Welcome to the Big Board video tutorials! It’s about an hour in total of in-depth detail on how to use the Big Board. If you want to know about a specific part of the sheet, it’s broken up into a few sections, based on the different tabs within the Big Board. Videos are embedded below, or check out the full playlist here.
Big Board, Picks, Age and Position, Roster Import
Search+Roster, Best Remaining, Teams, Standings, Bullpen, Trades
Custom Projections Tool
Quick notes here below, but watch the videos above for full details!
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Make sure you hit “The Big Button” after you’ve finished inputting all your settings!
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Make sure to ‘Authorize’ the Big Board’s scripts when asked! More details here.
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If you’re in multiple leagues, you can save multiple copies of your sheet to keep them separate! Just hit ‘File’ and ‘Make a Copy’.
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Need to work offline? Try offline mode!
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Settings
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Every large heading (e.g. ‘The Basics’) has a note that will pop up when you mouseover it, explaining the details behind each of the settings. For further details on things like the valuation systems or the hit/pitch split, check out some of the articles linked on this site’s sidebar.
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On initial setup, choose all the settings first, then come back and hit ‘The Big Button’ to format the board properly.
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One note on The Lineup – if you’re in an auction league, and the bench spots are drafted separately in a reserve round, do not include the bench spots in this setup. If you do, the dollar values will be way too low for your auction.
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The Projections – if you choose to run custom projections, click the link that pops up, and do the necessary modifications there. The Big Board has been set up to automatically pull projections from your Custom Projections sheet.
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The Replacement Level – if you’ve entered values in the override column, note that you should hit the ‘Apply Override’ button in order to adjust the replacement levels to your new setting.
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The ‘Update Data’ button will pull in updated ranks, ADPs, and default projections.
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Big Board
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This is your main sheet for viewing your rankings/dollar values, and for running things during the draft.
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Several of the headings across the top left have drop-down menus for additional options (the Rank, NFBC, BIGz, Pos. Rank columns)
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A row of filter buttons is also provided (the striped arrow symbols), they are super useful. Use them to sort or filter by any of the columns in your sheet. For example, to find a speedy second baseman, you could filter the Pos. column for 2B only, and sort by SB.
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The columns should be self explanatory for the most part.
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The ‘D’ column is used to track drafted players, and works as a shortcut if you don’t want to spend the time typing out individual team names during your draft. Just put an ‘n’ in that column for players drafted to other teams, and a ‘y’ for players drafted to your team.
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The ‘W’ column is used to track watch list players, which displays on the ‘Search & Roster’ tab. For me, I use this just as a way to bookmark guys I like, or trade targets.
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The buttons up at the top are able to run some useful scripts for you.
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‘Draft’ – uses the boxes directly next to it (Player, Team, and $ if it’s an auction draft) to mark players as drafted. Takes a few seconds to run. If you’re quick with the keyboard, it can be slightly faster to use “Ctrl+F”. The same button is provided on a few other tabs.
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‘Sort’ – a shortcut for sorting by BIGz ($) and by team. The filter buttons are generally better, but this is a shortcut.
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‘Hide/Show Drafted’ – hides (or shows) all players that are already marked as drafted. Again, the filter buttons can also do this (just use the filter button under the ‘D’ column).
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‘Backup’ and ‘Restore’ – takes all your data from this tab and stores it away somewhere (backup), takes all your data from the stored tab and restores it to this tab. Useful for when you’re updating projections or running other things which might mess with your settings. If your data gets cleared out by a projections update, make sure to come here and hit the ‘Restore’ button!
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Many of the remaining tabs are fairly self explanatory.
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Note that the Best Remaining, Teams, Standings, and Bullpen tabs all have a checkbox at the top left that asks if you want to ‘Display?’. They’re unchecked by default, to make the sheet run faster. If you want to view these tabs, just check the box!
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Teams / Search & Roster
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These are generally self explanatory. Note that the pitcher roster spots are treated somewhat loosely, since many fantasy leagues have pitchers that swap in and out of the starting lineup pretty regularly. The Board will display up to 8 SP, 5 RP, and 5 generic bench players (hitter or pitcher). You can have more than that, but that’s all that will show up in these tabs.
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Picks
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Select Snake or not (straight). This automatically will assign the pick order for you, but you can edit freely if you have pick trades or other complicating factors. This is the order used for the ‘Draft’ button, to automatically fill in the next team up. It’s also used by the Trade tool.
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SO PUMPED that this tool is returning for 2020! Quick question that will likely be addressed in the larger tutorial. (Auction League) If I make myself the first listed team in Settings and use a modified budget for all teams via Standings page – will the player values that are calculated reflect what players are worth to my team. For context the average budget is 250 and I’m at 330, so theoretically players should have higher values since I can bid more.
Hey Jon, that’s a good question! They will not adjust higher for something like that, because the amount of money across the league is still the same. It’s a question of strategy for you, you could either spend more than a player is worth if you really want them (which is what you’re suggesting), or, you could just afford to buy better players. In other words, replace your $1 players with $5 or $10 players, or get two $40 players when typically you would only buy one. Hope that makes sense!
Big fan of the Big board! Thanks for putting this monster together. Looking it over, what’s the best way to get keepers (2 per team) onto rosters and off the Board without messing up any of the pick orders?
Hi Kevin, do you mean your league keeps players at a certain round/pick? That is unfortunately one feature I haven’t yet implemented. You can draft them to their respective teams, but as you’ve said, that will throw off the draft order. So, either manually edit the draft order to account for it, which might be a pain, or ignore the automatic draft order during your draft.
I’m in the same boat as Kevin. My league has keepers at the rounds they were drafted in the previous year starting in round 7. Would you recommend not allocating these players to teams and just ignoring them on the draft board until they are ‘drafted’ at their keeper pick? Will that mess up any of the numbers/algorithms?
You could do that, if you don’t think it will throw you off mid-draft having to keep track of it. The biggest trouble would be that it would mess up your ‘Best Remaining’ tab (which personally, I find super useful).
Alright, thanks! I’ll play around with it thanks!
Where do I enter in the point values for my points league? The pop-up box reads "If your Valuation System is set to SGP or Points, make sure to update the SGP or Points columns to the right." I don’t see anything immediately apparent that allows me to enter in points.
Nevermind, just found it. Great product so far!
How do I edit the roster tab? We have 2 C, 2 1B, 2 2B, 2 SS, 2 3B, 6 OF, 9 P, 1 Util.
When I add that to the Settings, the other tabs do not update.
Have you hit The Big Button yet?
Yes, there is no bench as well. I clicked the Big Button and it still lists incorrect position lists on the Teams tab. The Teams tab shows:
C
1B
2B
SS
3B
blank
blank
blank
OF
OF
UTIL
blank
5 BN
7 SP
BN
2 RP
3 BN
Oh okay. Have you hit the ‘Display’ checkbox at the top left?
The extra BN spots are just for display purposes, they’ll act as a catch-all spot for players that don’t fit into the roster spots you’ve chosen. This can be useful in cases where you have multi-positional players, for instance.
Yes, even when clicking Display it doesn’t list the entire rosters or the correct position amounts. It just makes it challenging to track other teams to make sure they are following position requirements.
Sorry I misread your initial comment. Yes, that is a super unusual roster construction so the Board doesn’t display it fully in your roster page, sorry!
This looks fantastic; I cannot wait to use it this season. I have looked through many of your old posts (and done a search on the site), and have found no mention of Ron Sandler’s BaseballHQ projections. Have you ever looked into those or thought about including them in the tool? If I want to use them as well, what is the easiest way to incorporate? Should I put them in a spreadsheet format that fits them into the Pecota sheets, since I do not intend to use Pecota? Thanks!
Hi Bryan – I haven’t! But you certainly can. You can drop them in as ‘Custom’ projections in the projection tool. Or, like you said, you could put them in the Pecota sheets of that tool. Either way should work.
Hello! Looking to purchase the bigboard for the 1st time but have a question as my Auction league is pretty unique. we use NL + AL East, + Astros & White Sox. On top of that player pool we also allow 2 "Imports" from the other AL teams, but only if you big more than $21. I would like to select all of the teams listed above and then add in the players i feel would go for more than $21 from the other AL teams. Is this possible?
Hi Jordan – what a wacky system. Yes technically possible, but tricky. You can set the tool to only allow certain teams, so that’s no problem. Then what you would do for the special >$21 players would be to go to the Custom Projections Tool and change the teams those players are listed for. For example, you could switch them all to be listed as ‘Yankees’. Then they would load into the main Board as Yankees and be valued normally. Hope that makes sense and let me know if you need a hand.
Hi I am in a 20 team keeper league. Is there a way to add a player to the sheet. I could not find Julio Rodriguez, Seattle’s Outfield Prospect. Please advise.
Yes. Please use the Custom Projections sheet to add him in, it should be covered in that part of the tutorial. Thanks!
Is there any way to revert the Spreadsheet to its original default version?
Shoot me an email – you can use version history to do this, or I can make you another copy.
Ryan,
Is there a way to display actual auction $ vs BigZ value on the "Teams" page?
thanks
No, but if you hit the Sort button on the main Big Board tab, you’ll see the teams sorted and can make the comparisons there?
Love the product as always!.
Is there an option to have players on team’s bench not count towards the standings. For example if a guy has 3 3b basemen all 3 of their stats are counted 100% towards the standings even though all 3 of them won’t play everyday.
Is there a way I’m missing to factor that in?
There is not a way to factor it, no. I have considered a few different ways to do it in the past but there is no perfect system that works for all league setups! I’ll note this down as something to do more research on.
I feel like I must be missing it, however where on the Big Board or teams section does it show $ remaining per team for auction drafts?
Standings page. Make sure you’ve run The Big Button or otherwise it might not show up!
Hi there! Our league plays with some Minor league slots that are taken up but the players are not involved in the actual draft. Each team has between 2 and 4 Minor slots taken up by rookie eligible players.
How would you suggest dealing with this in Big Board? Remove them from the pool and not have them on the teams at all? Put the Minors players in Bench slots? We don’t draft any bench slots if that helps. Trying to take these guys out of the pool and still have the weightings for the Auction values be accurate.
Thanks!
One approach I like is to roster those players at zero value. So you just go into the Custom Projections sheet and change their projection to like, 1 PA or 1 IP. Then they can be rostered and tracked, but don’t affect any of the standings or dollar projections.
Hi,
I’m trying to revert to the original to start over because I messed up some settings and it’s really buggy after I clicked Big Button again. It’s for some reason not letting me do this. Can you send me another file? Thanks…
Sure – can you shoot me an email so I can figure out who you are and where to send it? Thanks!
I sent you an email @HarperWallbanger. Thanks for response!
my order number is #02751
Great, you’re all reset and good to go.
I am having a similar issue as guy. I need to have the sheet resent to me or refreshed. Can not get the Z dollars to populate no matter what I do
Responded to your email and reset!
To anyone else coming across the thread – these resets are usually only caused by either deleting or clicking+dragging a cell/row in the sheet. One other issue can be from pressing the ‘Import’ button if you don’t have any previous sheet linked to Import from.
One backup option is available, which is to ‘Make a Copy’ of your sheet at the start, so that you always have a version to return to.