Ten Players to Build Best Ball Championships Around (Part 1)

It's Player Taek SZN

Those familiar with my best ball work over the years know that I have tended to play fairly flat in terms of my exposures. I prioritize ADP value, correlation, and targeting and fading players based on archetypal qualities.

However, thus far in 2023 I’ve found myself taking larger stands than ever. Last year my highest rostered player was just 23% exposure, with just 10 above 2X Market (16.7%).

This group included some massive hits (shoutout Garrett Wilson, Saquon Barkley, Evan Engram, Jerick McKinnon) and some massive misses (shoutout Elijah Moore, Kyle Pitts, Skyy Moore).

However, thus far in 2023 I’ve been much more aggressive in pursuing my top targets. My most drafted player carries 51-percent exposure and I have 9 players 3X the market or more.

The reason behind this is three-fold.

First, best ball has evolved over the past few years from a niche off-shoot of fantasy football to one of its central game formats. Along with vastly increased play has come far more and far better content. Mike Leone’s Best Ball Manifesto and other similar work has narrowed the debate around what roster constructions are viable. Whatever edge over you could glean from simply drafting well-structured teams and not reaching on ADP has shrunk as the ratio of “dead” teams vs. the rake has shrunk.

Second, the most consistent edge I’ve pressed since playing fantasy is to focus on impact of outcome rather than likelihood. In other words, I’ve long felt ADP is too tied to median outcomes which are most non-determinative of league or tournament championships. By chasing ceiling outcomes at the expense of medians, over a large sample, I can increase my chance at upper-percentile lineups. A perfect example of this from last year is my extremely over-weight stance on the 2022 Rookie WR class. While my Skyy Moore picks certainly flamed out, indiscriminately hammering rookie WRs in this range of the draft was a net profitable choice with huge pay-offs on Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave, and a strong result at cost from Jahan Dotson and Christian Watson.

I don’t have sufficient information to say whether or not the proverbial shark has been jumped, but we draw indisputably closer to its jaws with each passing year.

Broad, heuristic-based strategies work best in inefficient markets. If we have reason to believe ALL rookie WRs are undervalued as a group, it would be a greater risk to only action that for the WRs we feel most strongly about than to risk being over-inclusive, and picking some flops. As the edge gets priced out of any “upside over likelihood” grouping such as rookie and sophomore WRs, players returning from injury or suspension, rushing QBs etc., we have to take more care to pick only the best bets in each group, and open our minds up more to diamonds in the rough from non-traditional archetypes.

Last year I discussed the way in which I sorted players into binary archetypes, and then re-sorted by price. In my view, there are fewer ceiling-weighted options who also have extremely attractive prices than ever. For that reason, I am consolidating more than ever on the options I think hit both marks.

Lastly, early drafting is the best time to take large stands. We know that ADP will shift dramatically over the course of the summer. If you have players you think are extraordinarily underpriced, it is best to fill up your bags while there remains a chance the market eventually agrees with you. If you want to finish your best ball portfolio with 20-percent of a player you think is priced too low, you might as well draft 30-percent now. You can always stop drafting him whenever you wish, but there is a chance that his price will rise and you wind up with a more cost-efficient 20-percent. There is also of course a chance that their ADP declines. However, that’s what extreme conviction plays are all about, right? For each of the players discussed in this article, my view is they are being drafted a tier or more too low. If their price was to drop for any non-injury related reason, I would simply keep drafting them closing line value be damned.

So with all that said, I wanted to kick off my substantive best ball content this summer with a deep dive into seven of the players who I am building my portfolio around, for better or worse.

Each of these players share in common traits of breakout archetypes I’ve identified in previous articles: (that’s three separate article hyper-links baby)

• In general we find breakouts when working with incomplete information. This means targeting players (or stacks) who are early in their career, and/or in a situation with material change; new coach, quarterback, new team, new play-caller etc.

• Beyond that, we want to be targeting receivers and tight ends with a demonstrated or potential capacity to earn high target volume, preferably downfield target volume. At Running Back and Quarterback we want to be targeting players who can contribute in both the rushing and passing phase of the game

When these elements align with that upside not seemingly being priced in, we want to attack those spots aggressively. What my top players have in common is either some level of “hype fatigue” associated with their profile, such that the community is far more bearish on their breakout potential than they would be based on their statistical profile alone, or situations in which the uncertainty around their profile or usage projection has been interpreted more negatively than positively.

I will cover them in reverse ADP order with my first five in today’s column and five in a future one within the next 5-10 days.