Here’s a list of the available Smart Fantasy Baseball tools. Leave a comment if you download any of these. Please let me know what you like. What you don’t like. Or what else you’d like to see. Thanks!
Please note that I am an affiliate for some of the products listed below. When you click through and purchase such an item, I will receive compensation at no additional cost to you. You can read more about affiliate resources I am involved with here.
| Tool | Information |
|---|---|
| Player ID Map Excel Spreadsheet (view PLAYERIDMAP on web) (PLAYERIDMAP CSV) (view Change Log on web) (Change Log CSV) |
Click here for a comprehensive explanation of the Player ID Map. Click here to see last update. An Excel file that lists player name, birth date, handedness info, Baseball-Reference ID, Fangraphs ID, MLB ID, CBS ID, Retrosheet ID, ESPN ID, Yahoo ID, NFBC ID, Baseball Prospectus ID, Davenport ID, FanDuel Name, FanDuel ID, Draft Kings name, and more. Useful for joining information from different sources. These posts highlight practical uses of the Player ID Map:
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| Automated SGP Ranking Excel Tool (read more) | The Automated SGP Ranking Tool will help you convert your favorite projection set (Fangraphs, Steamer, RotoWire, PECOTA, etc.) into rankings and dollar values tailored to your own league’s settings. The process takes only minutes. No messy Excel formulas. Just load your projections into the file, adjust a few settings, and standings gain points rankings are calculated automatically. Click here to read more about the tool. |
| Automated Points League Ranking Excel Tool (read more) | The Automated Points League Ranking Tool works just the same as the above SGP tool, but it’s designed specifically for points leagues. Whether you’re in a head-to-head league, a Fantrax best ball league, or the NFBC Cutline, this tool will help you convert your favorite projection set (Fangraphs, Steamer, RotoWire, PECOTA, etc.) into rankings and dollar values tailored to your own league’s settings. Click here to read more about the tool. |
| Projecting X 2.0 Excel Template (read more) | The Projecting X 2.0 Excel template comes bundled with Mike Podhorzer’s book, “Projecting X 2.0”, when purchased here at the site. Podhorzer’s book is an incredible introduction to the topic of developing your own projections. The process outlined in the book can be time consuming and the Excel file greatly streamlines the process by pulling information directly from Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference. This Excel file is some of my best work ever. You can check it out in the video below. |
| Projection Aggregator (read more) | The Projection Aggregator is an Excel template that will help you to easily combine and average up to three different projection sets into one more accurate set of projections.
It has other beneficial features like the ability to weight the projection system you like most and the ability to enter in your own playing time estimates if you disagree with those from the projection sets (but it keeps the “averaged” rate of performance from the projections and multiplies that rate by your playing time estimate. Click here to read more about the Projection Aggregator and see detailed screenshots  |
| SGP Slope Calculator Spreadsheet (download) | Enter your league’s standing history into this Excel file and it will calculate the SGP factors (denominators) specifically based on that league history. Read more about the tool and how to use it in this post.
Customizeable for anywhere from 8 to 16 teams. Allows up to eight hitting and eight pitching categories to be logged. This spreadsheet will also calculate the target rotisserie points and category totals you need to win your league. 
UPDATE: After doing research on relative standings gain points, I’ve now added a line on the Slope Calculator to display the relative calculations below the traditional SGP denominator. |
| MLB Team Abbreviation Map (link to CSV) | Have you ever tried to join or use a VLOOKUP to combine information from different sites, only to realize that the White Sox are abbreviated “CHW” on one site and “CHA” on another? Or the Giants are “SF” on a site and “SFG” on another? Honestly, this doesn’t happen to me often. But it will occasionally. I figured it might be helpful to document the team abbreviations used on the major sites and make it easily available for download. The map currently has team abbreviations for the following sites:
 Read more about how you can make use of this tool here. |
Tanner, the ID map is a fantastic idea. I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it first!
Thanks! I believe they say necessity is the mother of invention. I do need to update it for things that transpired during the season and for those expected to play during 2014. I have already started and hope to have it uploaded here soon.
Hi Tanner, thank you so much for this! It’s great. You may want to look into updating it some more. For example, you have Bobby Abreu in there and he retired.
Hi Jason, I agree that it seems odd for me to have players like that in there. Abreu is not even the worst example. He has at least played last season. If you look close enough I think you’ll see guys like Barry Bonds and Trevor Hoffman. I keep them in there because I will occasionally do studies where I look back in time to test theories and strategies. So I need their player IDs for those purposes.
If a player is obviously retired I try to put “N/A” for their team. But I should go through and update that some because you’ll see Abreu still shows as having a team.
If having these retired players in there is causing problems in your spreadsheets, let me know. I can probably explain a way around it.
It’s not an issue at all, just saves time. At first I thought I was doing something wrong when those retired players had no values coming back! This is a great tool. Thanks!
Can you add Runs Produced? I see you have added other categories over time. Great spreadsheet.
Hi Chris,
I am assuming you mean to the “SGP Slope Calculator”? I just uploaded a new version that has Runs Produced in the drop downs. If you already have another version that you started to fill out, you can add this yourself pretty easily so you don’t need to start over. Just right-click on any of the tabs in the Excel file and choose the “Unhide” option. Then unhide the tab called “Drop Down Menus”. Then just add whatever category you want to the applicable spot on that tab and it should show up on the drop down menus elsewhere.
Thanks. Tanner
Thank you again for updating an already awesome tool. I ended up re-building my spreadsheet this year, with the ‘live’ updating Player ID Map.
However, I’m getting an issue where player projection numbers are only updating for players with a Fangraph ID beginning with “sa”.
I tried from both Zips and Steamer projections. Just didnt know if it was something you ran into.
Hi Philip, try this article: https://www.smartfantasybaseball.com/2015/12/an-important-lesson-and-how-to-resolve-vlookup-errors/
Let me know if you have any issues.
Thanks,
Tanner
Briliant, it worked perfectly! Thanks Tanner.
Love the site Tanner. Just wanted to report a small error in the ID map: Tommy Pham’s bbref ID is wrong. Let me know if there’s a better place for reports like this. Cheers
Looks like Matt Olson’s bbref ID is also incorrect.
Thanks, 3card. I appreciate you pointing this out. You can comment here, e-mail me (smartfantasybaseball at g mail dot com), or let me know on Twitter (@smartfantasybb), if you find any others.
Hi again. A couple incorrect bref IDs for 2019: Ramon Laureano, Ronald Guzman
Thanks, 3card. Just fixed them.
I’ve loved this thing and have used it going on about 4 years now…One thing I’ve always needed was for the PlayerIDMap to put ‘SP’ or ‘RP’ instead of just ‘P’ for the pitchers. If there is another way to get this done, it would save me hours and manually updating or trying to find easy ways to update.
Hi, Matt. I have considered this at times, but have ended up concluding there would be no way to keep everyone happy. I suspect leagues have many different rules about the thresholds that constitute an RP vs. an SP vs. a P. I have two suggestions though.
First, do an analysis to see how many SP and RP end up in the draftable player pool if you ignore position. For example, if you’re in a 12-team league that starts 7 SP and 2 RP, how far from the implied 84 SP (12 * 7) and 24 RP (12 * 2) are you? If your top 108 are near the 84 and 24, it’s probably not worth sweating about.
Second, you could use Excel formulas to overwrite the value I have entered into the POSITION column. Or you could add your own position column. You could download a report like this one from Baseball-Reference and use Excel formulas to determine if a pitcher qualifies as an SP or an RP. Might take a little bit of thought to get it working the first time, but should be leverageable each season going forward.
Hi Matt, I play in an antiquated fantasy baseball league that uses winning percentage as one of its pitching categories, any suggestions as to how to
i can integrate this stat into your spreadsheet.
Hi Marco, unfortunately it wouldn’t be very practical for me to add that myself at this point in the offseason. But I can consider adding it for next year. The Automated Ranking Tool is an entirely unlocked Excel file you can manipulate and attempt to add your own categories. If you’re skilled in Excel, you could potentially add this
For the Automated SGP Rankings Tool, how do you differentiate players with multiple positions? Just use the highest one? We use LF/CF/RF so I’m in the process of modifying the tool.
I handle this outside of the rankings tool when I’m setting up the Player ID Map for the year. I attempt to assign each player to their most valuable position (or the scarcest position they play). Historically, this has been C, SS, 2B, 3B, OF, 1B, or something similar.
If you did want to manipulate the file, I think you’d first manipulate the Player’s POS’s in the Player ID Map. Then also add rows to the replacement level table for RF, CF, LF.
I’ve made some headway with adding the outfield positions, but ran into an issue with circular references when I tried to update the Hitter Cheat Sheet.
Hi, just an fyi: There are a lot of Davenport IDs missing — mainly younger players such as Juan Soto or Eloy Jimenez. Clay has them in his projection downloads here if this helps: http://claydavenport.com/projections/PROJHOME.shtml
Thanks, Sam. I just updated the map for the missing Davenport IDs. Thanks for pointing this out.
are you gonna be updating the id sheet for this season?
Hi, Matt. Yes. I plan to keep it relatively up-to-date. I will mention the caveats that I’m mostly concerned about keeping it updated for season-long fantasy relevance, So my update schedule and what I deem to be relevant might be different than what some DFS players will deem relevant. It’s also worth pointing out that I keep the web version of the ID Map updated, but do not always flush the changes through to the downloadable Excel version. But if you download the Excel version, right-click within the data of that file and choose “Refresh”, the web version will get pulled into the Excel file.
I have made a lot of updates in the last several days. I’ve added a lot of younger players that have become relevant. I think next order of business is to get the revised Fangraphs IDs for those previously in the minor leagues updated.
If you see changes that are needed or players that are missing, please let me know and I’ll do my best to get things updated.
Hi – did you create the playerid list all manually? That’s a lot of work! I see some players that have been in the league a few years like Luke Jackson are not listed. Also, you have Pete Alonso as Peter Alonso under MLBNAME – i don’t believe this is correct, is this expected?
Hi Stotts, yes, I created and maintain that list manually. It is quite a bit of work. I wish I could automate it more. My goal is to keep it updated with players that are “fantasy relevant.” That’s purposely ambiguous and allows me to decide who gets on and who doesn’t! I’m playing in mostly 15-team leagues, so that’s the general barometer I use. If they’re relevant to those leagues and it’s someone on my radar to pick up, they make the list.
So that’s why Luke Jackson isn’t on the list quite yet. He just recently became relevant by recording a save. I’ll try to add him tonight.
Pete/Peter Alonso has a difference because he formally changed the way he wants people to refer to him. Those are especially hard for me to pick up on. So I’ll double check his references too and make sure they’re correct.
Hope that helps explain where I’m coming from and why you may uncover minor errors in the ID Map.
missing:
https://www.mlb.com/player/jon-berti-542932
https://www.mlb.com/player/tomas-nido-621512
https://www.mlb.com/player/pete-alonso-624413
https://www.mlb.com/player/ty-france-664034
Thank you!!
Will you release a new version for the 2020 season or can I use the 2019 version for 2020?
Hi Michael, I will be releasing updated 2020 versions within the next couple of days. But you can also use your 2019 version. In most of the tools I sell, I include a section in the instruction manual about “adding players”. Those 2019 versions should work, you’ll just have to add the new relevant players for the 2020 season.
Hi…i just tried to insert new Steamer projections for 2020….there are around 2450 players in the playeridmap, 4156 hitters + nearly 5000 pitchers in the projections…many of them are not fantasy relevant…hitter ranks shows about 1100 hitters but i`m missing some players like Bichette, Y.Alvarez to name a few…both are in the idmap and in the projections…why don`t they show up in the hitter ranks?
Regards
David
Hi David, hopefully you can locate the instruction manual that came with the automated ranking tool. There is a section toward the back of that manual the discusses how to add new players to the tool. Updating the Player ID Map is one step, but then you also need to add the players to the hitter or pitcher ranks tabs. If you’re having trouble identifying who is relevant, a simple hack might be to go through the new NFBC ADP that recently came out and make sure you have the players accounted for in your sheet.
Have you considered adding Baseball Savant to the ID Map? Would be super helpful for advanced analysis! Thank you so much for you work!
Hi, Brett. Sorry for the slow response. I didn’t notice there were recent comments. Baseball Savant is an MLB-owned site, so they use the MLBID column on the spreadsheet. If you run into trouble using that column to interface with Baseball Savant data, please let me know.
Thanks for this! I noticed that some of the Lahman IDs are wrong for players who have the same name as an older player (I was using this to link birth dates from the Lahman Database with FanGraphs data). Ones that popped out right away: Dominic Smith (should be smithdo02 instead of smithdo01), Bill Hall (hallbi03, not hallbi01), Peter O’Brien (obriepe04, not obriepe01), Franklin Barreto (barrefr02, not barrefr01), and Ramon Flores (florera02, not florera01).
Thanks, Morris. I did update the BREFID field for Dominic Smith and Franklin Barreto. I can verify I had those wrong. I didn’t change anything for Hall, O’Brien, or Flores. What I had in the BREFID column seems correct when I look the players up on Baseball-Reference (granted, my “IDPLAYER” column is wrong for these players. But the BREFID field agrees). I see you mention Lahman. Does that database follow the Baseball-Reference IDs? I generally try to follow those, but if I screw one up (like I did for Dominic Smith), I’ll adjust his BREFID field, but leave his IDPLAYER as the way I originally created it.
Hi Tanner! Thanks for that update. I believe based on the matching I did that IDPLAYER is the Lahman player ID. I am not sure how you are gathering these data together, but given that you keep the BREFID most up to date here, perhaps you can use the Lahman Player table to link BREFID with IDPLAYER (http://www.seanlahman.com/files/database/readme2017.txt)?
It sounds like from this post, you either created the IDPLAYER or the source you got it from hasn’t updated. What does IDPLAYER represent here if not the Lahman player ID?
Hi, Morris. Yeah, I did “create” IDPLAYER in a sense. Inadvertently, more or less. It should be the exact same as the BREFID 99% of the time. There are a few instances where I erroneously used something that was not the same as the actual BREFID (e.g. I could have used SMITHTO01 and should have used SMITHTO02).
You may just choose to ignore IDPLAYER. It’s now a decision that I made long ago that I’m somewhat stuck with. I designed a lot of my spreadsheets and tools to work off IDPLAYER, even though it’s essentially duplicative of BREFID. I can’t change IDPLAYER now without inconveniencing (or destroying) the spreadsheets of many people that have come to use the ID Map over time, unfortunately.
Small error I noticed, Jose Ramirez (CLE) seems to have the same Rotowire ID (12840) as Jose Ramirez, a reliever who last pitched for the Braves. The reliever’s Roto ID should be 12710. Thank you very much for all your work putting this together.
Thanks, Griffin. I have fixed the Jose Ramirez pitcher now.
[…] Player ID Map: Another one from SmartFantasyBaseball.com! This one is free and if you import data from multiple sources this one is a huge addition. Basically, it helps match up the player IDs from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, MLB.com, and a few other sites so that you can work with that data across sites. […]
[…] Smart Fantasy Baseball – Are you decent with excel? If so the tools on Smart Fantasy Baseball can take your game to the next level. Rather than provide you with a bunch of analysis, this site is one big tool that helps you be the expert. Tools included are an Automated SGP Rankings Tool, Projecting X, which is a baseball projections system developed by Mike Podhorzer and made accessible to all by Tanner Bell, and a Projections Aggregator Tool. […]
This is a godsend. Thank you for putting this together. I know how much work goes into something like this and how valuable it is to the community, so I’m happy to help contribute.
Here are a couple fixes for Retrosheet IDs I found getting ready for the season so far. Let me know if you’d like me to share any more if I find them.
PLAYERNAME RETROID
1 Pete Alonso alonp001
2 Luis Cruz cruzl001
3 Nelson Cruz cruzn002
4 Adam Eaton eatoa002
5 Cesar Hernandez hernc005
6 Bryan Reynolds reynb001
Thanks, Chris! I have made these edits. Please feel free to continue posting suggestions here or you can also just email me directly.
Hi. Thanks for doing this. I’m looking for data containing current major league players. I had been using Crunchtime but it looks like that is no long being maintained. A couple of questions:
1) How often does this get updated during the season? How long from the date a player makes his major league debug until your spreadsheet gets updated?
2) I noticed Nolan Arenado is still listed as being on the Rockies. Is that just a bug, or is there some lag time before this update happens?
Thanks again.
Josh
Hi, Josh. I keep this pretty up-to-date. My system is not automated, so it’s never going to be as reliable as Tim’s was at Crunchtime. The Excel file you download does get out of date. But it is linked to an online source that is updated much more regularly. You just have to right click within the Excel table and choose the “Refresh” command and the updated data will pull into Excel. I don’t flush my changes all the way through to that Excel very often.
If you need a player added, just reach out to me on Twitter or email me. I do try to keep the population of players in the map to be those that are “fantasy relevant”. I’m not looking to track all MLB bullpens, etc. I should mention that’s more of a “season-long fantasy relevant”. I’m not sure my timelines are going to line up well with those looking for a DFS resource.
Thank you so much for this. I am working on a project and this is the only file I could find with updated retro and BF IDs to help me compare. My project is http://www.mlbtradetrees.com, I will be giving you a credit once I update with stats! Thank you so much!!!!
Thanks for your work on this. It’s a tremendously helpful database. I was wondering if you could add TJ Freidl (CIN) to the database. I also noticed two errors that mattered to Excel when I used this. 1) Ryan McMahon’s CBS name is listed as Ryan Mcmahon, and excel only accepts it as a match for “Ryan McMahon”. Similarly, Lars Nootbaar is listed as Lars NootBaar when his CBS name is Lars Nootbaar.
I wish there was a way for me to get my CBS sheets to spit out the user ID so I wouldn’t have to do this weird name matching, but since I can’t, I do.
Hi, Corey. Thanks for pointing this out. I made these two edits in the online version of the ID map. If you have a connected version, you should be able to refresh the data connection to pull in the change. More info on that here, if you need it: https://www.smartfantasybaseball.com/2020/12/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-player-id-map/
Am I missing something or is Alek Manoah not included in the list?
Hi, Louren. The ID map comes with a data connection that links it to my own live version. You can right click somewhere within the data of the Excel file and choose the “Refresh” option. Excel will then pull in all the latest and greatest information. I’m pretty confident the current data has every player within the top 500 of NFBC ADPs. There are likely only a small handful of players in the top 750 not included in the map. You can read more details about the ID map here: https://www.smartfantasybaseball.com/tools/
Hi Tanner,
My version of excel has external links disabled so when I go to download an updated version of the ID map, I get one that was posted in mid-late March. Any idea on how to remedy this situation?
This is great, it is been helpful for my work.
Here are a few players who are not in the database:
Bryan Lavastida, David MacKinnon, Simon Muzziotti, Henry Ramos, Jake Hager, Vinny Capra, Blake Perkins, Freddy Fermin, Nick Plummer, Brett Wisley, Payton Henry, Donovan Walton, Zach Reks, Brett Sullivan, Gosuke Katoh and Patrick Mazeika
Any plans to update the Player ID Map?
The ID map Excel file is connected to the main data source. You should be able to right-click within the data of the sheet and choose to “Refresh”. It should download all the latest and greatest information into the sheet automatically.
For more details, please check this out: https://www.smartfantasybaseball.com/2020/12/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-player-id-map/
I have also recently created this video showing how to update the ID map on Macs: https://youtu.be/1uKKMIZQ5PQ?si=p8X7D1mun9Fvhs0v
Hi there, and thanks for this very useful resource!
I think you’ve got the wrong MLBID for Logan Allen of CLE. It’s 671106 rather than 663531.
Cf. https://www.mlb.com/search?q=Logan%20Allen&playerId=671106
Thanks again,
Matthew
Hey there – noticing more discrepancies lately with players assigned to the wrong team – wondering if you would like some help to get things fixed.