Best Ball Mania Rankings

I've just launched Best Ball Mania Ranks with target exposures on each player

Hey Folks,

I hope you caught my most recent piece on the 2024 Best Ball Mania Economy, because that will be a *FAR* more actionable piece of information to inform you of how I’m approaching drafts this year from a structural and systemic basis than what I’m begrudgingly giving you today… rankings!

I really, truly hate rankings because I think it’s just not a great baseline from which to play any format of fantasy football, least of all best ball tournaments. If I was to summarize my strategy of how to make draft picks in this tournament as quickly as possible I would say the following:

• Identify the overall structure through you want to build your teams based on the macro-economy

• Identify players and teams within that structure you want to be aggressive in targeting in almost every draft

• Build consistently sound teams around those players by drafting at or near ADP with structure and correlation

Drafts - and portfolios of drafts - call for a dynamic process that a set of rankings just isn’t the appropriate medium to account for. However, I do understand that I’m not going to write 216 in depth player profiles and that part of my duty to you all as an analyst is to offer a micro-level take on each player within this year’s draft environment. I hope these ranks communicate that aspect of things and provide value that way.

The big question for me this year was whether to make these “market-adjusted” rankings i.e. an attempt to rank in the order I recommend you draft or “in a vacuum” ranks i.e. the order of how I prefer the players without any regard to their ADP.

I decided on the latter.

My first reason for that is there is simply no way I can make rankings that you should legitimately draft off of in order because drafts are far too dynamic. You need to be prioritizing structure and correlation in ways that will change your typical player preferences, and you’ll want to read the room of your individual draft by watching opponents teams and in-draft trends to try to play the room to the best of your ability. To me, if I give you a set of ranks that you can more or less plug into Underdog and draft off, I think I’m doing you a disservice.

My second reason is that I think we get too anchored to ADP when we’re drafting in the same economy day after day all summer even though it’s inevitable that some of these ADPs are going to look massively inefficient as soon as Week 1 (or even the pre-season in some cases). I want to demonstrate to you legitimate conviction in a tournament where diversification gives you very little, considering that out of 150 entries you would be quite fortunate to have even 1 team in the finals.

It’s not about arrogance that I’m right. It’s about the fact that we only have 150 bullets to fire, and in the event I get *some things right* I want to have as many bullets associated with those takes as possible to increase my minuscule odds of advancing to a finals and succeeding if I’m there. I would just rather build as many teams around my core conviction plays than throw 2-4% around at everyone even though nearly all of this diversification will be culled along the way anyhow. I want to be taking legitimate stands and I want the ranks to reflect that.

So how do you use these ranks?

The best way I would describe their use case is to take it as a communication of how I feel about each player. If I have a player listed far below their ADP I probably want zero or near-zero of them anyhow so feel free to not draft them until I have them ranked (if you want to draft off my opinions at all).

For players who I have listed materially above ADP (in some cases WAY above ADP), do not draft them where I have them ranked. The most actionable way to use these ranks is with a focus on the target exposure column.

For each player I have a set “target exposure” which is how often I want to draft them:

• Zero = 0% Exposure

• Only in Stacks = Only taking them if I’ve set up a stack (likely 2-8% depending on the player and team)

• 0.5X Market = 4% Exposure

• 0.75X Market = 6% Exposure

• 1X Market = 8% Exposure

• 1.25X Market = 10% Exposure

• 1.5X Market = 12% Exposure

• 2X Market = 17% Exposure

• 3X Market = 25% Exposure

• 4X Market = 33% Exposure

If you’re looking to hit my target exposure of a given player here is how I suggest actually drafting them:

• Zero = Never Draft

• Only In stacks = self-explanatory

• 0.5X - 0.75X Market = Only draft after ADP, typically in stacks or to set up stacks

• 1X - 1.25X Market = Only draft at or after ADP when fitting structure / correlation considerations

• 1.5X - 2X Market = Draft consistently at ADP when they fit structure. Correlation not always necessary but prioritize if they fit from a correlation perspective

• 3X -4X Market = Draft consistently at or near ADP so long as they fit the structure of the team. Correlation is ideal but not necessary

I hope you enjoy! Let me know if there is something I can do to make these more actionable and helpful for you!