One of the interesting dynamics about MLB Best Ball compared to NFL is that there are more players who have actual big-league jobs who don’t get drafted. This is because MLB teams have 5 pitchers and 8 starting position players (if you don’t count catchers, who I rarely draft because they don’t get full-time at bats). That’s 13 players per team times 32 teams. You can dump a few obviously bad players and part-time platoon guys, but you’re still left with more players than there are total combined roster spots in a draft. When you add in prospects who might get called up early enough to be impactful in the season, there are more “playable” players than there are roster spots, which means there are a lot of guys going undrafted in most drafts who could really make an impact.
In every Best Ball format you’ll hear advice to “scroll down” at the end of the draft. The point here is that if you’re looking at a 19th or 20th round pick, these guys are all inherently pretty thin. A guy who’s picked up in 90% of drafts might project very slightly better than a guy who’s picked up in only 10% of drafts, but this is where simple game theory comes into play. The guy who’s only on 10% of rosters will outperform the guy who’s almost always drafted 40-45% of the time, and when he does, you’re positioned to benefit because nobody else has him. If that outperformance happens to come in a big spike week in the playoffs, that’s the kind of thing that can be key to taking down a tournament.
There’s a new game in town…
And the edges are real.
Let Xandamere guide you through!
