Becoming a Best Ball Bro: Should We Do a Recap?

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

What's up, guys? It's JJ. With the Fourth of July holiday this week and the launch of the Late-Round Draft Guide, I'm taking a little vacation with my family, but I still wanted you guys to have some content. I've been doing Becoming a Best Ball Bro for a handful of episodes now, and there's been so much great information shared by the guests who have come on to that show. Some of you maybe haven't heard that information, or you just straight up forgotten about it. So on today's episode, we're doing a little recap. With the help of my co-host, Rich Ryan, you'll hear some of the best advice that's been given over the last month and a half of that show. It'll get you ready for best ball drafts that are upcoming here in July and August. This is really best ball season.

So happy 4th of July, enjoy your time with family and friends, and know that I'll be back in your ears early next week.

I'm JJ, and I've been playing in best ball leagues for years. But there are people out there who play a lot more than I do, and there are people out there who have won a lot more than I have. And I want to learn from them. This season, I'll be documenting my journey of Max entering Underdog's Best Ball Mania Contest, and I'll be doing so with guidance from some of the most successful best ball players on the planet. This is the year where things start to change. This is the year where I officially become a Best Ball Bro.

Mr. Kerrane, I got a question for you. I know the answer is probably both to this question, but what do you think's more important in best ball? Simply choosing the right players, which is sort of a mantra that some fantasy analysts go to, or having proper roster construction?

Pat Kerrane (1:42)

I mean, if you were gonna like, let me have all the league winners or a portfolio of perfectly constructed rosters, I'd take the league winners. I think it's like more important to get, to have those guys. But the thing is like, where do we actually have control? And we have some control on picking the right players. I spend a lot of time on player analysis and stuff. But I think as a best ball player, especially if you're newer to best ball and you're trying to kind of level up, focusing on roster construction is really the low-hanging fruit because that's where you actually have a lot of control and you can make like huge improvements.

And then the other thing I would say with roster construction is when you think about the type of tournament that you're playing. Like if you're an underdog's best ball mania, that's not a tournament that rewards the big prize to whoever scored the most points week one through 17 It's not that kind of tournament. In that kind of tournament, you probably need all the best players in that season because it's just who scored the most points. This is a tournament that has four different, like basically it has three qualifying entries and a final week in week 17

It leads to the situation where maybe the very best group of players doesn't even take it down. It's really a team that was structured to peak at the end of the season and win a single week in week 17

JJ Zachariason (3:03)

Would you say then that your roster construction is sort of dictating your exposure to players in a way and going that direction or are you out there seeking these individual players, obviously to some degree, and then sort of letting roster construction fall into place after week 17? What's the place after that, if that makes sense?

Pat Kerrane (3:21)

Yeah, to me the whole question is what can I get later and what can I not get later? And this is like this, you know, my site's called Legendary Upside because I think in the early rounds you want to be looking for running backs to have legitimately legendary upside who can shift the season to be about them. And you can't get that later usually. Like last year I thought Breece Hall gave us an opportunity to get that, but that was because of very specific circumstances where he's coming off this ACL tear.

Most of the time you have to pay a first or second round pick to get that kind of upside at running back. And I think it's worth it to pay for it, but you want to be shooting for that. You want to be examining where in the landscape you think there's significantly mispriced players and then attack those spots. But understand that essentially you have a budget. Your draft picks, you could kind of equate them to auction dollars or you've got basically a budget of picks that you're going to be spending, and you don't want to be coming out of the draft way overspent at running back compared to wide receiver.