Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
Mike MacGregor

Projection Pal Now Available

Recommended Posts

Just went up! Check back to the download page where you get Draft Buddy, scroll down a little bit and you'll see the link.

 

Hmm... looks like I have a couple of video at my YouTube Channel for importing projections into Pal for baseball, but not for football. If you watch the baseball video, you'll get the tips, tricks and potential pitfalls to avoid using Pal, but maybe I should add one for football. Someone make a request of projections they'd like to see imported into Draft Buddy via Pal, and I'll see what I can do to demonstrate with a video.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

My screencast software trial period may be running out at this point! I'll see what I can do, Dan

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Holy smokes Dan, I've had a heck of a couple weeks. I was away part of one week and then had to pack my house and move last week. Finally I have my desk set up and back on my normal computer instead of my phone that I had to use the majority of time.

 

Now I've got a good chance to look at the projections from Fantasy Sharks, they actually have a link there to download their projections in CSV (comma separated values) which imports right into Excel. See the link there? Says "Other Formats: For Excel" right above the table on this page:

 

http://www.fantasysharks.com/apps/Projections/SeasonProjections.php?pos=QB

 

What I would do first is grab that file, and open in Excel. They seem to have all the projections for all positions in the one file. No IDP projections.

 

Sort the whole thing by position. You might want to make a couple copies of this tab (in the same workbook), perhaps one tab for QB, one for RB, one WR and TE, one for K, one for DEF. The reason for this is because, since they included all projections on a single tab, there is going to be a lot of data there that isn't going to be relevant for some positions (i.e. receiving projections for QBs), and we'll have too many columns to copy into Projection Pal, which is where I'm going with this.

 

Once you have your projections on separate tabs, delete the columns you don't need for each position. You could delete unwanted rows too, but not really necessary.

 

Now open Pal, and highlight just the players and projections for each position to the appropriate Raw tab in Pal. Change the headings, follow the rest of the steps and there you go. The Clean tab will not pick up the data immediately after you drop the data into Pal, because the player names are in separate columns, but after you hit the Copy to Compiler button (guess I should finally change that name), then Pal should fix the player names, data flows to Clean tab for the right players and copies to Draft Buddy.

 

Cool? Let me know if you have any issues.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

For those of you trying to pull projections from ESPN or CBS, copied below is what I emailed back to one customer yesterday that could be helpful. The issue with each of those sites is the player name is combined on their website with other data. I think just team for CBS, but position + team + notes (?) on ESPN. When the player names are like that, clearly they aren't going to match up with the names as we have them in Projection Pal and Draft Buddy. We can fix that.

 

 

 

Okay, using the link here for QB projections (ESPN): http://games.espn.go.com/ffl/tools/projections?&slotCategoryId=0
Now I can see these, this should be pretty straight forward. We're just going to use an Excel feature that you've likely never used before, but it is very handy. Here are the steps:
1. From above link, highlight just the table of projections from the upper left box to the lower right. You can include headings if you like, or not, as long as you keep track of what stats are what. Now copy what you highlighted using CTRL-C.
2. Open Excel and start a new blank workbook. In the upper left cell, paste the projections. CTRL-V is paste.
3. Notice the player names have full name, a comma, then team and position? As you know, we just want full name and nothing else. We are going to split that data into two cells by the comma. Then we'll be left with just full name in the first column.
To do this, start by insert a blank column to the right of the player names. Highlight the column next to your name column, and choose Insert > Column.
4. Now highlight all of the cells with the player names, and then choose Data > Text to Columns. Select "Delimited" and click Next. Then on the next step check "Comma" and uncheck the others.
5. Click Next, Click Finish, and you should see the data split across between the two columns. We are left with player names.
6. Looking at the QB projections, you can do the same thing with the pass completions/pass attempts, which ESPN has in one column separated by a "/". Insert a blank column next to it, highlight the projections, choose Data > Text to Columns > Delimited - "Other" and put a "/" in the other box. Finish and now those are in two columns.
7. Copy this data into the QB Raw tab in Pal and complete the other steps in Pal you would normally do. Repeat the above steps for other positions.

 

I later checked CBS projections, here: http://fantasynews.cbssports.com/fantasyfootball/stats/weeklyprojections/QB/season and the same steps as above should work the same.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I decided to move my projections pal questions over here. Like I mentioned, Im trying to add the projections from fantasypros.com. The issue Im running into is the names are imported as FirstName LastName (Team). I tried doing the text to columns and separating the names from the teams, but when I save it or copy to compiler, the separated names change to the first name listed (they all become Aaron Rodgers).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Make sure your calculation setting in Excel is set to automatic. Is it, or is it manual? Go to Tools > Options > Calculation or Office Circle > Excel Options > Calculation or on a Mac, Excel > Preferences. Pretty sure that is why the first player name repeats itself. Should be able to do Text to Columns pretty easily on the "(" character.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That seems to have fixed it... not sure if ill have to do this everytime I open it.. my workaround for the rookies was to remove ® from any names in the projection pal or draft buddy worksheets. thanks for the help

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The projections on fftoday.com are on multiple pages. How can I have more than 50 players to load in projection pal?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You don't need to import the projections from FF Today. I think I have links in there from FF Today for testing and to not show any favouritism. But, this can become an issue on other websites that split projections across pages. What you can do is highlight just the data, copy it and paste it into Projection Pal (appropriate Raw tab), and then go to the next web page, highlight that data, copy it and paste it below the first page data in Pal. Another reason copy/paste method might be better than web query option.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Projection Pal - 2014 version - is now available. I added a link to the same download page where you get Draft Buddy.

 

Remember Pal is an optional add-on, to help import projections from other websites. Read the instructions carefully and check out the demo video:

 

http://fftoday.com/draftbuddy/instructions.html#9a

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've been using Draft Buddy for several years now. Love it!......but Projection Pal has never worked, yet.

 

I've imported a QB list off of FFToolbox.com (http://www.fftoolbox.com/football/2014/cheatsheets.cfm?player_pos=QB&league_ID=702501&page=1&print=true). I went step by step, as the YouTube video shows, yet the rankings come out wayyyyy off (i.e. Chad Henning is #1, etc.). The only columns of info I choose to keep when importing onto Projection Pal is the name of the player and his projected points. All other columns I change to "Other".

 

How can I fix this?

 

.....Which leads me to a second question: How does Draft Buddy know in what order to list those players off of Projection Pal? For example, in the YouTube video example, several different lists of baseball players had to be copied and pasted under "Hitters". So, how did it know in what order to rank them?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi Jonathan. Based on the web page link you provided there from Toolbox, the only thing you really could import is the projected fantasy points, since it does not include detailed projections for other categories. That said, if you had a resource with projections for each category, you could import those to Draft Buddy (via Pal) and Buddy should calculate the fantasy points and sort the players accordingly.

 

In terms of order, you shouldn't have to put the players in any particular order on the Raw tabs in Pal. The way it works is this:

 

1. You copy/paste players and data onto correct position Raw tab (any order).

 

2. Set column headings. Player names should be on left side of the data. Hit Copy to Compiler button (did I change that to DB yet? Doh).

 

3. Pal finds Buddy and copies the player names for that position from Buddy to the Pal Clean tab. This is why the order doesn't matter - because now the players on the Clean tab are in the same order as you have them in Buddy.

 

4. Now, there are formulas to match the data from the Raw tab to the Clean tab in Pal. Pal copies all of the data from the Clean tab back to Buddy.

 

I searched the Toolbox site a little looking for projections and didn't find any. Do you have another site you want to pull projections from and get into Draft Buddy?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm still having the exact same issues getting projections into Projection Pal.

 

This time, I'm pulling the projections off of Draft Sharks. (By the way, the link I included in my previous post will send you straight to the page that contains FFToolbox.com's QB projections. You had mentioned you didn't see any when you visited the site.)

 

Step by step, this is what I'm doing:

 

1) I copy the projections off of the site (selecting, then "copy").

 

2) I "paste" them into the box in the QB RAW tab in Projection Pal, as shown in the YouTube video.

 

3) I type in the correct First and Last Row Player boxes.

 

4) I'll also delete the default QB Projections URL of FFToday.com so that it's now left blank.

 

5) Across the yellow boxes I'll select the correct dropdown menu titles for each column (Player name, PassYd, etc.). For most, I choose OTHER since I don't need that particular stat (as the YouTube video mentions). NOTE: Under the column that contains the projected fantasy points for those players, I'm selecting under the dropdown menu CUSTOM 1, since there is no option for "Points" or "Total Points" to select. (Could this be one of the main issues???).

 

6) Then, I'll also click on the box CUSTOM 1 (just to the right of the box for "Include?"), since I'm trying to pull those projections from that column.

 

7) I'll click COPY TO COMPILER.

 

8) After it loads up, I go over to Draft Buddy to look at the projections........and the order of the QBs are way off. (I've yet to attempt to do this with WR and RB projections since I can't get past the QB issue.)

 

Can you see where along this sequence something is going wrong?

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Instead of using the custom columns let try this:

 

1. Check the checkbox to import Projections and uncheck the checkbox to import Custom1.

 

2. Change the drop-down above the projected fantasy points from Custom1 to PaAtt.

 

3. Hit Copy to Draft Buddy and the projections (projected fantasy points) should go into PaAtt column in Site B on the QB tab.

 

4. Now, in Buddy, go to the options tab and set the default allocation key to 100% Site B. Go to the scoring tab and set the QB scoring to 1 fantasy point per 1 PaAtt. Set the fantasy points for other categories to 0 (zero) fantasy points for each.

 

5. Hit Compile Cheatsheets.

 

What order are they in now?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I followed your steps, but not only are the QB names still out of order, but I noticed that even though I'm only currently trying to set the QB projections, in Draft Buddy now all of the RB names are out of order in no logic manner as well, and all of the WR projections are now in alphabetical order (as opposed to by projected rankings).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Jonathan, you can email me the two files if you like. Your copy of Draft Buddy and Projection Pal. I'll look at it tomorrow (getting late here) and get back to you when I figure out what the issue is.

 

Email address is compiler@fftoday.com

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Mike,



Thanks for the help you gave me via email. This worked marvelously! Thank you a million for taking time out to figure this out and for having written the step by step instructions in such a clear manner.....and in layman's terms.



I've been using Draft Buddy as my one and only draft day tool for several years now. I'm no newbie and I use this as my weapon every year.



Thanks!



P.S. No, I'm not a paid spokesperson for FFToday nor do I play one on TV.



P.S.S. If I have any other questions, I'll bother you again....er, I mean I'll post on here again.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks Jonathan! Glad to have you back this year, and any time you need some help you know how to find me. Cheers.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just noticed I haven't posted in this thread since last year, but yes, Projection Pal (2015) is available. Note this is an optional add-on for Draft Buddy, to help import other projections, rankings or other data into DB and help align the data with the right players.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So the default projections in draft buddy is from FFToday correct?

 

All I did was set my scoring system in draft buddy and hit the action button and it sorted the players for me. Is there more I should do to get better projections?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes, the default projections are the same as found at fftoday.com.

 

Better projections? Better projections? Seriously though, what you've done is all you really need to do, and what most people do. Adding other projections is completely optional, and can be a bit difficult at times to be completely honest. And, not sure if it really results in better projections. Projections are very subjective and are a lot of personal preference.

 

If you have specific projections you want to add to Buddy to use or compare to the FF Today projections, then you can use Pal and hit me with questions if you get stuck. Your call.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey Mike.....

 

Um, would you consider removing the rookie symbol? The names do not match up - so I either have to eliminate the symbol from your list or add it to my imported list. I assume I have to add it because they will not copy to compiler correctly.

 

if I am missing something let me know.

 

Cheers.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi emerlin. Pal will remove the rookie symbol automatically from the Clean tab after you hit the Copy to Compiler button so the players match up with your Raw tab data. No reason to add it to your Raw data, or remove it from anywhere.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ok - I guess I have been working hard to make sure the data is squeaky clean before sending it over. Are you saying some of the name correction takes place during the process as well like Odell Beckham vs Odell Beckham Jr.?

 

so - in a nutshell

 

1. copy the raw data in

2. adjust columns etc...

3. copy to compiler

4. check the compiler for N/As and issues?

5. fix issues in projection pal and copy over again?

 

Also - is there an easy way to get in more than 2 sites A and B - or am I just coping them over to past years and changing the name?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That is pretty much it. You won't see any N/As in Draft Buddy after hitting Copy to Compiler, because Buddy should remove them, but an easy way to see if a player didn't copy over is to look for blank rows going up and down. The players are usually in pretty much rank order, so the higher up a blank row, the more likely the player got missed.

 

On the name changes tab in Pal is a list of players whose names will be found and changed automatically. I don't remember if ODB is in the list but you could certainly add him in there.

 

About the only way you could add more sets of projections is to copy them over prior year stats sections.

  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×