Doesn’t seem fair, does it?
Can you imagine it? Bill Gates in a blue oxford, walking up the
plate, that smarmy smile on his face…despite the fact that
lurking on the mound is Koji.
As
in, “best season by a reliever since 1821” Koji.
My
guess is Gates would go down on 3 pitches: he’d watch a
first-pitch fastball whizz by without a swing, smarmy smile
still intact.
He’d swing & miss weakly at the next offering, another too-fast
fastball.
The 3rd pitch would be inspired by years of Koji, like the rest
of us, being frustrated that every other Windows offering is
simply horrible: he’d throw his nasty splitfinger, just a hint
off the plate. Gates, choking up to protect the plate, would
still miss by a mile, and down he’d go.
(How could you blame Koji for that 3rd pitch? I mean, XP was
fine, but then Vista was a nightmare; Windows 7 was perfectly
good, and then they had to go ‘improve’ everything with the
disastrous,
“we-probably-didn’t-ask-any-consumers-what-they-thought-of-THIS-operating-system”
Windows 8. I digress.)
But a batting matchup between the two millionaires isn’t
actually the point of my article.
I’m instead attempting to guide how you spend your offseason
time. Sure, you need to evaluate your team, decide whom to
trade, whom to draft, all that. But you also need to know how
to prep your team for the season, and then avoid overusage
during it.
As
we all know, Microsoft Excel, the default spreadsheet program
which controls the universe, can help you do this.
If
you know how to use Excel and manipulate it to your advantage,
you know that it’s something you probably can’t live without. I
have no idea how I’d avoid overusage during the season without
it. Not leveraging Excel in this way means you are more prone
to incurring penalties, for example.
So, while it makes sense to spend time deciding how much to
offer for Koji, and how much he’ll improve your team if you land
him, there’s a point at which learning Excel can also help your
team a great deal.
If
you view Excel merely as a necessary evil, or even purely evil,
it’s time to hit the accelerator and learn what you can.
THE EASY WAY OUT
The easy way out is for me to attach a file or two that
solves all your problems.
A
roster program that automatically pinpoints strengths &
weaknesses? How about a playing time grid? And what about the
grand-daddy of them all: a program that automatically exports
your Strat usage and converts those innocent-looking percentages
into dates (so when you see “104%” next to “Pedroia” on August
1, that means you can keep playing him at your current pace, but
he’ll run out on Sept 22, 6 games shy of your season finale).
There could be an even smarter version of the latter: an
algorithm that calculates how often you might face a certain
type of pitcher based upon the teams on your schedule the rest
of the year, and would suggest things like “just rest Pedroia
against LHP for the remainder of the season, and you should
avoid over-usage” based upon the number of times it expects you
to face a southpaw.
Or
the Einstein version, which would tell you how high you’ve been
hitting him, and if you move him down 2 slots in the batting
order vs RHP, his “runout” date moves to Sept 26. 4 slots?
You’ll be safe through the last game of the season.
The playing time grid is easy to create on your own (email
me if you need more details), but sadly, most of
those other programs don’t exist.
THE ONLY WAY
So, the only way is to battle through it. Excel can be quite
fun once you get the hang of certain functions, especially "vlookup"
but also conditional formatting. And if there are things you
don’t know how to do, then YouTube to the rescue: almost
anything you want to do with a computer will have a viable
solution on YouTube.
Even better, Microsoft recently introduced online chats to help
solve technical problems, a huge upgrade over the prior and less
successful “um, figure it out for yourself” model.
http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/
is a good place to start, or if your religious views hold that
Gates is, in fact, the AntiChrist, then non-Microsoft sites like
MrExcel.com give you an easy to use forum to post questions;
experts from around the globe give answers. I’ve used
MrExcel.com for over 10 years.
The very first version of our Rookie Review, back in 2004,
started off in Microsoft Word, but it became much easier to
handle once I migrated the write-ups & information into Excel.
Today, your competitors are sorting & editing that file in Excel
as they wish, allowing them to find more insights in less time.
And until you do something to change it, they’ll always have
that edge over you.
Mike SanClemente
--
Mike SanClemente is a founder of Stratogists.com. Subscribe to
his newsletter by visiting
www.Stratogists.com.
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Additional Notes: As we have shared
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more about the "Rookie Review" visit this page at:
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