Fantasy Baseball 2019: PlayDraft MLB Best Ball Strategy and Analysis

Why do you need another DFS site? Because DRAFT combines the excitement of a season-long draft into one set of games! Available from now until the start of the Fantasy Baseball season are “Best Ball” drafts.

If you have seen them in the lobby and have not tried them out yet, this article will give you an overview of what you can expect if you are trying one out for this Fantasy Baseball 2019 season!

Welcome to this first of two installments of Fantasy Baseball 2019 , covering best ball drafts on DRAFT.com from FantasyCPR. My plan here today will be to explain to you exactly what a “Best Ball” draft is and how it works. In a few days following the publishing of this piece, I will put out my top 150 rankings.

Yup it sounds like a lot, but for a 12-man draft, you will actually need to go a little deeper than that even. We will talk more about this later, when we get to the strategy section of this article. I will also touch on some basic roster construction options as well.

I play quite a bit on DRAFT, and have always been a big fan of the snake draft format. They offer 3-man, 6-man, 10-man, and 12-man best ball drafts, that start upon filling. In the DRAFT lobby, you will find me mostly in the 6-man and 12-man best ball drafts. The DRAFT app can be downloaded to your mobile device through your app store, or you can access their desktop site here!

Introduction to Best Ball Drafts:

So the first question I asked was of course was “what does best ball mean?” I know what it means for golf and golf tournaments, but is it the same principle? Not at all. What best ball really means here to put it as easy as possible, is that this is a one time thing, for the entire season.

There is no setting of lineups every week. There are no waivers. If one of your guys gets injured, there is no injured reserved. One chance to do your best right now with 18 roster spots.

So what is the benefit you ask? Well for draft junkies like me who like to hammer out a mock draft a couple of times a day, this is a great way to fine tune your skills for your season-long drafts, while still making some money if your teams can stay healthy.

Now that you have a slight understanding of what best ball drafts are in general, please click the slide bar below to proceed. Next, we will cover different types of best ball drafts you will see in the lobby, including the big glamorous looking tournaments scrolling back and forth at the top of the page. I will also briefly touch on the rules and scoring.

Types of Best Ball Drafts:

There are two types of best ball drafts available in the lobby. Fast drafts are quick in the sense that they are similar to your everyday drafts on DRAFT, and you get 30 seconds to make each pick. Slow drafts are quite a bit different.

For slow drafts, you really get to take your time and think through every pick if you decide to do so. As we get closer to the season, DRAFT will speed up that clock so watch for that, but for now during daytime hours you get eight hours to make your pick, and it you even get a couple extra hours per pick overnight.

I am currently in a slow draft that started about 24 hours ago, and we are sitting at pick 3.5. I got pick one in this one, so I currently have Mike Trout, and I was able to land Luis Severino and Manny Machado at the wrap-around, so I am in good shape so far in my opinion.

I probably will not make my fourth pick until some time tomorrow, so if you like to really break down a draft and make it last, these slow drafts are probably for you.

The fast drafts have been pretty solid though, and I like the teams that we can put together in this format. Let’s proceed and check out the rules and scoring a bit more in-depth. Of course DRAFT has done a great job with this as well, and all of their info on best ball drafts can be found here.

Rules and Scoring for Best Ball Drafts:

Rules:

So the rules are simple. Select your draft style when you are all ready to go and draft your squad. We have 18 roster spots for just three total positions. The common strategy for most with those 18 picks is to draft six of each Pitchers, IF’s, and OF’s.

Starting pitchers are grouped with relief pitchers. Infielders are all infield spots including catchers, and outfield spots also include DH’s, which is quite helpful.

While this is a good strategy, and should be able to cover an injury at each spot, I am not quite married to it. For me, it will depend a lot on how my draft shapes up, and where I may need that extra spot.

For the most part, it depends on the size of the contest for me up to this point, but mostly that is more for strategy, which I will I discuss further later on.

I will try to implore that strategy for the 12-man contests, as those stretch the player pool out to 216 players, and I think balance will be key for those. However, in the smaller field contests, even 10-man, I will likely roster extra pitching. Pitching scoring will be huge in these best balls if you have a consistent staff off guys that can eat up innings, and rack up wins and quality starts.

Scoring:

Scoring is tallied every weekly. there are 20 scoring weeks, and prizes will be distributed accordingly after the season. Instead of having to keep tabs on these teams every week like you would with an ordinary season-long league, best balls on DRAFT do all of that for you.

This is especially awesome, because sometimes the struggle with season-long leagues in general is just keeping on top of them.

Out of your 18 guys drafted, only 9 particular players scores will count to your total each week. Regardless of what you draft, you will only receive points for that particular week from your top three at each position.

With the way the scoring looks with pitchers, stud starters on two-start weeks have potential to get upwards of 100 points for the week, so I think a premium can be put on making sure you draft a pitcher or two from the cream of the crop.

Now that you have a basic idea of what a best ball draft is and how they work, let’s talk about the MLB Best Ball Championships, now live in the DRAFT lobby. Remember to refer often to the rules and scoring to take a look at the scoring and rules should you have any questions. The more prepared you are before you draft, the more likely you are to succeed. Just like anything in life.

Fantasy Baseball 2019: The MLB Best Ball Championship

Now that you have found the MLB home page on DRAFT, the first thing you are going to want to do is set those pre-draft rankings. Part two of this series will touch more on that, but now that you are there, right below that is the basic cash leagues that draft upon filling.

Any draft you click on will have payouts listed, along with a link to rules and scoring and well. They start as they fill, so again, make sure you have least have toyed with the pre-draft rankings before diving in.

You will see varying buy-in’s and league sizes. $1 contests are either six-man or 10-man, and they offer some 3-man’s, and of course the big 12-man contests, all at different buy-in levels. What I want to talk about it a bit further in depth however, is the three tournaments scrolling back and forth at the top of your screen.

The MLB Best Ball Championship is a $25 buy-in tournament, with a $100,000 prize pool. It is capped at 4608 entries, and pays $20,000 to the eventual champion. If there is any negative about these it is the fact that the max entry level is too high at 138, but I don’t see this being that type of contest.

Max entering something like this with the uncertainty of injuries seems highly -EV in my opinion, but I am sure there will be still be handful of folks that do max it out.

Unlike the normal leagues which carry on throughout the regular season, tournament entries will wrap up the regular season earlier to allow for the six week playoff run.

If you win your 12-man league you advance to the playoffs. Second place is the first loser in these, thanks for playing basically if you do not win your league through the first 14 weeks.

After all the winners are set, the quarterfinals will run for weeks 15 and 16, and you must finish in the top three of your new league of all regular season championship teams to advance to the next round.

If you have made it this far, and do not finish in the top three, you have made the money at this point, and are guaranteed a $100 payday. To see the rest of the rules for the championship and the minor differences opposed to the regular leagues, you can find that information here.

Is $25 a little too steep for your budget? Or who knows, maybe not even worth your time? DRAFT has you covered either way. There is the MLB Mini Best Ball Tournament with a $5 buy-in, with a larger field of 11,520, and a $50,000 prize pool.

For the high rollers, there is the MLB Mega Best Ball Championship with a smaller field of just 1152, and a $125 buy-in, and a $125,000 prize pool. Any way you look, there is plenty of action for all bank rolls over on draft, and we still have a month before the MLB season is underway. Before we wrap this up so I can work on my rankings, let’s finally talk about strategy a little more in depth.

Fantasy Baseball 2019: Best Ball Draft Strategy:

So I have touched on strategy periodically throughout this piece, and from what I have gathered after around a dozen or so super early best ball drafts, is that there really is no wrong or right concrete strategy at this point. Kind of a bummer you got this far and that is my answer I am guessing, but it honestly is what it is.

In my opinion, that is what makes these better than most people think. If you go into these drafts regardless of size with a particular strategy, you are only hurting yourself if you do not adjust to what is going around you. One common example of this for this upcoming season, is what to do with one of my favorite draft picks this season, Ozzie Albies.

It appears as though the slump in the second half of the season was enough to make everyone forget what Albies did in the first half. When my rankings come out in a few days, you will see that I have him maybe a bit over ranked compared to his ADP (average draft position).

What I have learned however in my process of doing so many drafts, is that I don’t have to take him in the fifth round like I did in my first couple drafts.

In my last 10-man draft I did, I had pick 1.02 and was able to take an approach I hadn’t yet up to that point. What I did was draft two pitchers by the fifth round, in the hopes of landing Albies even later. It worked, and I was able to still land him at pick 7.02.

The only suggestion I would make in order to help as far as strategy goes, is simply to pay attention to who you are drafting. Players with injury risk are falling in drafts and that is for good reason. I am not saying don’t draft players with question marks, but be aware that they can maybe be had a little later than normal.

Prime example of this is Clayton Kershaw. Healthy, he is a mid second round pick at worst, but in these drafts with the uncertainty of his health, you will see him drop to the fourth and fifth round often.

Remember, there are no waivers or IR, so drafting Kershaw to me means drafting a seventh pitcher if possible. Believe me this is tough, because one thing I like a lot about season-long fantasy MLB in general, is the fact that you can stream pitchers every week, and that can give you an edge. In best ball however, that is one edge that is gone.

I could go on and on but my advice would be get your feet wet with a small $1 entry and test the waters. Once you get the hang of it, take it from there.

I am going to be firing a few more entries in the mini best ball championship so I hope to catch you in a league or two, and I plan on doing one entry in the big one at some point in the next couple of weeks. Remember, it is already almost half full, so if you think you have what it takes to be the best, get in there before it fills!

That will be all for this strategy piece for MLB best ball drafts on DRAFT. If you have any questions, give me a follow on Twitter with the link on the page, and feel free to ask. You can also leave a question right here in the comments, and I will do my best to respond.

Remember to keep an eye out for part two of Fantasy Baseball 2019, covering MLB best ball DRAFT rankings, which should be ready in a few more days. Good luck to you in your drafts!