401: Best-Ball League Strategy

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the lad podcast with your host JJ Zackertha J J zacher.

00:00:06
Speaker 2: Reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyese and the editor in chief at fandel and at number five dot com. And this is episode four hundred and one of the Late Round podcasts when many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. All of you listening to the show love fantasy football. You wouldn't listen if you didn't. Not all of you have made the jump to Best Ball Leagues though, or you draft your team and instead of managing that team each week, the lineup is optimized based on player performance, so you don't have to inevitably screw up a start sit decision if you're one of the people who haven't given Best Ball Leagues a try. Hopefully today's episode changes that because I had a great discussion with Best Ball expert Mike Beers from Rodoviz on how he dominates his Best Ball League drafts. We talked about roster construction, when to draft particular positions, the importance of win rates, and so much more. By the end of it, you'll have all the answers to crush Best Ball Leagues by yourself. And by the way, those Best Ball leagues are going to be on FanDuel very very soon, so get excited about that. But without further ado, here's my interview with Mike. So, Mike, if someone's planning on doing a lot of different Best Ball drafts, it makes sense to diversify the players that those managers are drafting. So how do you go about doing this? What's the maximum amount of exposure that you'll generally have on a player, and do you advise people to just completely avoid certain players?

00:01:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it depends a bit on you know, how many drafts you're doing. But you said, if you're doing a lot, like more than twenty, then I think it is something you got to think about diversification. And for me, it scales with how late in the draft you are. Right, So a later round guy sort of back half double digit rounds, I might go up to thirty percent if I really like that guy across my teams, whereas an earlier guy it's you know, I don't want to go over twenty percent. And the reason is you're what you're doing by diversifying is accounting for risk, right and missing on an earlier round pick. I mean this is sort of obvious, but not everyone pieces it together is a bigger deal, so there's more risk there.

00:02:14
Speaker 1: And if you have fifty percent of.

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Speaker 3: All your leagues, you know you have let's say Nick Chubb on all those rosters and something happens to him, your entire portfolio is tanked. And if you just wanted to make a bet on Nick Chubb, what you should do is, you know, place prop bet on the over for his yards, on the over for his touchdowns. You know, if you're if you're a best ball player and you're taking advantage of a wealth of knowledge across many positions, strategy, different players, you don't there's no reason to put all your eggs in that basket.

00:02:45
Speaker 1: And that's really how I think about it.

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Speaker 2: It makes a lot of sense. You've also done a lot of work with win rates, which shows the percentage of teams that one with a particular player roster or that they had on their roster. I'm curious, do you think that win rates tell us a lot about an endo visual player or do you think that it's more helpful in developing an overall strategy and best ball. So, in other words, if a player has a good win rate, one year, should we be focused on what that win rate was and getting that player in the next year.

00:03:13
Speaker 3: I think it tells you almost nothing about the specific player. But I think there's so much valuable information in terms of developing strategy and understanding sort of the shape of the draft, where the right places to attack different positions are based on ADP, you know, the one case there's one example, like zach Ertz has had a very high win rate four straight years. All that tells me about him is that people just don't appreciate how good he is, and he's relatively cheap this year. I like him, But really it's about looking at what kind of player is this? Not the specific guy, So is it a like a deep threat wide receiver, is it a pass catching running back? And then where they were drafted in terms of was it the you know, first four rounds, was it the back half the draft?

00:04:01
Speaker 1: Was it the middle?

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Speaker 3: And that's where you really learn a lot and even more than I don't care that much about individual players, but you look at clusters of players.

00:04:10
Speaker 1: Right, and that's something that I really like to look at.

00:04:13
Speaker 3: It built a tool for rotovisk I called a positional heat map, where it tells you how high was win rate about expectation for you know, picking a certain position based on where you are in the draft individual picks, and you can see these big areas of green for quarterback between rounds like eight and twelve and everywhere else it's kind of red. You weren't you were hurting your team by drafting in other areas, And that's really I think the best way to use these player win rates.

00:04:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And by the way, I'm one of the people that has not been very high on zach Ertz and that has bit me in the butt over the last four years. So along the same lines of sort of the player analysis stuff, do you think that there's a misunderstanding out there about like the floor and ceiling projections for a player and the boom or bust potential that they might have. I think a lot of people see Best Ball and they think, oh, I automatically need you know, the Will Folders of the world, which you know, that's a different discussion if you like Will Fuller this year, which I do. But I do think that people just generally look at a Best Ball league and say, this guy's more volatile. Therefore, I need to get him, and I'm only going to draft players that appear to be highly volatile. How do you sort of go about sifting through the player pool and looking at those types of players versus players like Jamison Crowder or James White and players who people would say have a high floor. They guys that you just completely avoid or don't draft a lot of in Best Ball leagues.

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Speaker 1: So it's really a mix.

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Speaker 3: I think it is important the idea of weekly volatility, and I think that is a very important distinction weekly volatility versus your long volatility. Right, so a handcuff like Latavious Murray is someone you'd say very volatile production sort of range.

00:05:53
Speaker 1: It's either going to.

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Speaker 3: Be very low or very high, depending on whether Kamara gets injured.

00:05:58
Speaker 1: Right, That's not the kind of guys that are special for Best Ball. Really.

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Speaker 3: You're talking about maybe like a Marki's Brown last year, the Will Fuller, Deshaun Jackson historically, who are gonna have these big weeks. And I shift my focus to guys like that sort of later in the draft because ultimately you still have to score enough points every week. You want to get those high floor guys who are just going to put compile points every single week, particularly at running back early on, but also wide receiver. And then where you go for volatility is especially at the wide receiver position because you can draft generally so many of them, you have to start so many of them, and there are more of them available late in the draft, so you have each one of them sort of covers up for the other when he has that bad week. It's more of a tie breaker for me though, because you know James and Crowder and James White, I mean, they've been very useful for bestball rosters and they're actually a great kind of player to have if you are building volatility around them, right, so you know they are the band aid during the bad weeks for say you have six volatiles reivers, plus you know your your stud at the top, and then jameson Crowder. Well, Crowder's gonna cover up because sometimes those six guys are all gonna miss if they're really truly boombust guys. So I think I think you prioritize it a little bit, particularly late in the draft, but it's not it's not a must have.

00:07:17
Speaker 2: So let's shift topics a little bit. What does the research that you've done say about stacking in best ball leagues. This is a question that people talk a lot and ask a lot about in season long leagues. I think it obviously intuitively makes even more sense in best ball leagues. But what have you found?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so there are kind of three answers I have for this, and it depends on what kind of bestball league you're talking about, right, So, generally and historically I always thought I don't really care about stacking because the reality is stacking creates very high weekly volatility, and I'm playing a full season total points league in most of these best ball leagues. So putting a couple of players from the same offense together, if the entire offense has a great year, that is a bit of a boost to your upside. But it's not the kind of thing like DFS where that's you need them going off in the same week. That can actually be a bad thing, right, I mean, we really like to have kind of a puzzle fitting together of guys who have big weeks at different times on a best ball roster would be the ideal.

00:08:16
Speaker 1: You can't plan for that, but that's the ideal.

00:08:19
Speaker 3: And so in that kind of like one single league, you know, just total points sixteen weeks.

00:08:25
Speaker 1: I don't really care about stacking now.

00:08:26
Speaker 3: It changes when you start talking about a tournament format, and these would become more popular over the past couple of years.

00:08:33
Speaker 1: And there are two types of tournaments.

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Speaker 3: There's the kind where it's again just total points for sixteen weeks and the highest score wins.

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Speaker 1: And then there's the kind where it's sort of you.

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Speaker 3: Know, through week twelve, you have your league, and then it becomes a weekly game kind of like DFS, and each week thereafter, you know, teams are eliminated based on their score in that one single week. And then the former where it's still total points. I think stacking does make a small difference.

00:09:00
Speaker 1: Look.

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Speaker 3: I created this sort of stack explorer tool for Rootovis to look into this for best Ball, and you can see it does make a difference over a pretty big sample to have multiple guys from the same team in terms of total.

00:09:12
Speaker 1: Points and win rate.

00:09:14
Speaker 3: But you really got to have more than two, you know, if we're talking about stacking, you know, Matt Ryan and Julio Jones doesn't matter. But if you want if you're doing Matt Ryan, Calvin Ridley and you know, say last year Austin Hooper. That's going to make a difference because these, particularly the secondary and sort of tertiary guys, are the ones more correlated with the quarterback. Or you might be looking at an entire offense getting the quarterback and the running back plus one of the receivers that I think increases your upside for a tournament format where it's sort of total points across the year and then the last one where it sort of turns into dfs at the end. I think stacking is critical. You basically have to have it, so you need to I don't do anything crazy with my rosters, but I have an eye on it throughout the draft the entire time. I want to have at least one, ideally two quarterbacks stacked with at least one, ideally two receivers on my roster for that kind of format, and you just try to build around that in a smart way, keeping in mind all the other roster construction and valuation.

00:10:17
Speaker 1: Kind of stuff that we like to pay attention to.

00:10:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. You know a lot of people they keep talking about how deep the wide receiver position is this year, and really, at face value, it does make sense. The position appears to be really deep. But what has history told us about waiting on wide receiver and best ball drafts? Do teams historically win when they don't go after the position through the first like four or five rounds of drafts. How important is the wide receiver position.

00:10:42
Speaker 3: It varies a little bit by format, but across almost all formats, waiting until you know the fifth round to start on your wide receivers has been very bad in terms of win rates. You can sometimes get away with it if you are smart enough to stop drafting running backs entirely after the fourth round, so you took three of them in a tight end and you just don't.

00:11:04
Speaker 1: Draft any more running backs.

00:11:05
Speaker 3: But especially in leagues where you start three wide receivers plus that flex position, you just can't wait that long to start getting these receivers. I mean, I think I understand why people are saying wide receiver is deep. Like you look at wide receiver thirty six versus running back thirty six, and you it's just a much higher, scoring, better player at the wide receiver position, right, But people really are not factoring in the way that these drafts play out.

00:11:30
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to start three wide.

00:11:32
Speaker 3: Receivers because at almost every single point in the draft like the same the wide receiver versus running back that you're choosing between. Because the wide receiver is going to be a higher scoring player in PPR leagues, you want to have your flex position be a wide receiver as well. I means you're starting four wide receivers versus two running backs.

00:11:51
Speaker 1: Other people know this.

00:11:52
Speaker 3: So even if you're in sort of a running back heavy type draft, after those first two three rounds, everyone is taking wide receive they are gone very quickly.

00:12:03
Speaker 1: So you know, I ran.

00:12:04
Speaker 3: Through just as a thought exercise, what does it look like if you start with three running backs and then hit those wide receivers thinking wide receiver is deep versus Say you take one and then you start hitting the wide receivers, maybe an elite tight end, And I get to, even just looking at ADP, how drafts are playing across, playing out across different formats. You get to a stronger starting lineup with the wide receivers because of that difference and who you're starting and who the later guys are, how much they actually produce, And you wind up in a position where you maybe your running backs are weak, but you're more likely to improve that. It's sort of the idea of zero running back, and you don't have to go zero running back to do this. You know, you start with maybe Dalvin Cook and then you don't come back to running back for another six rounds. You're putting yourself in a stronger position from the get go and a better position to improve by the sixth round. You know, so many wide receivers are gone because everyone's taken everyone. You know, the secret's out. It's not as if you know wide receivers deep and nobody's drafting them. Everybody's drafting them, so at the same point in the draft, basically the depth has dried up and you still have to start more of them.

00:13:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It really aligns with some of the league winning player analysis that I did this offseason, where it really showed that the true difference making wide receivers are coming in the early rounds at a higher rate than where we get running backs and the league winning running backs. You know, obviously you're still getting a lot of running backs early that are league winners, but just compared to wide receivers, wide receiver gets the edge a little bit and sort of the way that I've like described this is that I think that there's just this sort of like overconfidence with the way that we look at positions in total and look at the wide receiver position and we sit we say, oh, the position looks really deep this year. But realistically, you know, we've been saying that over the last three or four years too. It's not that much different. And in the end, it really comes down to the fact that I think that we're just kind of overconfident in our abilities to project these guys, and so what you're describing there is sort of playing into volatility a little bit too.

00:14:09
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, even if projections were perfect, I think the wide receiver model holds up the way I just describe it. And then you add in the fact that running backs are more prone to catastrophic injury. You know, I had someone telling me that wide receivers bust more often because they finish twelve spots below their ADP more often than the top running backs. But if wide receiver is flat, then you know, a wide receiver one finishing as a wide receiver two isn't even a bad thing. They're still scoring a ton of points, you know, So structurally it just it really does not favor the running back heavy approach early.

00:14:44
Speaker 2: So I'm really curious as to what some of your research says about the tight end position, because in fantasy football, you know, a lot of the season long stuff that I've researched basically says get one early or don't get one at all. And I've really bought in more and more every year to getting the early round tight end. I mean, historically, I really have just sort of punted it. I mean a lot of the middle round tight ends are guys that just have had really really bad outcomes historically. But I'm curious if that's any different in best ball formats.

00:15:12
Speaker 3: So it's not really different in best ball actually, I mean I think you know, this year, you've got this clear top tier of you know, Kittle and Kelsey kind of the one A, and then you've got Andrews and Ertz right behind them. And after those guys, you have that sort of soft spot that's you know, a dead zone if you want to call it.

00:15:30
Speaker 1: Where I'm not drafting tight ends very often at all.

00:15:33
Speaker 3: I like to get one of those elite guys that provides flexibility in a lot of formats. You know, it'll allow you to draft one fewer tight end, which is nice, you know, freeze you up to add points in another position. But then also late round tight end in best ball doesn't mean the same thing as it does in redraft because yes, yeah, yeah, you just have to take them earlier. Everyone's taking two or three tight ends right, so by the say, fifteenth rount, fourteenth round, the guys who are going to make a difference are gone, even your sleepers, you know, mostly, so you still need to you still need to.

00:16:08
Speaker 1: Attack the position.

00:16:09
Speaker 3: And I think you either when you get that earlier guy, you can wait and just take one in that area. If you don't get the earlier guy in on most formats, you skip that middle section where everyone's very expensive. Those great wide receivers that we were just talking about live and then maybe around tight ends or twelve, you get you know, three of those guys maybe instead.

00:16:29
Speaker 1: Of two total.

00:16:31
Speaker 3: But you need to be done before you know, the eighteenth round because it really dries up again. They're only thirty two teams, most of them only have one usable tight end.

00:16:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's something too that I've talked about with superflex formats, where you know, at the quarterback position, you know you might do your analysis and realize that you can wait on quarterback, and you generally can, more than a lot of people do. But at the same time, you have to be cognizant of where the quarterback position ends up drying out in a super flex league, where it could be in the seventh round. Let's say we're like the last very clear viable starter, which could be like QB twenty five in some drafts where that player is no longer on the board. And I see that similarly to your point and how best ball leagues are different than regular redraft leagues in that you know you can get an IRV Smith in the last round of a regular redraft league, whereas that's not going to happen in these Best ball leagues because not only do you need that tight end position in best ball formats, but you can utilize that position in different ways and you're not having to guess, you know, throwing one of those guys into your flex spot or something like that. So what you'll notice if you look at ADP to anyone listening to this that's curious about Best Ball and wants to try, what you'll notice with ADP is at the low end tight end ones or the high end tight end twos are generally being drafted earlier, and you have to adjust as a result of that, and it almost makes the Kittle and Kelsey picks early and the opportunity costs that you take on. It makes it an easier pill to swallow because you know that the low end tight end ones, high end tight end twos are being drafted earlier, which kind of gives that Kittle Kelsey tier a little bit more value.

00:18:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree with that.

00:18:05
Speaker 3: I was going to say, the same thing kind of applies at quarterback, right, I mean, if you talk about late round quarterback kind of thing, I think that it still makes sense to wait on quarterback, but the definition of late round just changes.

00:18:19
Speaker 1: Right.

00:18:19
Speaker 3: If we're talking about in a redraft league, you can wait until maybe like the fifteenth round and still get a solid starter, or there's even people available in the waivers. In a best ball league, again, everyone's draft in two or three of them. Your window is really slamming shut around the fourteenth round or even before then if you want to get people who are actually contributing, So you know, you still skip the Lamar Jackson, you still skip the Patrick Mahomes, I mean the first handful of guys. But then you really you have to pay attention to how quickly they fly off the board.

00:18:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you mentioned earlier that it seems like the round eight to round twelve range is sort of the quarterback sweet spot. And then are you are you drafting two? Are you drafting three? How many are you typically drafting for your squad?

00:19:05
Speaker 1: It'll depend on the format.

00:19:06
Speaker 3: You know, some sites, you know, say FFPC where they have twenty eight rounds, I'll almost always draft three regardless of where I get him, something like you know fan ball where you know, only got twenty rounds. You got drafting defenses. It'll depend on who I've drafted. Right, So if I do take one of your earlier guys, and I'm not talking about Mahomes or Lamar Jackson because they're just they're off my board completely. But let's say I get Kyler Murray, right, he fell a little farther than normal. I get him the sixth round or seventh round or something. That's the flag that tells me I'm only drafting two quarterbacks in this draft. And you really it's just about the amount of value and draft equity you've put into the position. Now, if you're going to skip that tier and you're gonna start out with you know, next you maybe Drew Brees or you like, you know, Daniel Jones is your quarterback one, then that's the time to go with three. And you just have to keep an eye on that as the draft is playing out.

00:20:03
Speaker 2: One thing that you've done a lot of work with is looking at sort of what you just described, where you're seeing where you put a lot of value in terms of pick equity in to these particular positions. So if you draft a Kyler Murray, then you know inherently that you don't need to go completely nuts at the quarterback position later in the draft. And you did that in particular with the running back position, where you know, obviously if you're drafting back to back to back running backs to start a draft, then you likely don't need to invest in the position that heavily later on. So what's sort of your approach to the running back position overall, and are you still sort of thinking about the game in a similar way.

00:20:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, So my favorite thing to do at running back is part of this is luck, but is to have a top six pick and get one of those you know, sort of uber Bell Kow kind of running backs, and then I won't take another one for several rounds, and that because that is I mean, that's already using a first round pick on a running back is a lot of equity. And so I will, you know, the way that drafts are playing out this year, in particular, on the way back, you can get your Kittle or your Kelsey or you're still getting maybe a top six wide receiver, and you can hit another one on the way back, and it really gives you a strong foundation knowing you only need to start one running back in I'm sorry, two running backs in most formats you can wait and say. You know, zero RB is a popular you know, it's like a buzzword. This time, you're always you can target those same zero RB type of guys after you've got your one running back at the top who's already giving you an advantage of that position every week. And that's what I really like to do most Now. It changes if I'm in the back half of the draft, though, you know, if we're talking about Alvin Kamara and Dalvin Cook are gone and we're into that sort of Derrick Henry Nick Chubb area where I don't have as much confidence in those guys. I might skip running back all together in the first two rounds. That's where you might see me go zero running back and not take one till the fifth or sixth round, something like that. And because it really changes things. I mean, if you just think about, you know, a two running back start from pick ten, Say you get Joe Mixon and Nick Chubb. Right, if somebody at the front end of the draft, somebody who have McCaffrey or Barkley also takes a second running back, they're already ahead of you, and they have their third pick before you do. You're just playing from behind. You're chasing points, and you got to find a different way to win.

00:22:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really interesting way of looking at it. I've never really thought of it in that way. I think that that might be a little bit of a light bulb moment for some folks listening to this. So let's end it on this. Who are some players this season that you're likely going to have a lot of exposure to.

00:22:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's already playing out quite a bit. I've done a bunch of drafts and we already mentioned Zach Ertz perennially undervalued. He's one I'm finding on a lot of my rosters. Anytime he falls with the FI round, I'm gobbling him up there. I said, I like to get one of those premium tight ends. So if I miss out on Kittle or Kelsey, I'm usually trying to get Ertz and then a few later guys. I mean, it varies across the different sites, you know. I've played a few on sites where Christian Kirk is just really buried, and I love his upside in terms of that that weekly volatility. I think he's gonna have a lot of big games, So I've been drafting him a lot, and then I found, you know, on an FFPC draft.

00:23:32
Speaker 1: I've done a bunch of those this year.

00:23:34
Speaker 3: I keep getting with Tavius Murray and I just I kind of like that binary upside with the chance that he takes over as a bell cow if something happens to Kamara, even for a few weeks. I mean, we saw it happen last year, So I those are the guys that I'm probably ending up with the most. And but really it's any of the wide receivers in the first say three rounds, or you know, four or five rounds, I'm probably overweight on versus everyone else because of this approach. I have to running back that I think people are kind of missing the boat quite a bit this year and overdrafting running backs, and that's so I just end up with a lot of receivers in those rounds.

00:24:13
Speaker 2: Awesome stuff, Mike, thanks again for hopping on and talking to the Late Round podcast audience. For rent of you who aren't following Mike on Twitter, go do that right now by finding him at Beers Water. I'm also on Twitter at Late Round QB, and make sure you're subscribed to this podcast, the Late Round Podcast, which you can find anywhere podcasts can be found. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll talk to you later in the week.