can update this myself?

Ability to put in $150 budget. Ability to put in 11 for Pitchers drop-down.

[Ike Warner]

I just realized that the link I had posted for a brief time was a link to an old version of IPDS. Please click the new link and download the correct, current version of IPDS. I apologize for any inconvenience.

[Ike Warner]

John & Rafi:

If you download the new version, those problems should be solved. They were evident in an old version of the system, but shouldn't be a problem in the correct version that has been posted.

[poisonmonkee]

I was wondering if there is any way you could add an innings limit for pitchers?

[Orion]

I'm getting an error when trying to run this on a Mac version of Excel. When I hit Submit, I get

Run-time error '1004'
Application-defined or object-defined error

Any thoughts?

[poisonmonkee]

Also curious as to why your dollar values differ (based on the "standard" league) from Rotoauthority's if you are using the same projections?

[poisonmonkee]

sorry, another minor question ... I should have thought of all of these before I posted in the first place. Where do you get your ADP info from?

[RSN]

Work blocks mediafire AND Google, and makes me sad.

Any thoughts? Sounds awesome and I'd love to try it out.

Either way, thanks for the great work and sharing it with the fantasy community.

[Justin Jas]

Can personal projections be input into the spreadsheet? For example, say you have Russell Martin's HR at 17, but i project 20, can I input 20 and have the spreadsheet still calculate everything accordingly without screwing up any of the macros, etc?

[Ike Warner]

Orion:

I wish I did know what that means, but I haven't experimented with IPDS on a Mac. I wish I had that capability, but unfortunately I do not. The most I can say is make sure that macros are enabled - that's about the most advice I can give with help in Excel.

[Ike Warner]

poisonmonkee:

An IP limit for pitchers is certainly a great possible addition. I'll do some research on implementing that over the weekend, along with all of the other suggestions.

Although we are using the same projections, my dollar values differ from RotoAuthority's because I am using a different method of valuation. I hope to have a detailed essay on my valuation method up at some point soon.

I'm getting the ADP data from MockDraftCentral.com.

[Ike Warner]

RSN:

If you send me an email, I'll send you an alternative link to IPDS that should resolve your issues. It's not a posted link because a reader alerted me to the problems they were encountering when I provided IPDS through that method.

[poisonmonkee]

Thanks, Ike. Great "little" tool you've made here. Really appreciate you making it available.

[Ike Warner]

Justin:

I'll be providing instructions on editing projections in my aforementioned essay detailing my valuation method. It should be relatively simple to change Martin's projected 16 HRs to 20 HRs [which changes his value from $26.80 to $28.49 in standard formats].

[dave]

Thanks for your effort...

Can you make it so you can set the pitcher roster size to 10? 9 is as high as you allow so far.

Thanks again.