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How To Calculate Custom Rankings for a Points League: Part 5 - Calculating Projected Points

How To Calculate Custom Rankings for a Points League: Part 5 – Calculating Projected Points

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Welcome to the first part of a series in which we’ll go step-by-step through the process of using Microsoft Excel to calculate your own rankings for a fantasy baseball points league (as opposed to rotisserie or head-to-head rotisserie).

Whether you’re in a standard points league at a major site like ESPN or a more advanced Ottoneu league at Fangraphs, this process will help you develop customized rankings for your league.  These instructions can be used for a season-long points league or a weekly head-to-head points league.

If you’re looking for info on how to rank players for a roto league, look here.

I recommend going through all the parts of the series in order. If you missed an earlier part of this series, you can find it here:

ABOUT THESE INSTRUCTIONS

  • The projections used in this series are the Steamer 2015 preseason projections from Fangraphs.  If you see projections that you disagree with or that appear unusual, it’s likely because I began writing this series in December 2014, still early in the off-season.
  • For optimal results, you will want to be on Excel 2007 or higher.  Some of the features used were not in existence in older versions.
  • I use Excel 2013 for the screenshots included in the instructions.  There may be some subtle differences between Excel 2007, 2010, and 2013.
  • I can’t guarantee that all of formulas used in this series will work in Excel for Mac computers.  I apologize for this.  I don’t understand why Excel operates differently and has different features on different platforms.

IN PART 5

In this part of the series we will use the named cells created in Part 2 along with our projection information on the “Hitter Ranks” and “Pitcher Ranks” sheets to calculate total projected points for each hitter and pitcher.

Please note that this series has been adapted into a nine-part book that also shows you how to convert points over replacement into dollar values and how to calculate in-draft inflation. Click here if you’re interested in reading more about the conversion to dollar values.

EXCEL FUNCTIONS AND FORMULAS IN THIS POST

We’ll just be doing some basic addition and multiplication.  We won’t be adding in any new features, but we will be doing this basic math using the named cells for your league’s scoring settings that we created in earlier parts of the series.  All_Point_ValuesTo refresh your memory and to see the complete list of named cells, access the “Formulas” tab of the Ribbon and then click the “Name Manager” button.Name_Manager

The list will display all named cells/ranges and named tables.  To view only named cells, click on the “Filter” drop down menu and choose “Defined Names”.Defined_Names

STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS

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An Even Better Positional Ranking Formula

An Even Better Positional Ranking Formula

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In my last post about how to calculate positional rankings in your player spreadsheet (link), I realized a weakness in the approach I outlined.  I’m here to fix that with a slightly more complex formula. Final_Excel_Formula_Output

The Weakness In The First Approach

The problem with the first approach is that it is entirely dependent upon how the file is sorted.  If the file is sorted by dollar value or standings gain points in descending order, then the rankings work.

But if you sort the file by home runs, stolen bases, or player name, then the rankings fall apart.  The player with the most home runs (or the most stolen bases or the first name alphabetically) becomes the top ranked player.

The COUNTIFS Excel Function

Instead of the COUNTIF function, we’ll use the COUNTIFS function this time.

You might remember from the last post that the COUNTIF function will count the number of cells in a specific range that meet a specified condition (e.g. “Hey Excel, count all the players in this column that have a ‘POS’ of ‘OF’.”).

Well the COUNTIFS function counts the number of cells in a specific range that meet all of the conditions you provide (you can give multiple conditions).

In plain English, our goal is to have Excel count all the players in our list of hitters that have a “POS” of “OF” AND that have a higher projected SGP than our player being evaluated.

We’ll get into the specifics of our formula in a bit, but here’s a screenshot of the Excel formula wizard for our COUNTIFS function.COUNTIFS_FUNCTION

This formula allows for an open-ended number of arguments, but you do need to pieces of information for each set of criteria you want to specify.  Each criteria requires:

  1. Range – This is the block, column, or area of cells we want to count from.  “Excel, look in Column E and count the cells that meet this condition I’m about to tell you about in bullet #2.”
  2. Criteria – This is what we are evaluating the cells for.  “Count the cells in Column E that show ’1B’ as the position.”

If we want to specify three conditions that must be met, then we would need six arguments (three ranges and three criteria: range1, criteria1, range2, criteria2, range3, criteria3).

Step By Step Instructions

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