INTRODUCTION Thank you for inquiring about Spin Stats Version 4.00. We feel that after using the Spin Stats demo, you will find it to be the perfect tool for your fantasy baseball league. Its flexibility and ease-of-use make the chore of being league commissioner a breeze. Spin Stats was considered to be "the best of the dozens of stat-keeping programs" by Fantasy Baseball Magazine. It allows you to select from numerous point categories and each league that you run is separately "customizable". The Spin Stats demo allows you to see all of the full product's power and flexibility with the following exceptions: o You may create only one league for yourself. The complete version of Spin Stats allows you to run thousands of leagues. In addition, a demo league has already been set up for you in order to allow you to immediately see the numerous reports that Spin Stats makes available to you. o You are limited to only 4 teams within a league. The complete version allows thousands of teams per league. o You are limited to only 8 players on each team. The complete version allows thousands of players per team. o The complete version comes with a very comprehensive manual to guide you through your season from start to finish. Questions & Answers If you have any questions regarding this demo, feel free to contact us at Faulkner Strategics. There are several methods of contacting us. o You may a leave question via our electronic bulletin board. This BBS is on-line 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With this system, you may leave questions and they will usually be answered within 24 hours. You may also place orders through this BBS. The number to the BBS is (404) 908-1607. o Another method of contacting us is via the fax machine. You may send us a fax at (404) 378-7279. You may send faxes 24 hours a day and they will also be responded to within 24 hours. o Third, you may contact Faulkner Strategics directly. Our normal working hours are 10am to 6pm, Monday-Friday, Eastern Standard time. Our number is (404) 378-7279. WHY USE SPIN STATS? If you have had to keep track of your fantasy league statistics either manually or by a spreadsheet method, then you know how tremendous a chore it can be. You must keep track of hundreds of players which may or may not need unique calculations done to their statistics in order to figure out partial statistics. Spin Stats takes care of all of this for you. You simply enter in the players, make roster moves throughout the season, enter the player's current statistics (either manually or with a modem) and Spin Stats does the rest. And you don't have to be a computer expert by any means in order to use Spin Stats. It has self-explanatory light- bar menus and on-line help throughout in order to guide you through. Spin Stats places all of the power and control in your hands. You have your choice of many different point categories to keep track of and if Spin Stats does not include a category that you want, you can create it. You don't have to rely on expensive stat services to get your reports. These services usually make you play by their rules and keep you waiting for your reports to come in the mail. With Spin Stats, you can make roster moves when you want, update your statistics when you want and print your reports when you want. Considering its ease of use, complete list of features and low price ($59.95), Spin Stats is the best value in fantasy baseball league software products. A QUICK GUIDE THROUGH SPIN STATS The following discussion will guide you through some scenarios of running a league using Spin Stats. Follow these steps to see how easy it is to run your league using Spin Stats. This short guide will give you a feel for how Spin Stats works and what you can do with it. Please take the time to go through this guide and then feel free to play around with the entire system. Let's begin the guide! o Run Spin Stats by typing SSDEMO from the Spin Stats demo directory. o If this is the first time that you have run the demo, there will be an item that Spin Stats will ask you to set up. This will only occur this one time and will never occur again. The item that Spin Stats will ask you to tell it is what type of computer you have. This is only needed to set the speed of the opening screen properly. Answering this incorrectly will not effect anything except that the opening screen may be created slowly. If the opening screen gets created too slowly, go into 'System Options' and lower the value of the CPU speed field. Simply highlight the correct computer type and press [RETURN]. If you are unsure of which computer type to select, select the "386 - 80386 Processor'. Again, this will only happen this one time and will not happen again. NOTE: If you have a 5 1/4" diskette version of the Spin Stats Demo or if you downloaded the demo from our BBS system, the indexes to the data files do not yet exist. Therefore, there will be a second thing that happens this one time only. Once you have selected your computer type, Spin Stats will create the data file indexes. This will take a short moment and will only occur this one time. o This will bring you to the opening screen asking you to either enter a date or confirm the provided date. This date is very important! Spin Stats stamps roster moves with this date. No matter what the computer system's date is, Spin Stats uses this opening screen's date so that you can go back and make roster moves that you may have missed and have Spin Stats use the correct date for that roster move, etc. For example, if it is August 5th and you need to go back and enter in a roster move that you forgot to do on July 26th, simply enter this date as '07/26/93' and the roster move will be dated properly. o Change the date to 05/16/93 and press [RETURN]. o This will bring you to the opening Spin Stats menu. Let's enter into a league and do some weekly processing, such as roster moves and reports. o Select "Enter Into League" to bring up a list of leagues. Select "SPIN STATS DEMO LEAGUE". This will enter you into the "SPIN STATS DEMO LEAGUE" and bring you to another menu. Here you will have access to all of the features you will need in order to run this league. At this time, we would like to add Deion Sanders to a team called the BASE RAPS. Since in this example the baseball season is under way, we will want beginning stats to be entered for Deion when he gets added to the roster so that his stats will begin accumulating for the BASE RAPS from that point forward. o Select the "Player Transactions" menu choice. This will bring up a list of teams to work on. Select the "BASE RAPS". o Select the "Add a Player to the Roster" menu choice. You will see a screen of options before you get into the player addition routine. This screen will ask you 3 questions: Do you want to use a downloaded file to pick players from?; Do you want to pull the stats from this file as startup stats?; and Which downloaded file do you want to use? o Select the "Change Options" selection. This allows you to change the above options. Answer "Y" for the first two questions and then hit the F2 key to popup a list of downloaded files. Select the download file dated 05/16/93. o Select the "Continue on to Routine" selection. o At the "Player" prompt, press F2 to get a popup list of players to select from. o Begin typing SANDERS, D. You will see the highlight bar move to the player starting with the letters that you type. When Deion Sanders is highlighted, press [RETURN]. o A list of positions will come up. Type the letter 'O'. This will highlight the position "OF-Outfield". Press [RETURN]. o A list of major league teams will popup with this player's major league team highlighted, in this case the Atlanta Braves. Press [RETURN]. o The player's on-line name will be automatically placed into the "On-line" field. For this demo, the system options are set up to make the match with the on-line service by a combination of major league team and on-line name. This option could be set to match by player ID number. In that case, you would see the ID number in the "On-line" field. Press [RETURN] to continue. o Then you will be prompted to enter in "Miscellaneous" information and "Salary" information. Simply enter something in these fields and press [RETURN] or leave the field blank by pressing [RETURN] without entering anything. o You will see a message at the bottom of the screen that says "Stats pulled from on-line file". Then the player's stats will appear on the screen. The stats that you see on the screen will be the starting up stats for Deion Sanders and they will not count for this team. Stats will begin accumulating for this team from this point forward. A message will appear at the bottom of the screen asking you if you need to enter previous statistics or not. Since the stats were pulled from the file, there is no need to manually enter the previous stats, so type 'N'. If stats were not pulled or you were doing stats manually, you would want to enter 'Y' and type in the starting up stats. At this time, enter 'N'. o You will then have 3 choices: "Edit Input", "Save Input", or "Abandon Input". Since the information entered is correct, type "S" to save or highlight the "Save Input" choice and press [RETURN] to save. o You are now back at the "Player" prompt and are ready to enter another player. Simply press [RETURN] to return to the menu. This concludes the example of entering a new player to the team in the middle of the season. Now let's go and drop a player from a roster. We will drop Mariano Duncan off of PHIL'S PHLEDGLINGS' roster. o First we need to change the team that we are working with. If you notice, at the top of the menu box is the current team that we are working with and it says "Base Raps". Type "S" or highlight "Switch to Another Team" and press [RETURN]. This will bring up a list of teams to choose from. o Select "Phil's Phledgings" and press [RETURN]. Notice the team name change at the top of the menu box. o Select the "Drop a Player from the Roster" menu choice. o At the "Player" prompt, press F2 to get a list of players to pick from. o Type the letter 'D' to go to the first player that starts with a 'D'. Highlight "Duncan, M" and hit [RETURN]. o You will see the question "Do you need to update this player's statistics before dropping?". This is giving you the opportunity to update the player's current major league stats before dropping him off of the active roster. At this time, type "N". o A list of statuses will appear for you to choose from. This player will be stamped with this transaction status. Based on this status and how it is set up in league maintenance, a value will be charged to the team for this transaction and the stats while active on this roster will count toward the team totals. Please refer to the league maintenance menu choice called "Status Maintenance" for further details. At this time, select "d - Disabled". o Now you will be given a choice to enter "D" to drop the player or "E" to end without dropping. Type "D". o At the "Player" prompt, press [RETURN] to exit This concludes dropping a player from the roster. Now let's go on and look at some reports for this league. o Select "Quit to Team Menu" o Select "Print Reports" First, we will look at the report of player statistics for all of the team's. o Select "All Players' Statistics" o You will be prompted for a print destination. Select "SCREEN" to send the report to the screen. o You will then see a screen full of report options. Take time to look over these options to see what is available for you to modify in order to create the report that you would like to see for your league. If you would like to change any option, select "Change Options". When you are ready to see the report, select "Print Report". o After Spin Stats generates the report, it will appear on the screen. You may use the arrow keys along with the "Page Up" and "Page Down" keys to navigate through the entire report. When you are finished viewing the report, type "Q" to quit. Now let's look at the league standings. o Select "League Standings" o You will be prompted for a print destination. Select "SCREEN" to send the report to the screen. o You will then see a screen full of report options for this report also. When you are ready to see the report, select "Print Report". That's the end of the Quick Guide. This guide should have given you a feel for how Spin Stats operates and how it can help you run your league quickly and easily. Please take the time to look over the rest of the Spin Stats system to see its many powerful features. SPIN STATS DEMO MENU SELECTIONS This is not the full manual that you will receive when you purchase Spin Stats. Instead, what follows is a quick list, in alphabetical order, of every menu selection in the Spin Stats system and what it does. Please take a look at the entire Spin Stats system and see the power and flexibility that it gives the league commissioner. ABOUT SPIN STATS This selection simply gives you information about the product you are running. ADD A PLAYER TO THE ROSTER This selection allows you to add a new player to the roster. Through this selection you may add a player at the beginning of the season or you may enter a player who has already generated some statistics. If he has already generated some statistics, the statistics up to the time of the addition to the roster will not count towards that roster's totals. ADD, EDIT, & DELETE PRINTER This selection allows you to maintain printer information. You can add new printers to the system, change an existing printer's information, and delete a printer from the system. ADD LEAGUE This selection allows you to add leagues to the system. Spin Stats can handle numerous leagues at a time. When you add a league, you will be asked: what type of league that you want to run; which point categories you would like to track; if you want to attach on-line service names to your players; if you want to attach major league team names to your players; and if you want to set roster limits. ADD, EDIT, AND DELETE TEAMS This selection allows you to maintain team information within the current league. You may maintain team owner information including name and address, phone numbers, and how much an owner has paid. You may also instruct Spin Stats to generate the amount owed and the salary total for this team. ADJUST A PLAYER'S TRANSACTION This selection allows you to correct any wrong roster moves that are mistakenly made. This selection will show you each transaction that has been made for a player and allows you to delete the transaction in order to bring a player back to the proper status. Occasionally, you will also need to go and update the player's current statistics again if you have deleted an inactive transaction to make the player active again. Also, through this selection, you may edit any of the past transactions directly. However you must be careful not to put in greater values for past statistics than for future ones. Spin Stats will generate an error if this occurs. ALL PLAYERS' STATISTICS This will print player statistics for all teams in the league. BACKUP DATA FILES This selection copies your data files to a diskette. You should back up your data on a regular basis. The little amount of time that this option takes to run could save you alot of time should you later discover that you made an error with a player or a team. BUILD DRAFT DAY FILE This selection allows you to take a stat file from an on-line service and import it into Spin Stats without updating any players in the league. By doing this, you will then be able to quickly build Opening Day rosters through the menu choice "Draft Opening Day Rosters". CATEGORY MAINTENANCE (LEAGUE) This selection allows you to modify some of the characteristics of the categories being used by the current league. Among these are entry sort and print sort. CATEGORY MAINTENANCE (SYSTEM) This selection allows you to modify the characteristics of the categories in the Spin Stats system. These characteristics will be inherited by any league created from that point on. CHANGE LEAGUE INFO This selection allows you to change the league name, what type of league it is, whether or not to attach on-line service names to the players, whether or not to attach major league team names to the players and change roster limits. You can also change which point categories the league will track. CHANGE SCREEN COLORS This selection allows you to change all of the colors in the Spin Stats system. Of course, you may only run this selection if you have a color monitor. CHECK APPOINTMENTS This selection will look into the appointment calendar and see if there are any appointments set up for the current date. CHECK & MODIFY CONFIG.SYS This selection will check your system's CONFIG.SYS file to make sure that it is properly set for Spin Stats to run. CLEAR FILES FOR NEW SEASON This will clear out the files for a new season. You will be asked whether you would like to retain the team information and the players. If you retain the players, their statistics will be reset to 0 and their status will be set to FULL SEASON PLAYER. Also, if you choose to retain players, you can choose to retain all players or select which players that you would like to retain. CONVERT VERSION 3.xx to 4.xx This selection will take the files from a Spin Stats version 3 system and convert them to the version 4 system. This will add the version 3 leagues to the system and will not overwrite any leagues that you have already added to the version 4 systems. COPY LEAGUE INFO This selection will take all of the information from one league and copy it into a new league. DELETE A PLAYER FROM THE TEAM This selection will delete a player from a team. This is NOT the same as dropping a player from the active roster. This selection will completely wipe out this player's information. This information CANNOT be recovered after it has been deleted. DELETE LEAGUE This selection allows you to delete a league from the system. If you delete a league, all associated files (team files and player files) will also be deleted. Once the league has been deleted, the information CANNOT be recovered. DOWNLOAD FILE MAINTENANCE This selection allows you to change the information about an imported stat file. With this selection, you may change the date and description of the imported stat file. DRAFT OPENING DAY ROSTERS This selection allows you to build Opening Day rosters quickly from an imported stat file. You will simply select the player and position and Spin Stats will supply the major league team, on-line code, and add the player to the active roster. You must first run either "Update Files From On-line Service" or "Build Draft Day File" before you can use this menu choice. DROP A PLAYER FROM THE ROSTER This allows you to drop a player from the active roster. When you drop a player, you will select a drop status which will be used for reporting purposes only. Example statuses are Reserved, Disabled, Sent to minors, etc. EDIT A PLAYER'S NAME This selection allows you to change the player's name. The way the player's name appears here is the way it will appear on the reports. EDIT TRANSACTION LIST This allows the user to modify the transaction file that has been built by Spin Stats from the league's roster moves. This allows the league commissioner to go in and zero out transaction values, etc. ENTER INTO LEAGUE This choice will take you to a particular league in the Spin Stats system so that you may run this league. Spin Stats will pop-up a list box of leagues for you to select from. By highlighting and pressing [RETURN] on a league name, you are taken to the team menu for that league. All reports and data entry can only be done on a league by league basis. Once you have entered into a league, any actions you take will only effect that particular league. FILE RE-BUILD This selection rebuilds and verifies all of the system file indexes. The indexes allow the system to sort and find information. This selection should be chosen routinely in order for Spin Stats to maintain data most efficiently. Never turn the computer off without exiting Spin Stats through its menu selections. If the power should go off while running Spin Stats, choose this selection the next time that you run the Spin Stats program. FREE AGENT LISTING This report will print out any major league players that are not on an active roster. This choice is only available if you are downloading from an on-line service. GENERATE PERIOD STATS This selection will take a given beginning and ending period and will generate the players' period stats. This selection must be run prior to printing any period stats on the reports. KEEP FILES FAST AND LEAN When Spin Stats deletes records from its files, it simply marks them for deletion without removing them from the files. Therefore, the files do not get smaller as you delete information. This selection will go in and remove the records marked for deletion. This selection could help save disk space. Also, this selection does the same file re-building as the "File Re-build" menu choice. See File Re-Build. LEAGUE MAINTENANCE This selection will take you into the league maintenance menu selection so that you can modify the characteristics of the league. LEAGUE STANDINGS This will print out the league standings. It will print out a batting total, a pitching total, a grand total, and how many points behind the leader each team is. With the correct system option set, you may also see what place the teams were the last time that the league standings were run. MAINTAIN FREE AGENT FILTER LIST This selection allows you to select players so that they will no longer appear on the free agent report. This can be used for players that get injured for the season, etc. While they still remain in the stat file, they will not appear on the free agent report if you select them with this menu choice. MAINTAIN LEAGUES This selection will take you to the maintain leagues menu where you can add leagues, change league information, copy leagues, and delete leagues. MAINTAIN PRINTERS This selection will bring you to a menu where you can add, change, and delete printers along with selecting the active printer. MAJOR LEAGUE TEAM MAINTENANCE This selection allows you to add, edit, or delete major league teams from the system. When you select a team, you will see four prompts. One is to change the major league team name. This is how you want the team name to appear on your reports. The second prompt asks what league the team is in. This is either 'AL' or 'NL'. The third prompt asked which division this team is in. This is either 'EAST', 'WEST', or 'CENTRAL'. The fourth field is the team abbreviation. This is a three letter code that will print on some of the reports so that you can see which team the player is on without taking up much report space. NON-STATISTICAL INFO This report will print the players along with their non-statistical information such as on-line service field, major league team name, miscellaneous field, and salary field. ONE TEAM'S STATISTICS This selection allows you to print a single team's player information. You will be prompted for the team you would like to print. ON-LINE SERVICE MAINTENANCE This allows you to modify the characteristic of an on-line stat service and how Spin Stats picks out information from that on-line stat service. ON-LINE SERVICE MENU This selection takes you to the on-line service menu. This is where you would run the programs associated with data from an on-line service. PLAYER LISTING This selection will print out all of the players from an imported stat file. This report will also use the players that have been selected through the "Maintain Free Agent Filter List" to decide whether or not the player shows on the report. PLAYER TRANSACTIONS This selection will bring you to another menu where you can manipulate all of your player information. You can do such things as drop and add players to the roster, delete players, edit players, etc. POINTS PER CATEGORY This will print out each point category and how each team did. It will show what the team's total was for that category and how many points they were awarded for that category. There are two different types of the points per category report. One shows a lot of detail for each category and the other is more of a summary. POSITION MAINTENANCE (LEAGUE) This selection allows you to modify some of the characteristics of the positions being used by the current league. Among these are the description and sort. POSITION MAINTENANCE (SYSTEM) This selection allows you to modify the characteristics of the positions in the Spin Stats system. These characteristics will be inherited by any league created from that point on. You may add, edit, and delete positions from this menu choice. PRINT MULTIPLE REPORTS This selection allows you to print the "All Players' Statistics", "Team Statistics", "Points Per Category", and "League Standings" reports all at once. This choice will read the options for each report as they are currently setup. You may want to go into each of the reports prior to running this selection in order to setup their options the way that you want them to be. You can set the options without running the report by changing them and then exiting the report without printing it. PRINT REPORT OF WHO DIDN'T UPDATE This will print a report containing the active players which were not updated by the last imported stat file. PRINT REPORTS This selection will bring you to another menu where you can choose different reports to print. You can also maintain your printers through this selection. PRINT TEAM OWNER INFO This selection will print the owner information for the teams in the current league. PROGRAM UTILITIES MENU This selection takes you to the program utilities menu where you can do such things as rebuild indexes, backup data files, change screen colors, change system options, etc. QUIT TO DOS This selection ends Spin Stats and returns you to DOS. You should always exit Spin Stats in this manner. NEVER turn the computer off without exiting Spin Stats properly. This could result in a loss of data. If the power should go off while running Spin Stats, choose the FILE RE-BUILD selection the next time that you run Spin Stats. QUIT TO LEAGUE MENU This selection takes you back to the league menu. QUIT TO TEAM MENU This selection will take you back to the team menu. QUIT TO THE PRINT MENU This selection takes you back to the print reports menu. RE-ACTIVATE A PLAYER ON ROSTER This selection allows you to place a player who is inactive on the active roster. A player's statistics will only count towards the roster totals while he is active. RE-CALCULATE PLAYERS STATISTICS If for some reason the players' partial statistics get out of synch, running this selection will look through each player's transactions and re-generate the player's correct active stats. RE-RUN PLAYER UPDATE This selection allows you to re-run the last imported stat file in order to update players that were not updated the first time due to incorrect setup. You should run this choice instead of importing the on-line stat file again. RESTORE DATA FILES This selection will restore the Spin Stats data files from a previous backup. SEARCH FOR AN ACTIVE PLAYER This selection allows you to search for a player within the league. This can be used for quick access to a player or if you do not remember which team he is on. SELECT THE ACTIVE PRINTER This selection allows you to change which printer is set to be used for printing out reports. STATUS MAINTENANCE (LEAGUE) This selection allows you to modify some of the characteristics of the statuses being used by the current league. Among these are the description, whether this type counts toward active stats, whether this stat should appear on the free-agent report, transaction messages and transaction values. STATUS MAINTENANCE (SYSTEM) This selection allows you to modify the characteristics of the statuses in the Spin Stats system. These characteristics will be inherited by any league created from that point on. You may add, edit, and delete statuses from this menu choice. SWITCH TO ANOTHER TEAM If you are finished with the current team and would like to make changes to players on another team, you may choose this selection to go to another team. SYSTEM MAINTENANCE This selection will take you into the system maintenance menu. SYSTEM OPTIONS This allows you to customize the way Spin Stats handles certain functions. For instance, which on-line services you are using, do you want sound effects turned on, which diskette drive do you want to back up to , etc. TEAM STATISTICS This will print the team totals for batting and pitching for each team in the league. TRADE AN INACTIVE PLAYER This menu choice allows you to trade an inactive player from one team to an active roster of another team. TRADE PLAYERS TO ANOTHER TEAM This selection allows you to trade a player or players from one team to another. The player(s) will become inactive on the previous roster and will become active on the new roster and his (or their) current statistics will be automatically transferred. TRANSACTION LISTING This allows the user to print a list of transactions that have occurred for a given date range. UPDATE A PLAYER ON THE ROSTER Through this selection you may update a player's information. This includes his current statistics, position, status, on-line service field, major league team, or salary. UPDATE AN INACTIVE PLAYER This selection allows you to update a player's information while he is not on the active roster. For example, you may change a player's position without re-activating him. UPDATE BY MAJOR LEAGUE TEAMS If you are manually entering the statistics, this selection allows you to update your player information in major league team order. This allows for quicker updating because it will bring up all of the players from the same major league team together. That way you can use the paper and update all of the Atlanta Braves together instead of having to look all over the paper to find which team the current player is on. Through this selection you can update the player's statistics, position, status, on-line service field and salary. You CANNOT update the player's major league team name through this selection. UPDATE BY POSITION This selection allows you to update your player information in position order. This allows for quicker updating because it will bring up all of the players for the same position together. Certain publications list out players' stats in this order. This way you can use the publication and update all of the first basemen together instead of having to look all over the paper to find which position the current player is playing. Through this selection you can update the player's statistics, major league team, status, on-line service field and salary. You CANNOT update the player's position through this selection. UPDATE FILES FROM ON-LINE SERVICE This selection allows you to update the current statistics of all of the players for each league that has their on-line flag set to 'Y'. This function will read the on-line service stat file and import them into the Spin Stats system. It will check the system options to see which on-line service you have selected so that it will know how the stats are formatted. After you run this selection, you will probably want to run the "Print Report of Who Didn't Update" selection. This will tell you which players were not updated. Typically, if a player was not updated, then either his major league team or his on-line field is incorrect.