When I do a review of any book or a new tool that might help other Strat Gamers with their level of play, I always look at it from the perspective of all of the gamers who will be using it. I like to make sure that when working with the guide itself that it is very easy to do and that every nuisance, capability and aspect linked to it's use is also fully explained.  Anyway, this is my way of how I look at new strategy tools.

So let's first talk about what you will receive with this Draft Guide.  As stated before, all the players who will receive their first Strat Baseball Card are fully evaluated.  The Panel looked at five areas of each players performance capabilities that includes:

How well did they perform in 2016.  What is the expectation of their future career, for you see as we all know, young prospects sometimes take a few years to get going.  And how durable will their play be (vs. not being injury prone) going forward.  A ranking system of 1-5 was used in these evaluations with "1" being the worse and "5" being the best.  The image presented from the draft guide at the beginning of this page is not fully complete however. There is also two other evaluation categories: for each positional player (the hitters) they were similarly ranked for their offensive and defensive abilities while each pitcher was ranked upon the variety of their pitches and the command of their pitches. Finally as you can see from our example shown above, the Evaluator also wrote a powerful comment to describe the player as he is at present and comments about their future potential as well.

The beauty of this guide and where it shines is we are able to use a built-in function in MS Excel where you can literally sort through this list within the guide, in any way you wish.  You could quickly just view, for example, those players who are rank a "5" in the future or the positional players who are a "5" offensively. Or conversely, you can view which players are a certain age like 22, or just sort all the players by age if you wish (using the built-in sort capability).  There is no limit how you can view these players.

Another aspect shown in our snapshot view of the draft guide above is that each player is given an overall ranking value - Points from 5-25, or an actual ranking index from 1-5.  Within the guide, the initial ranking page shows all of the players being sorted by their overall ranking value.  But also, we have gone one step farther and given to you, two other ranking pages which are shown by the main playing positions for each player so you can find that best young and upcoming 1B or pitcher depending upon the needs for your team. Plus in the back of the guide, in the appendix, is a done for you ready worksheet that you can print the entire ranking listings.

And if this isn't enough to help you, there are also included two Stat pages, one for the hitters (the positional players) and one for the Pitchers to show you how they did in 2016 including their lefty-righty stats as well.  For my money, the USBN Essential Draft Guide team not only did their homework but they added extra features to make your life much easier that I haven't seen in similar guides before.  Every part of it is simple to use and fully explained so you don't have to be a computer jock to immediately dig into the guide's important data.  So, whether you are an expert with Excel spreadsheets or just a newbie you will be able to use this guide quickly with a minimal of efforts and obtain the key information you require to make thoughtful draft picks for your team.

There is even a very detailed instruction page that will make sure you don't get lost and have a good idea of what you are doing.  Plus, the latest edition of the guide has the 3 classification of the players added so you can view just those players that your league allows to be drafted. This is one complete package.

I was able to solicit a comment from Bart Ewing, who is one of the evaluators mentioned before, about his experience and he wrote to me:  "It was a (very) cool project ... I think this is going to be the best guide of its type ever produced for Strat ..."

From Marc Wass, the initiator of the guide, "It is a pleasure to bring to our community such a great tool for the Strat-o-matic gamer to use when planning their upcoming drafts.  I have always enjoyed the extra resources that other fanatics (like myself) have brought into the community in years past, so I thought there was a void for this type of draft guide and that we could do it .... and so we did!"

And from the Draft Guide Coordinator, Doug Brunet, as part of his message to the users of the guide that is share within, "On behalf of everyone at the Ultimate Strat Baseball Newsletter, we greatly appreciate your interest  in our 2017 Draft Guide. I consider it an honor to have managed this project. Truthfully, it’s been a labor of love. It’s been also one of respect for all of you Strat players who are, most likely, as crazy and obsessed as I am."

And finally a few comments from those who already purchase the guide when it was initially released in the middle part of January:

Hi - I am enjoying using the guide and especially like the individual comments about the players - they go beyond the numbers and the guide saves me the time of having to look up each player myself!  Thanks -- CW

The draft guide you produced is as good, or better (closer to better) than any other guide of it's type I've seen, and priced more than reasonably!  Thanks...  Dan H.

Finally no review is complete unless we also take a look at what might be expanded within this draft guide as its development continues onward into the future.  One quick question we might pose is, "are only 5 categories to rank the full value of an up and coming player enough?".  So I would propose there might be other aspects (categories) for each player's abilities that could be added to the guide at some point.  Next, is a ranking from 1-5 enough, could this be expanded to 1-10 or 1-100 (as was proposed by one of the evaluators themselves)?  Maybe too, the guide could offer for each player, a link to an on-line scouting report that a reader of the guide could also read rather than trying to find one on their own?  Anyway, just a few other thoughts for consideration at this guide unfolds in its evolution.

In Summary: There has been a lot of thought put into the making of the 2017 USBN Essential Draft Guide, as the USBN Team (both staff and our guest evaluators) for it all are Strat Baseball Gamers just like you.  They have thought about what they would want see in a guide such as this, if one was available. 

So even though I was only a small part of the creation of (some help with the final editing and formatting)  the 2017 USBN Essential Draft Guide, I can tell you that it was utterly and completely a team effort and it definitely shows in the final product.  I daresay, I think the draft guide came out far better than any of us could initially visualize it.

So I highly highly recommend you take a good look at this guide. It will absolutely help you to know which of these young carded players coming out in a strat card for the first time in the new set should certainly be on your team or teams.  I think for the price the Draft Guide Team is charging, it's a steal with all the power and features you are going to be getting.  As a matter of fact, through the process of doing this guide, I now have found an easier way to work with the Ratings Book that Strat-o-matic releases each year to do the multiple sorting views of the information that I desire to read without working so hard.  There is no doubt whatsoever, with our Draft Guide and the Ratings Books, you will have everything at your fingertips.

I am very proud to have been associated with this group of creative gamers and you can be sure that the Essential Draft Guide will be a key tool offered by the newsletter for years to come that no doubt will always see new improvements and enhancements. Maybe you may even consider to join our team going forward!

All the best,
success in your league, tournament and replay gaming,

Wolfman Shapiro
editor, Ultimate Strat Baseball Newsletter.

PS - so if you are ready to order your copy see below ...

HOW TO PLACE YOUR ORDER AND WHAT HAPPENS AFTERWARDS?

We have set it up for you to order your copy of the 2017 USBN Essential Draft Guide via Paypal, this is the easiest way for us to do this on-line and to expedite your order so you will receive your copy of the Draft Guide quite quickly. You will see "Buy Now" buttons on this page which is linked directly to the Paypal ordering system.  If you don't have a paypal account, you can still use any credit card to place your order through Paypal.  

Special Note: We are going to be sending to you the 2017 Draft Guide as two files as an attachment to your email. We have found that sometimes the email linked to your paypal account is not the email you wish to receive your messages and information at.  Therefore, before completing your order, make sure in the Notes Section on the ordering screen, you indicate a different email for us to use to send your guide. The two files coming are two versions of a MS Excel spreadsheet which the guide is constructed from (.xls or .xlsx).  You must be able to read and use the functions of MS Excel to get the full power of all the ways in which the guide can be utilized.

After your order is completed on-line, here is what happens next:  We will both receive an email from Paypal, confirming your order make sure you find this email,.  Once we have this message from Paypal, we will then send to you an email with the two version of the draft guide attached.  Within the Draft Guide are instructions how to use the guide completely along with a brief explanation of our evaluation system and the various built-in functions within MS Excel that will help you to view all the information in the guide. There is also shown an email for technical support if you have any questions too.

If you have any other questions or a problem to receive your Draft Guide, feel free to contact us at our general email at:

info@ultimatestratbaseball.com
 

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